Was discovered a rogue planet (without a star to orbit) with a mass approximately equal to Earth wandering through the galaxy.
Source: Sputnik Brasil (Translated to English)
Scientist used gravitational lens to detect “rogue planet” which don’t orbit a star and moves freely in the space. It is possible that Milky Way is home to trillions of these types.
Astronomers detect a rogue planet, which doesn’t orbit any star. The planet is relatively small, in a way that scientists weren’t able to calculate the distance this planet is from Earth. The discovery was recently published on the arXiv prepress portal and haven’t been analyzed yet by other scientists.
Denominated OGLE-2016-BLG-1928, the planet can have between 0.3 and 1 the Earth’s mass, but researchers believe that the planet has approximately Earth’s mass.
Officially exist 17 rogue planets and another 4, including OGLE-2016-BLG-1928, awaiting confirmation. Even so, scientists defend that there are numberless rogue planets in our galaxy, without stars to orbit, which make them frigid and hostile.
Saw for 40 minutes
The scientist seeking for these rogue planets use light distortion in space-time, an effect known as gravitational microlens, which produces the illusion to increase or approximate distant objects.
As OGLE-2016-BLG-1928 is relatively small, it means that wasn’t possible to establish specific details about the planet, including its distance from Earth. The researchers reported that it became visible a bit more than 40 minutes.
Gravitational lens
The light of a distant star can be curved by an object with great mass before arrives at Earth. A rogue planet amplifies the background light when it passes by the same axis of light source. A gravitational lens creates many images of the same background object.
It happens, because gravity bends over space-time around the body.
