Lonely Planet

[swebby]

A report of a very low mass brown dwarf that has characteristics of a gas giant planet.  Question is - is it a planet wandering about without a companion star or just a very low mass brown dwarf?

 

http://www.scienceworldreport.com/articles/10084/20131010/astronomers-discovere-lonely-planet-without-astar.htm

 

http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.0457

 

S

[Methuselah]

A report of a very low mass brown dwarf that has characteristics of a gas giant planet.  Question is - is it a planet wandering about without a companion star or just a very low mass brown dwarf?

 

http://www.scienceworldreport.com/articles/10084/20131010/astronomers-discovere-lonely-planet-without-astar.htm

 

http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.0457

 

S

No one suggested 'Nimiru' yet?

[mike Meehan]

I also wonder whether there is a possibility of this being an incomplete star I.e. a body which started off as an embryo star but just did not have sufficient mass to ignite the fusion process to make it into a proper star - after all the mass of different stars differs greatly, so just as we have extremely massive stars I see no reason why we should not have others which just do not make it to maturity.

[swebby]

I also wonder whether there is a possibility of this being an incomplete star I.e. a body which started off as an embryo star but just did not have sufficient mass to ignite the fusion process to make it into a proper star - after all the mass of different stars differs greatly, so just as we have extremely massive stars I see no reason why we should not have others which just do not make it to maturity.

 

Hi Mike, it is exactly these type of objects the researchers were looking for.  For more see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_dwarf

 

In this case I suspect it is a very low mass (failed) star but I would imagine there must be planets wandering about out there that have been ejected from the orbit of their original parent star.