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Old 19-05-2011, 11:21 AM
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Lonely planets

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news...orphanplanets/
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Old 19-05-2011, 11:40 AM
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Hi Bojan, it is an interesting article. Sure will change some theories if there are as many of these planets(?) or small almost brown dwarf failed suns floating around the cosmos as the scientists indicate there might be.

Brian
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Old 19-05-2011, 01:02 PM
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Yes, interesting article. It's in the news on several science websites. Would be very interesting to go visit one of these planets.
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Old 19-05-2011, 01:15 PM
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Originally Posted by renormalised View Post
Yes, interesting article. It's in the news on several science websites. Would be very interesting to go visit one of these planets.
Not easy to find them.... Some of them will be very cold (and therefore quite invisible).
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Old 19-05-2011, 01:38 PM
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Not easy to find them.... Some of them will be very cold (and therefore quite invisible).
Quite true, they'd be like looking for a needle in a haystack.
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Old 19-05-2011, 01:57 PM
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Seems like they picked up a lot more 'events', too …

Quote:
Although there are a thousand microlensing events in this sample, only 474 well characterized events have passed our strict selection criteria. Ten of these events have tE < 2 days {ie: "Lensing Transit duration"}... thus indicating planetary-mass lenses.
.. they seem to have covered the 'false positive' aspects fairly well …

Quote:
we have confirmed that this event sample has no significant contamination by possible background effects including: (1) cosmic-ray hits, (2) fast-moving objects, (3) cataclysmic variables (4) background supernovae, (5) binary microlensing events, and (6) microlensing by high-velocity stars and Galactic halo stellar remnants. For example, effect (1) is excluded because cosmic-rays never hit the same place in four consecutive images, microlensing model fits for effects (2) to (5) produce a high χ2 and unphysical values of parameters, and effect (6) is excluded by proper- motion and radial-velocity observations…
Seems they are saying both ejection and protoplanetary disk formation, are still contenders, and cannot be ruled out by these observations …
Quote:
Planet-formation theories predict that dynamical instabilities in planetary systems with multiple giant planets could scatter many of these planets into unbound orbits, as well as some into large separations. Recent observations also indicate that planet-planet scattering plays an important part in moving giant planets into short-period orbits. The planetary-mass population that we have identified here may have formed in protoplanetary disks at much smaller separations and then been scattered into unbound or very distant orbits.
Makes you wonder how much of a role the complexity of the n-body problem plays in the establishment, (or otherwise), of stable 'solar' systems.

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