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Two massive ‘rogue planets’ have been spotted flying through our galaxy on their own, with no stars to orbit, scientists have said.
And the find suggests that there might be millions of ‘rogue’ worlds out there – more than there are stars in the Milky Way.
But before conspiracy theorists start yelling, ‘Nibiru! It’s coming!’ we should point out that the two possible planets are a huge distance away, either in the Milky Way’s galactic bulge and central disk.
Scientists believe one may be around the size of Neptune (if it’s in the bulge) or Earth (if it’s in the disk) – and the other may be the size of Jupiter (if it’s in the bulge) or a brown dwarf (if it’s in the disk).
Both were found using a technique called ‘gravitational microlensing’, where scientists detect objects by watching for the planet ‘bending’ light from a star in the background.
Man forced to observe Remembrance Day silence by paedophile hunters
The researchers believe that the two detections hint that such ‘rogue’ planets may be common in our galaxy – ejected from their parent stars.
The researchers write on science pre-publication service ArXiv, ‘Planet formation theories predict the existence of free-floating planets, ejected from their parent systems.
‘Although they emit little or no light, they can be detected during gravitational microlensing events. Microlensing events caused by rogue planets are characterized by very short timescales
‘While making statistical inferences out of such a small sample of events is risky, we show that these detections are consistent with low-mass lenses being common in the Milky Way, unless the fact that events occurred on bright giant stars is just a coincidence.’
‘Thus, our findings support conclusions that such Earth-mass free-floating (or wide-orbit) planets are more common than stars in the Milky Way.’
Why do conspiracy fans keep going on about ‘rogue planet’ Nibiru?
Supposed ‘rogue planet’ Nibiru (or Planet X) was widely predicted to hit our planet in April 2017, and before that in April 2016, and December 2015.
Are you seeing a pattern here?
Prior to that, it was predicted to smash into our planet to coincide with the Mayan apocalypse in 2012 – and before that, Nancy Lieder, an American website writer who claimed to have an alien implant in her brain, predicted it would destroy the world in 2003.
Nibiru does not exist. It has never been seen on any telescope, and no credible scientist has ever confirmed its existence.
NASA has thoroughly debunked the Nibiru myth via its Beyond 2012 page, saying, ‘Nibiru and other stories about wayward planets are an Internet hoax. There is no factual basis for these claims.
‘If Nibiru or Planet X were real and headed for an encounter with the Earth, astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye.’
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