Orphaned Planets: It's a Hard Knock Life

Orphaned Planets: It's a Hard Knock Life - by Seth Shostak (Feb.
24,'05)

http://www.seti.org/site/apps/nl/con...4993&ct=452111

Seth discusses the possibility of life on a planet ejected from its
system.

(I'm glad that Seth is coming around to a different viewpoint. Quite
awhile back I brought up this subject with him on the Are We Alone?
radio show, and I seem to recall him at that time relegating such
worlds as the domain of slime. I had brought this up here in the NG
before that (which eventually led me to ask Seth about it, to see if
researchers have ever considered these worlds in their search programs;
apparently many hadn't given the concept any merit, if they considered
it at all.) The only reason I started thinking about it back then was
because of Isaac Asimov's Extraterrestrial Civilizations book and Carl
Sagan. Also, after watching numerous iterations of computer
simulations over the years, it seemed to me to be a virtual certainty
that the universe is cluttered with ejected Free Worlds (and tidally
heated double worlds and moons etc..) And I felt that the
(anthropocentrically induced) argument by others that there was an
energy shortage for intelligent life processes (because of no star)
could be negated by volcanism, tidal heating, atmospheric pressure,
chemistry and novel food chains.)

Keep searching, Jason H.