Rogue planet bigger than Jupiter found floating free thru space

[raildogg]

That artist impression.

Shame it doesn't look anything as beautiful as that.

Do we know what beauty really is? Can something man-made be truly beautiful?

 

[TechBoyJK]

6 month old article?

 

[Jaskalas]

Nice, now let's tow this thing into this solar system and start mining it for resources.
115-160 light years away, so the towing operation will be something of a long-term investment.

Long term...

:hmm: It's said that Voyager 1 would take 75,000 years to travel 4.3 light years.

Based on that, round trip to this would take 3.8 million years at 115 LY, or 5.3 million years at 160 LY.

 

[MontyAC]

That is a really big rock.

 

[Jeff7]

Long term...

:hmm: It's said that Voyager 1 would take 75,000 years to travel 4.3 light years.

Based on that, round trip to this would take 3.8 million years at 115 LY, or 5.3 million years at 160 LY.

Or put it on a fast-track.

Or wait for reactionless drive tech to show up in a few hundred years.
Extending an anti-Higgs field around the planet would also make it easier to move.


---

I've seen it suggested that the most likely viewers of the golden record messages on the Voyager probes will end up being from Earth, long before the probes could make it to anywhere near another star.

 

[silverpig]

I know i buck the trend when it comes to this idea. But i strongly believe that a lot of our "missing matter" that is the basis for "dark matter and dark energy" is exactly objects like this.

Too small for us to detect with our instruments, yet all over the place.

This explains: 1. why our mass calculations for galaxies appear to be WAY low.
2. why "dark energy" is inconsistent across space.

There is simply shitloads of mass out there that is either never enough material to form a star, or made up of materials that will not fuse into a star (Iron and heavier).

I think dark matter and dark energy are the "Aether" of the 21st century.

That used to be thought of as a possibility. The two competing theories for dark matter were called WIMPs and MACHOs. WIMPs are Weakly Interacting Massive Particles and form the current theory. MACHOs are MAssive Compact Halo Objects, and are basically as you describe - cold planets, asteroids etc.

MACHOs were shown to exist (as this planet does), but were also shown to not be able to account for the effects of dark matter.

Dark energy is a completely different thing and isn't mass at all.

 

[JEDI]

we're 2-0 against it.. bring it!

 

[Argo]

At this proportions, it's probably a failed star. Ie, a gas cloud that collapsed, but wasn't massive enough to ignite nuclear fusion.

 

[Acanthus]

Nice, now let's tow this thing into this solar system and start mining it for resources.
115-160 light years away, so the towing operation will be something of a long-term investment.



I think they'd need to be everywhere to explain the amount of missing mass.

I'm favoring the MOND (MOdified Newtonian Dynamics) lines of thinking, which say that there's something missing or incorrect in our mathematical models, rather than there being invisible matter all over the place.

Interstellar space is really, really, really big. There is plenty of room for enormous amounts of things we cant detect with a telescope. Hell we cant even see planets without them passing in front of things or looking for star wobbles.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

I know i buck the trend when it comes to this idea. But i strongly believe that a lot of our "missing matter" that is the basis for "dark matter and dark energy" is exactly objects like this.

Too small for us to detect with our instruments, yet all over the place.

This explains: 1. why our mass calculations for galaxies appear to be WAY low.
2. why "dark energy" is inconsistent across space.

There is simply shitloads of mass out there that is either never enough material to form a star, or made up of materials that will not fuse into a star (Iron and heavier).

I think dark matter and dark energy are the "Aether" of the 21st century.

dark matter and energy are used only as a placeholder for when astronomical understanding is more complete. unfortunately, there is no way rogue planets or other objects can account for even a fraction of what is described as "dark"