• Cyberflunk@lemmy.worldEnglish
    55·
    7 days ago

    wtf,they have several classifications.

    • free-floating planetary-mass object
    • exoplanet
    • rogue planet
    • brown dwarf

    welcome to science where theres names, AND acknowledgement that things change with new data

  • BenLeMan@lemmy.worldEnglish
    33·
    7 days ago

    Strangely attracted to distant stars yet unable to establish a stable orbit, Simp 0136 is condemned to a lonely existence.

  • Victor@lemmy.worldEnglish
    17·
    7 days ago

    So how come there’s an aurora when there’s no star to spray it with electromagnetic radiation?

    • KingGimpicus@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      141·
      6 days ago

      Because the planet produces its own radiation. That much mass means this is less a “planet” and more of a proto star. It’s actually large enough to fuse deuterium if the right conditions arise. Pour enough hydrogen in there to raise the mass three of four times what it has now and it’d be comparable to our sun.

      • Victor@lemmy.worldEnglish
        42·
        7 days ago

        Nah, that’s a yes or no question, that’s a worse question. I want to know what’s causing the aurora, if not a star.

  • DeICEAmerica@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    6 days ago

    Welcome to 2016. Mike brown and Konstantin Batygin basically proved that the only way we could explain the orbits of Pluto and other KBO was a massive 9th, yet to be discovered rogue planet more than likely ejected from our inner solar system during planet formation.

  • TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    92·
    7 days ago

    That’s looks like a picture of Jupiter, or an artists impression of it, and there’s a star needed for an aurora to happen.

    Any scientific sources to back this story up?

    • Midnitte@beehaw.orgEnglish
      16·
      7 days ago

      No it is indeed an artists impression of the planet - it’s on the wiki page.

      I’m assuming that aurora only needs solar wind to happen on earth - or that solar wind outside the heliosphere is strong enough you don’t need a star for it to happen.

      In 2018 astronomers said "Detecting SIMP J01365663+0933473 with the VLA through its auroral radio emission, also means that we may have a new way of detecting exoplanets, including the elusive rogue ones not orbiting a parent star …

    • InappropriateEmote [comrade/them, undecided]@hexbear.netEnglish
      12·
      7 days ago

      The picture is definitely just some artist’s conception, but it’s not claimed to be a photo or meant to be anything other than what it is, an artist’s conception. You’re right that for the most part, a star is needed for aurora, at least for the kind of aurora we have on Earth since it depends on the solar wind interacting with the planet’s magnetic field. But if there is anything that can be said about what we’ve discovered astronomically in the last century or so it’s that there are always exceptions to every supposed rule.

      The authors attribute the auroras to SIMP-0136’s magnetic field being vastly more powerful than Jupiter’s (750 times stronger according to a previous study). Electrons (presumably stripped from atoms by internal processes) would flow with the field and hit atmospheric molecules fast enough to make them glow, they conclude.

      Aside from the aurora part though, none of this is exceptional or rare (and maybe even the aurora part isn’t rare either). Rogue planets are probably extremely common, possibly even more common than planets that are gravitationally bound in a star system. And objects of this size, which is really around where we’d start calling it a brown dwarf, are also very common, with more of them than there are main sequence stars.