Habitable Planets by the Thousands
Rogue Planet
A New Ball Game
Scientists have now found that there are planets floating loose in space. That is, they do not orbit any star. They are on their own, not being influenced by the gravity of any one star system, only being moved by dark energy or whatever else is out there. They believe that there could be thousands of these planets out there in the vastness of space.
You would think these planets would be cold considering that they have no sun to warm them. This may not be the case. Once again science fiction could become fact. In an episode of Star Trek “Rogue Planet” was kept warm by volcanic activity. Internal thermal activity could result in liquids on the surface not freezing and with no sun to boil off the liquid, huge oceans capable of creating and maintaining life, could cover these planets.
Now I guess, they will want to study these for signs of life.
The good news is they may not have to travel as far as the next star system to do it.
The bad news though is, as they are not stars they do not radiate much light and so are hard to find.
Some skeptics of previous alien visits to Earth always comment that it is not possible as the stars are too far away. What they say now? Travel to the outside of our solar system is already possible with our primitive technology. At any time in our history a passing planet could have had inquisitive inhabitants on it.
Comments
From what little I know about astronomy, galaxies collide with each other all the time, but since the stars are so far apart, they really remain unaffected. In other words, they don't go crashing into each just because their galaxies pass through each other.
PS, In one of two hubs I wrote about "leaders", part II. I mentioned Jean Luc Piccard as a prime example.
Nice to meet you fellow trekkie and astronomer. Thanks for allowing me to joining your team. I am familiar with the episode from Star Trek "Enterprise". Such a planet in reality may well be a needle in a haystack. There are moons of Saturn and/or Jupiter that I have read may well have substantial seimic activity, does it affect the surface temperature of the body?
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melpor Many of them may be gas giants but the possibility I wrote of was said by scientists, not me. If you know better than them, my bad. As for colliding, they haven't since the big bang and it is even believed that our Galaxy will collide with Andromeda Galaxy, but that is expected 80 billion years from now.
Rafken, you forgot to mention one thing about these rogue planets. They are all gaseous giant planets like Jupiter. I do no think you will find any form of life on these planets. Eventually they will collide with another body out there.
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