Saturday, May 21, 2011

Free-Floating "Planets" Are More Common Than What Is Believed

The "rogue" planets act as lenses, bending the light from distant stars

'Free-Floating' Planets Found With No Star In Sight -- BBC

An international team of astronomers claim to have found free-floating "planets" which do not seem to orbit a star.

Writing in Nature, they say they have found 10 Jupiter-sized objects which they could not connect to any solar system. They also believe such objects could be as common as stars are throughout the Milky Way.

The objects revealed themselves by bending the light of more distant stars, an effect called "gravitational microlensing".

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