Strigari et al at the Kavli Inst. (see http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/f...ts-022312.html ) say that evidence
supports the idea that starless, nomad planets may swarm
our galaxy (and thus others?). The huge ratio they propose
for such nomads per star is 100,000. Wouldn't this seem to
change the old assumptions in calculating the extremely low
probabilities of 'interstellar' collisions and near misses, once
we look not just at stellar distributions and their mean-free-
paths, but now have to fold in this whole new family of
objects.. the nomads?

Additionally, won't this affect the results in modeling galaxy-
galaxy collisions, for the same reason? Ie: More objects
that go 'bump' in the night?

[Mod. note: linked press release refers to
http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.2687 -- mjh]