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Free-floating planets in the Milky Way outnumber stars by factors of thousands
Springer ^ | 5/10/12

Posted on 05/10/2012 10:10:10 AM PDT by LibWhacker

Researchers say life-bearing planets may exist in vast numbers in the space between stars in the Milky Way

A few hundred thousand billion free-floating life-bearing Earth-sized planets may exist in the space between stars in the Milky Way. So argues an international team of scientists led by Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, Director of the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology at the University of Buckingham, UK. Their findings are published online in the Springer journal Astrophysics and Space Science.

The scientists have proposed that these life-bearing planets originated in the early Universe within a few million years of the Big Bang, and that they make up most of the so-called “missing mass” of galaxies. The scientists calculate that such a planetary body would cross the inner solar system every 25 million years on the average and during each transit, zodiacal dust, including a component of the solar system’s living cells, becomes implanted at its surface. The free-floating planets would then have the added property of mixing the products of local biological evolution on a galaxy-wide scale.

Since 1995, when the first extrasolar planet was reported, interest in searching for planets has reached a feverish pitch. The 750 or so detections of exoplanets are all of planets orbiting stars, and very few, if any, have been deemed potential candidates for life. The possibility of a much larger number of planets was first suggested in earlier studies where the effects of gravitational lensing of distant quasars by intervening planet-sized bodies were measured. Recently several groups of investigators have suggested that a few billion such objects could exist in the galaxy. Wickramasinghe and team have increased this grand total of planets to a few hundred thousand billion (a few thousand for every Milky Way star) - each one harbouring the legacy of cosmic primordial life.


TOPICS: Astronomy; Science
KEYWORDS: astronomy; catastrophism; deusexmachina; floating; immanuelvelikovsky; lunarcapture; lunarorigin; moon; outnumber; planets; rogueplanet; rogueplanets; science; stars; themoon; velikovsky; worldsincollision; xplanets
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The scientists calculate that such a planetary body would cross the inner solar system every 25 million years on the average

Yikes! That's almost 200 rogue, planet-sized, planet killers have zipped past us in the last 4.5 billion years.

1 posted on 05/10/2012 10:10:16 AM PDT by LibWhacker
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To: ETL

Speaking of nomads.


2 posted on 05/10/2012 10:13:40 AM PDT by cripplecreek (What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?)
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To: LibWhacker

A free-floating planet far from a star would have a temperature of 25K, if that. The blackbody temperature would be lower, I’m assuming some warmth from radioactive dacay, assuming the same amount of U and K as here.

I read a paper that discussed tracking long-period or one-time comets back to their origins, and they postulated the passage of a planetary mass that kicked their orbits inward.


3 posted on 05/10/2012 10:14:36 AM PDT by DBrow
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To: LibWhacker

Any planet in interstellar space will be a frozen ice ball.


4 posted on 05/10/2012 10:16:51 AM PDT by cpdiii (Deckhand, Roughneck, Mud Man, Geologist, Pilot, Pharmacist. THE CONSTITUTION IS WORTH DYING FOR!)
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To: LibWhacker

In keeping with the article’s theme of MAY BE... Monkeys may fly out of my ears at any moment.


5 posted on 05/10/2012 10:17:55 AM PDT by 1raider1
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To: LibWhacker

On a smaller scale, I believe they are called free radicals.


6 posted on 05/10/2012 10:18:06 AM PDT by cuban leaf (Were doomed! Details at eleven.)
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To: DBrow

I know that astronomers have discovered some “clumping” in the Ort cloud that may be the result of something large stirring things up.

It 50 years old, I’m not too worried about it.


7 posted on 05/10/2012 10:20:10 AM PDT by cripplecreek (What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?)
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To: LibWhacker

There is a theory that the moon was formed when a planetoid struck the Earth. Both the Earth and the planetoid disintegrated, and then reformed into two bodies: the current Earth and the Moon.

The Moon is too large of a body for the Earth to have captured via gravity, which gave rise to the collision theory.


8 posted on 05/10/2012 10:27:13 AM PDT by Brookhaven (Don't mistake my vote for Romney as a vote FOR Romney, it's a vote against Obama.)
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To: LibWhacker
So , let me get this straight. If we were to drift away from our sun, every phase of all life on earth would be destroyed yet we are supposed to believe that myriads of no sun planets drifting around would be havens for life???
9 posted on 05/10/2012 10:29:21 AM PDT by fish hawk (Religion: Man's attempt to gain salvation or the approbation of God by his own works)
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To: LibWhacker
So much wrong is so small of article.

The scientists have proposed that these life-bearing planets

Has any evidence been presented at all that they are life-bearing? So far we are 0-for-2 on detection of microscopic life on extraterrestrial bodies (moon and Mars) and zero for a lot more for detection of macroscopic life where we get close enough to various planets and moons to take detailed pictures of them.

originated in the early Universe within a few million years of the Big Bang,

For a planet to be anything other than a gas giant like Jupiter, there have to be elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. I don't know when the first stars when supernova, but the planets would have had to have formed after than to have any chance to have carbon, nitrogen, oxygen or even heavier elements like silicon or iron in them.

and that they make up most of the so-called “missing mass” of galaxies.

I've seen estimates that up to 90% of the mass is "missing". Since Jupiter is about one one-thousandth of the mass of the sun, that means you would need ten thousand missing Jupiter size planets for every sun sized star to account for the mass this way.

and during each transit, zodiacal dust, including a component of the solar system’s living cells,

What living cells? Have we ever found even one extraterrestrial cell? Just one? Then why is it assumed that they exist?

10 posted on 05/10/2012 10:31:22 AM PDT by KarlInOhio (You only have three billion heartbeats in a lifetime.How many does the government claim as its own?)
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To: fish hawk

Duh. They all self-sustain heat due to global warming.

=]


11 posted on 05/10/2012 10:31:52 AM PDT by Crazieman (Are you naive enough to think VOTING will fix this entrenched system?)
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To: cripplecreek
I know that astronomers have discovered some “clumping” in the Ort cloud that may be the result of something large stirring things up.

Well, they had to put the planet factory somewhere, and The Oort Cloud is a goldmine of 'matter'.


12 posted on 05/10/2012 10:32:16 AM PDT by UCANSEE2 (Lame and ill-informed post)
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To: fish hawk
So , let me get this straight. If we were to drift away from our sun, every phase of all life on earth would be destroyed yet we are supposed to believe that myriads of no sun planets drifting around would be havens for life???

They prepared by driving their SUVs for five billion years to keep their planets warm.

13 posted on 05/10/2012 10:33:19 AM PDT by KarlInOhio (You only have three billion heartbeats in a lifetime.How many does the government claim as its own?)
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To: fish hawk
So , let me get this straight. If we were to drift away from our sun, every phase of all life on earth would be destroyed yet we are supposed to believe that myriads of no sun planets drifting around would be havens for life???

I suspect there would still be life around deep sea vents and anywhere else warm enough to support bacterial life. So far the deepest holes we've drilled in the earth's crust have shown that bacteria survives there.
14 posted on 05/10/2012 10:34:21 AM PDT by cripplecreek (What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?)
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To: cpdiii

does mitt romney’s planet kolob have a star to orbit around, or is it simply awaiting for mittens to ordained a GOD so that it can revolve around mitt ... in all his glory ? /sarcasm-off with mega hurl aydded for effect ...


15 posted on 05/10/2012 10:34:31 AM PDT by Patton@Bastogne (Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin "will win" the 2012 GOP Nomination in Tampa !)
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To: UCANSEE2
Image Hosted by ImageShack.us
16 posted on 05/10/2012 10:37:17 AM PDT by cripplecreek (What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?)
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To: LibWhacker

“The scientists have proposed that these life-bearing planets originated in the early Universe within a few million years of the Big Bang, and that they make up most of the so-called “missing mass” of galaxies.”

Goodbye ‘dark matter’, Hello ‘missing mass’.


17 posted on 05/10/2012 10:39:08 AM PDT by UCANSEE2 (Lame and ill-informed post)
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To: cpdiii
Any planet in interstellar space will be a frozen ice ball.

So... maybe there will be a lot of penguins there. And polar bears.

18 posted on 05/10/2012 10:40:43 AM PDT by UCANSEE2 (Lame and ill-informed post)
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To: LibWhacker

“Space 1999” called it first.

Each week, our moon went zipping all over the galaxy.


19 posted on 05/10/2012 10:43:47 AM PDT by treetopsandroofs (Had FDR been GOP, there would have been no World Wars, just "The Great War" and "Roosevelt's Wars".)
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To: LibWhacker
The scientists have proposed that these life-bearing planets originated in the early Universe within a few million years of the Big Bang, and that they make up most of the so-called “missing mass” of galaxies. The scientists calculate that such a planetary body would cross the inner solar system every 25 million years on the average and during each transit, zodiacal dust, including a component of the solar system’s living cells, becomes implanted at its surface.

These components would have been sterilized by the solar wind. Any DNA that would have existed in what would have been living cells that may have survived the trip out of the atmosphere would be blasted in to incoherent and inert dust by the solar wind within short period of time unless shielded by being buried very deep inside a very large rock.

Any rock large enough to be shielding for life would be superheated by impacting a wandering planet again destroying that life.

The idea that a wandering lifeless planet could pick up life by drifting by a life bearing planet seems to me pretty far fetched.

20 posted on 05/10/2012 10:46:58 AM PDT by Pontiac (The welfare state must fail because it is contrary to human nature and diminishes the human spirit.)
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