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posted by martyb on Monday August 06 2018, @02:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the photogenic-chicken dept.

A bizarre rogue planet without a star is roaming the Milky Way just 20 light-years from Earth. And according to a recently published study in The Astrophysical Journal, this strange, nomadic world has an incredibly powerful magnetic field that is some 4 million times stronger than Earth's, which generates spectacular auroras that would put our northern lights to shame.

The new observations, made with the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), provide not only the first radio detection of a planetary mass object beyond our solar system, but also mark the first time researchers have measured the magnetic field of such a body.

[...] The peculiar and untethered object, succinctly named SIMP J01365663+0933473 (we'll call it SIMP for simplicity's sake), was first discovered back in 2016. At the time, researchers thought SIMP was a brown dwarf: an object that's too big to be a planet, but too small to be a star. However, last year, another study showed that SIMP is just small enough, at 12.7 times the mass and 1.2 times the radius of Jupiter, to be considered a planet — albeit a mammoth one.

"This object is right at the boundary between a planet and a brown dwarf, or 'failed star,' and is giving us some surprises that can potentially help us understand magnetic processes on both stars and planets," said Arizona State University's Melodie Kao, who led the new study on SIMP, in a press release.

[...] SIMP seems to be a massive and magnetic exoplanet without a star that may have a moon that is generating brilliant auroras while wandering the Milky Way.

[...] "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," said co-author Gregg Hallinan of Caltech.

http://www.astronomy.com/news/2018/08/free-range-planet

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Monday August 06 2018, @03:17PM (2 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 06 2018, @03:17PM (#717860) Journal

    Is a free range planet like a free range unicorn? A superior kind of unicorn meat?

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Monday August 06 2018, @03:34PM (1 child)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday August 06 2018, @03:34PM (#717869) Journal

    Only if you like cold cuts.

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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 06 2018, @10:55PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 06 2018, @10:55PM (#718028)

      That one won;t be cold, though. It's almost a star.