Star-less planets found

[Welsh cake]

Japanese astronomers claim to have found free-floating "planets" which do not seem to orbit a star. Read full article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13416431

From reading planetary formation theory I had suspected astronomers would eventually find celestial bodies out there without a parent sun to orbit around. Of course this discovery presents a new problem... what do we call them?

It can't be called a planet - that term is only used for astronomical objects such as our Earth that is orbiting a star or stellar remnant. Any ideas?

[downbeatplumb]

Japanese astronomers claim to have found free-floating "planets" which do not seem to orbit a star. Read full article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13416431

From reading planetary formation theory I had suspected astronomers would eventually find celestial bodies out there without a parent sun to orbit around. Of course this discovery presents a new problem... what do we call them?

It can't be called a planet - that term is only used for astronomical objects such as our Earth that is orbiting a star or stellar remnant. Any ideas?

Are they like the moon from space 1999

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WZW4groJro

[Anomalocaris]

Ex-planets?

That there should large number of planets sized bodies that orbits the milky way without any close association with any particular star is expected and should come as no surprise. We've discovered many planetary systems in which a large jupiter like planet orbits very close to the star, much closer then mercury is to our sun. The planets could not have formed at this distance from its sun, and must have migrated a great ways inward from where they were formed further out. The conservation of energy dictates such planets must have transfered a great deal of its orginal orbital energy to something else to accompolish the transfer inward. One very likely candiate is another planet. As one planet transfers its orbital energy to another, the planet lossing its energy migrate inwards, the planet gaining the energy escapes the solar system all together.

[Minimalist]

Any ideas?

Big fucking asteroids!

[Violet]

Any ideas?

Big fucking asteroids!

Viking extrasolar large comet reclaiming orbit. We can even call them 'Velcro' for short, as that too is an alien technology.

[Doubting Thomas]

Big fucking asteroids!

Tucks medicated pads or Preparation H will take care of that problem.

Speaking of which, what happened to Preparations A through G?

[Autumnlicious]

I thought there was a term for it - "Rogue planets"

A rogue planet (also known as an interstellar planet, or orphan planet) is a planetary-mass object that has been ejected from its system and is no longer gravitationally bound to any star, brown dwarf or other such object, and that therefore orbits the galaxy directly.[1][2][3] Astronomers estimate that there are twice as many Jupiter-sized rogue planets as there are stars.[4]
Isolated planetary-mass objects which were not ejected, but have always been free-floating, are thought to have formed in a similar way to stars, and the IAU has proposed that those objects be called sub-brown dwarfs.[5]]

Ok, so if it wasn't orbiting a star, ever, then call it a sub-brown dwarf.

Seems fine to me.

[Violet]

Rogue planets sound cool. But don't mind me, rogue everything sounds that way to me

[Cinjin]

I thought there was a term for it - "Rogue planets"

and if a rogue planet gets pulled into a different stars gravity to join the other planets around the warm light - we can than call it a "toke planet"

[Gawdzilla]

E.E. "Doc" Smith was all over this in the '40s.