The Kepler telescope discovered evidence suggesting that there are floating planets that are alone in deep spaces, not related to a host star. The data show four new discoveries compatible with planets with masses similar to deep floating earth in deep spaces. The study was led by Iain McDonald from the University of Manchester and used data collected in 2016 during the K2 phase of the NASA Kepler’s spatial telescope.
The K2 mission phase lasted two months. During this time, Kepler watched a cluttered field of millions of stars near the center of the Milky Way Galaxy every 30 minutes to discover rare gravitational microller events. The team has found 2 Microching signals candidates from the short time that varies on time schedules between one hour and ten days.
Many of these events had already been observed in field data. However, four of the shortest events are discoveries compatible with planets with a mass similar to the ground. The new signals have not shown a longer expected signal expected from a host star suggesting that they were floating planets. Astronomers believe floating and floating planets probably formed around a host star before being ejected by the gravitational tug of the heavier planets of the system.
Microlensing describes the light of a temporarily enlarged background star by the presence of other stars in the foreground. The microching event produces a short burst of the brightness that can last from a few hours to a few days. Scientists have found that about one of each million stars in the galaxy is visibly affected by microching at any time. However, only a few percent of events are supposed to be caused by planets.
Interestingly, Kepler has not been designed to find planets using micro-plays or to study dense star fields inside the inner galaxy. Scientists have had to design data reducing techniques to search for signals in the Kepler dataset. McDonald says that the signals are extremely difficult to find, but the team could extract characteristic alterations caused by planets. The discovery of fully floating planets will take place for the Nasa Nancy Grace Roman spatial telescope, which is optimized to search for microching signals.
