Rogue planets
A Cold Brown Dwarf is Belching Methane Into Space
Brown dwarfs span the line between planets and stars. By definition, a star must be massive enough for hydrogen fusion…
TESS Finds its First Rogue Planet
Well over 5,000 planets have been found orbiting other star systems. One of the satellites hunting for them is TESS,…
Where Are All These Rogue Planets Coming From?
There's a population of planets that drifts through space untethered to any stars. They're called rogue planets or free-floating planets…
How Many Planets Could Be in the Kuiper Belt?
A recent study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters investigates the potential existence of Mars-sized free-floating planets (FFPs)—also known as…
What’s the Source of Binary Rogue Planets?
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is already making great strides in helping us to unravel the mysteries of the…
Roman Could Finally Tell Us if Primordial Black Holes Exist
When the Universe erupted into existence with the Big Bang, all of its matter was compressed into a tiny area.…
Misaligned Binary Star Systems are Rogue Planet Factories
Astronomers are discovering that free-floating, rogue planets are common in the Milky Way. Hundreds were recently found in the Orion…
Why Build Megastructures? Just Move Planets Around to Make Habitable Worlds
A new study recommends we stop looking for megastructures and start searching for advanced civilizations who have moved multiple planets…
If Rogue Planets are Everywhere, How Could We Explore Them?
A new study estimates there could be hundreds of rogue planets nearby that we could explore for signs of extraterrestrial…
There Could be Trillions of Rogue Planets Wandering the Milky Way
A pair of new studies set to be published in The Astronomical Journal examine new discoveries in the field of…