Way to go, planets. First, your Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, then Pluto gets cut, and now they’re telling us there are perhaps more planets that we’re just learning about. One’s with no solar system, to be exact.
Japanese astrologers have just discovered free floating “new planets” that aren’t orbiting any stars. A report today in the journal Nature says that the only way they found these stars is because they’re large enough to bend light, or “gravitational microlensing” as they call it.
Basically, the definition of “planet” says that they have to orbit something, whether it’s a star or stellar remnant. So technically, they’re not planets, but they formed the same way planets do. These confusing little imposters are around the size of Jupiter, and they’re predicted to be about as common as a star in the Milky Way.
What we want to know is: 1. Do they have aliens and 2. Do they need help naming them? If they are, in fact, looking for some new planet names, we’ll get the ball rolling with some suggestions:
Bort: a very popular name made even more popular from an episode of THE SIMPSONS
Meeguin: a rumored off stage name that Justin Bieber goes by
Ethel: it’s a shame only grandmothers get to go by such a beautiful name
Gunther: we’ve all had a pet named Gunther at some point in our lives, so its a dear name to many people
Captain Von Trapp: Christopher Plummer no longer wants to be famous for this name, so we should give it to something else
If you have any planet names, please, feel free to suggest!