Have you ever heard of Rogue Planets? On hearing this name you feel like the planet is a tough and hardened criminal who has gone rogue. But actually, these residents have been evicted and are living on the galactic streets. Rogue Planets are starless planets that have become independent the hard way by being kicked out of their planetary system. To escape a star’s gravitational pull is a backbreaking job that the biggest and strongest of all planets cannot do. But these planets which have been exiled from their peer group have succeeded in breaking free from the Brobdingnagian gravitational pull of the star. These homeless planets have become the “stars” of their world.
What’s wild about these rogue planets is that they can harbor life. These planets are thought to span the entire range of bound planets, from planets the size of Pluto to humongous ones bigger than Jupiter. While these rogues will have no star to warm their surfaces, they still have internal heat. For example, if you cut off the Earth from the solar system, the surface would get pretty cold and chilly, but volcanoes and hot springs would still keep running. And where there’s heat there’s the potential for liquid water, and where there’s liquid water there’s the potential for life.
Even though there are trillions of rogue planets in the Milky Way galaxy, the unfortunate part is that it is an arduous task to detect these planets. For one, they’re small, and because they are not stars, they emit a dim glow from any internal heat they may have. “Small” and “dim” are tough pairs to overcome in astronomy.
These planets seem so dangerous when one hears about them. But when we get to know about them, they seem to represent the most common habitable real estate in the universe.
The closest rogue planet to Earth is OGLE-2016 BLG-1928 which is almost the size of the earth. What if this rogue planet decides to pay a little visit and being “rogue” in nature, destroys the earth? Now if these represent the most common habitable real estate of the universe as scientists say, the next stop might not be Mars (are you listening Elon). Just imagine living on a planet that is self-reliant and traveling around the galaxy as if the planet is our own spaceship.
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