Monday, February 27, 2012

cosmology

Galaxy may swarm with 100,000 times more ‘nomad planets’ than stars
February 24, 2012

This image is an artistic rendition of a nomad object wandering the interstellar medium. The object is intentionally blurry to represent uncertainty about whether it has an atmosphere. A nomadic object may be an icy body akin to an object found in the outer solar system, a more rocky material akin to asteroid or even a gas giant similar in composition to the most massive solar system planets and exoplanets. There may be 100,000 times more wandering “nomad planets” in the Milky Way than stars, and some may carry bacterial life, according to a new study by researchers at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC). If any of these nomad planets are big enough to have a thick atmosphere, they could have trapped … more…
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