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| Rogue Planet |
Our galaxy is full of mysterious worlds some are earth-like and may have the right conditions but life as we know it while others are hellish and orbit so close to their star that they are being ripped apart.
There are icy planets that are completely frozen at the edge of space dead worlds that orbit ancient exploded stars and gas giants that experience ferocious wind speeds of above 5,000 miles per hour. But some of the strangest world's ever discovered are known as rogue planets.
Rogue planets are huge objects that wander alone through the darkness of interstellar space untethered and free of a parent star. Not much is known about how these planets come to exist but scientists theorize that they are either failed stars or planets that have been ejected from a planetary system after an encounter with another world.
Rogue planets normally glow faintly from the heat of their formation but once they cool down they disappear into the darkness making them extremely difficult to detect and observe. Around 19 potential rogue planets have been identified two of which have been confirmed however scientists think that there could be billions of these mysterious Dark Worlds drifting through the Milky Way galaxy PSO J318.5-22
is a confirmed rogue planet that was discovered back in October 2013. The free floating world is a distant gas giant that exists around 80 light-years away from Earth and is around six point five times the mass of Jupiter. It is believed to have layers of clouds that are made up of hot dust and molten metal with an estimated internal temperature of 800 degrees Celsius. But what makes this planet extra strange is that it only formed around 12 million years ago making it a newborn planet. How such a young world became a rogue planet is a mystery but scientists think that it may have been knocked out of its planetary system soon after it was formed by a larger object.
A more recent candidate for the rogue planet status is a world named SIMP J013656.5+093347 which was originally believed to be a failed star known as a brown dwarf but is now more likely a very large gas planet. The wandering world is around 20 light-years away from Earth and has 12.7 times more mass than Jupiter placing it right on the boundary between a planet and a failed star. The rogue world also has an incredibly powerful magnetic field that is around 4 million times stronger than the Earth's and generates a spectacular Aurora.
The closest potential rogue planet has been named WISE 0855−0714 and can be found only 7.1 light-years away. The strange object is estimated to be around three to ten times the mass of Jupiter and could be a giant gas planet that was ejected from its planetary system. However scientists think that it is more likely a brown dwarf as they are more common throughout the galaxy. But due to its low mass this mysterious object could be the closest free-floating world discovered so far while potentially billions of rogue planets are drifting through the Milky Way galaxy.