Lone wandering planets?

http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...ay_031215.html

The above link talks about what constitutes a planet. However one
interesting line they put in was:

"In contrast, there are observational hints of lone, wandering planets not
hosted by any star. "

What observational hints? I've never heard of this before. Has someone
observed a huge rock floating through interestellar space? I'm sure they
exist, but has someone seen one? Or how do they get an "observational hint"?

Yousuf Khan

"Yousuf Khan" wrote in
. cable.rogers.com:

http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...ay_031215.html

The above link talks about what constitutes a planet. However one
interesting line they put in was:

"In contrast, there are observational hints of lone, wandering planets
not hosted by any star. "

What observational hints? I've never heard of this before. Has someone
observed a huge rock floating through interestellar space? I'm sure
they exist, but has someone seen one? Or how do they get an
"observational hint"?

Yousuf Khan




My guess would be microlensing.

http://bustard.phys.nd.edu/MPS/


Not sure if they have made any claims to have detected planets not bound
to a solar system but the microlensing method should be able to detect
those.

Llanzlan.

On Wed, 17 Dec 2003 00:09:46 GMT, "Yousuf Khan"
wrote:

http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...ay_031215.html

The above link talks about what constitutes a planet. However one
interesting line they put in was:

"In contrast, there are observational hints of lone, wandering planets not
hosted by any star. "

What observational hints? I've never heard of this before. Has someone
observed a huge rock floating through interestellar space? I'm sure they
exist, but has someone seen one? Or how do they get an "observational hint"?

I recall reading about one such case a year or two back. I think they
detected it's wake as it sped through a fairly dense nebula.

It's easy enough to imagine how a planet could be ejected from a
planetary system during the nearby passage of another star..

Al Moore

"YK" == Yousuf Khan writes:

YK http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...ay_031215.html
YK The above link talks about what constitutes a planet. However one
YK interesting line they put in was:

YK "In contrast, there are observational hints of lone, wandering
YK planets not hosted by any star. "

YK What observational hints? I've never heard of this before. Has
YK someone observed a huge rock floating through interestellar space?
YK I'm sure they exist, but has someone seen one? Or how do they get
YK an "observational hint"?

Yes, that's essentially it. Zapatero et al. (2002, URL:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/np...pJ...578..536Z
) found something toward the star cluster sigma Orionis that looks
like it could be a Jupiter-mass object. However, in order to estimate
its mass, they have to use theoretical models to estimate how an
isolated Jupiter-mass object from this cluster would appear. If the
models aren't quite right, this object could be more massive.

There was also a report of Jupiter-mass objects in the globular
cluster M22, but that claim has been retracted after additional
analysis of the data.

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