this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2025
44 points (95.8% liked)

Astronomy

4758 readers
46 users here now

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
top 9 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

There are NO planets that don't orbit stars : once they don't orbit a star they don't follow the modern definition of a planet anymore

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago

The modern definition of "planet" only includes things that orbit the sun.

Honestly, the IAU's definition of a planet is pretty useless.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

We'll not have science in this discussion about science!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

Rocky planets, gas giant planets, ice giant planets, dwarf planets, super Earth planets, hycean planets, lava planets, rogue planets...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

Very interestingly, they found that systems with fewer planets tend to exit their “ejection” phase after about 100 million years, but systems with 10 planets are still unstable even after a billion years. They also found that these more bountiful systems actually eject the majority of their planets, losing 70 percent after a billion years. Most of the ones ejected are lower-mass, as expected.

Wonder how many sibling planets we had when our solar system first formed. This sort of topic is always fascinating to me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

This post made me imagine a nightmare scenario where Earth is ejected and we can only helplessly watch as the sun becomes smaller and smaller.