Free-Floating Planets in the Milky Way Outnumber Stars by Factors of Thousands

[n2doc]

ScienceDaily (May 10, 2012) — Researchers say life-bearing planets may exist in vast numbers in the space between stars in the Milky Way.

A few hundred thousand billion free-floating life-bearing Earth-sized planets may exist in the space between stars in the Milky Way. So argues an international team of scientists led by Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, Director of the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology at the University of Buckingham, UK. Their findings are published online in the Springer journal Astrophysics and Space Science.

The scientists have proposed that these life-bearing planets originated in the early Universe within a few million years of the Big Bang, and that they make up most of the so-called "missing mass" of galaxies. The scientists calculate that such a planetary body would cross the inner solar system every 25 million years on the average and during each transit, zodiacal dust, including a component of the solar system's living cells, becomes implanted at its surface. The free-floating planets would then have the added property of mixing the products of local biological evolution on a galaxy-wide scale.

Since 1995, when the first extrasolar planet was reported, interest in searching for planets has reached a feverish pitch. The 750 or so detections of exoplanets are all of planets orbiting stars, and very few, if any, have been deemed potential candidates for life. The possibility of a much larger number of planets was first suggested in earlier studies where the effects of gravitational lensing of distant quasars by intervening planet-sized bodies were measured. Recently several groups of investigators have suggested that a few billion such objects could exist in the galaxy. Wickramasinghe and team have increased this grand total of planets to a few hundred thousand billion (a few thousand for every Milky Way star) -- each one harbouring the legacy of cosmic primordial life.


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120510100217.htm

note: Stars in the visible universe = 30 billion trillion (3x10²²)
So Planets>>Stars....

[laconicsax]

1. There's a lot of this that doesn't add up.

How can planets presumably made almost of hydrogen with traces of helium and lithium and not receiving any regular energy from a parent star be home to life?

You can't make complex molecules from hydrogen and bits of lithium, especially since there's no sustainable temperature where they're both in the same state.

[Posteritatis]

2. Gas giants are pretty 'warm;' Jupiter emits more heat than it receives from the sun. (nt)

[laconicsax]

4. Well, that addresses one issue.

I suppose all that's left is how hydrogen alone can result in life.

[BadgerKid]

6. IIRC the heavier elements

result from stellar fusion and any resulting supernovas distribute the matter throughout space. Carl Sagan's "we're all made of star matter" quote, etc.

[laconicsax]

7. The article in the OP is talking about planets formed immediately after the big bang

These planets would not have been formed from stellar remnants and would consequently have only hydrogen and traces of helium and lithium.

While it's possible that over the course of millions of years, they could pass through the ejected remnants of dying and exploded stars and gained enough additional material for complex chemistry, that's a big leap from what the article claims.

The idea that almost countless gas giants are floating around in the interstellar medium is interesting and provocative. The idea that, while having been solitary wanderers since they formed around the same time that the first stars were forming, they are home to life appears hugely unsupported.

[eppur_se_muova]

9. "Hugely unsupported" seems to be a good summing-up.

This probably should be at least cross-posted to Pseudoscience.

[struggle4progress]

3. Such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact!

Headline: Free-Floating Planets in the Milky Way Outnumber Stars by Factors of Thousands!
Sentence: The 750 or so detections of exoplanets are all of planets orbiting stars!

Rewording: We have found < 1000 planets outside our solar system
Rewording: None of the planets we have found outside our solar system are "in the space between stars in the Milky Way"

[eppur_se_muova]

10. I see, sir, you are a fan of the classics.

It does my heart good.

[NickB79]

5. Oh god, Chandra Wickramasinghe again?

The scientists calculate that such a planetary body would cross the inner solar system every 25 million years on the average and during each transit, zodiacal dust, including a component of the solar system's living cells, becomes implanted at its surface. The free-floating planets would then have the added property of mixing the products of local biological evolution on a galaxy-wide scale.

Funny, I never knew there was a cloud of living cells floating around in the space between the planets within our solar system

[eppur_se_muova]

8. Most appropriate response. Google Chandra Wickramasinghe for much pseudoscientific babble.

CW and Fred Hoyle together decided to re-animate the corpse of the Panspermia Hypothesis, based on over-interpretation of extremely sparse and ambiguous data. CW is convinced that life is spread just everywhere, floating freely in space and zipping from planet to planet and star to star apparently unimpeded by any laws of physics or probability. He also believes that viruses originate in outer space. All of this is one the basis of rampant speculation and very little real science.

He and Fred Hoyle charged that the fossils of Archaeopteryx were 19th-century fakes (apparently not realizing that more had been found in the 20th century -- guess they didn't believe in doing their homework).

[eppur_se_muova]

11. Here's where the author of this "theory" is coming from :

http://www.panspermia.org/chandra.htm

Read as much as you can without gagging. It's pretty much a textbook case of how rampant speculation and "logic" so sloppy it doesn't even deserve the name can lead to any conclusion you want, regardless of the inadequacy, or overlooked ambiguity, of the evidence.