INTO THE DEPTHS OF SPACE

"There are innumerable suns, innumerable lands... it is impossible for a rational and living mind to imagine that all these innumerable worlds, which are as magnificent as ours, or even better than it, were deprived of inhabitants like ours, or even better."

So wrote Giordano Bruno. Three and a half centuries have passed since then, at the stake of the Inquisition, the one who first dared to say against the church: we are not alone in the universe perished!

Bruno is dead, but his ideas are alive. The stars are the same suns as ours, only very far from us, said Bruno. His satellites are the earths, he stressed, the planets. Modern science has proven that planet-like satellites revolve around some stars.

From the stars closest to us - Alpha Centauri and Proxima Centauri - the light has been coming for more than four years. Three hundred thousand kilometers per second, one billion eighty million kilometers per hour, per year... no, the astronomical numbers of distances in the universe are too great. Four light years sounds shorter and simpler.

If we could go on a journey into space at the speed of light, then in four years our Sun would turn into a small star for us. Would we then see his family of planets, these dark bodies shining only by reflected sunlight?

Yes, they will let us know about themselves. If we filmed the position of the Sun in the sky - not once or twice, but many times over many years - we would notice an amazing thing: it strays first in one direction, then in the other direction from the path assigned to it by law gravity. This would happen every few years. This is influenced by the movement of the Sun, its planetary satellites, in particular the largest of them - Jupiter.

It turns out that one can learn about the invisible satellites of a star just as reliably as if we flew to Alpha Centauri and were convinced of their existence with our own eyes.

And, even before making interstellar flights, we know that the planets are not alone in the universe. They are also found in other stars.

Almost half a century Pulkovo astronomers photographed the star "61" in the constellation Cygnus. It turned out that in five years it shifts by an angle of three hundredths of an arc second. In the picture it is only five ten-thousandths of a millimeter! Perhaps the invisible satellite is to blame for this, which makes full turn around its sun in five years. At the farthest point of its path, it is about three times farther from the star than our Earth, moving away from the Sun. Its mass is twenty times greater than that of Jupiter - the most major planet solar system. It is possible that we are observing the combined disturbing influence of several planet-like satellites.

That's what astronomers were told by tiny deviations of tiny dots in photographs of the starry sky. You can imagine the accuracy of measurements in such pictures!

Recent years have brought new discoveries. An invisible satellite appeared at Proxima Centauri. Astronomers have studied the movement of the two hundred and forty stars closest to us. Approximately sixty of them have satellites. And meanwhile, says Pulkovo astronomer Professor A. Deutsch, "we are now only at the very beginning of a promising path, and there is no doubt that the coming years will bring us complete confirmation that many stars have their own planets."

As varied as the stars are, so varied are their planets. There is no doubt that among them there will be planets similar to ours. native land. Bruno spoke about lands three and a half centuries ago. Modern astronomers also talk about the lands.

Facts are stubborn things. And even the idealist Jeans - an English astronomer, an opponent of the plurality of inhabited worlds - finally admits under the pressure of facts: “On many planets there may be physical conditions not very different from our earthly ones and thus capable of supporting life similar to our earthly life. It's possible that life is much more common in the universe than we thought."

Life in the universe... So, other planets star systems can be inhabited?

The works of Soviet scientists dealt a crushing blow to those who tried to present the emergence of our planet as Lucky case, exceptional and unique.

What happened in one corner of the universe could or could happen in another.

In the boundless expanses of the universe, separated by vast spaces, worlds are born, live, die, and “matter in its eternal cycle moves according to laws that, at a certain stage, here and there, necessarily give rise to a thinking spirit in organic beings.”

The latest achievements of science strengthen faith in the validity of these remarkable words of Engels.

Life is not the privilege of only our planet. Only idealists who deny the materialist dialectic of nature are unable to understand this. Only those who cling to the ideas invented by religion about the divine creation of the world are afraid to admit the possibility of the existence of another earth besides ours, the possibility of another life besides earthly.

It is difficult to imagine what exactly the forms of life are in the worlds of distant suns. One thing is certain: in the course of development from the lowest to the highest, the “highest color of matter” inevitably arises - a thinking being. “... Once given organic life, then it must develop through the development of generations to a breed of thinking beings. In this statement of Engels lies the key to a materialistic understanding of the question of life in the universe.

What can be the appearance of thinking beings of other planets, if they exist? Some scientists answer: any other thinking being must necessarily resemble a person. This is the most convenient form for the "highest color of matter."

No, others argue. Why does it have to be human? The place of this small branch of the class of mammals, the detachment of apes, on other planets, under other conditions, may be taken by another group of animals. And perhaps there arose creatures that did not look like humans.

Let's not decide which of them is right. Another thing is important for us now - the question of the possibility of flying to the stars.

At one time, there was a whole discussion on the pages of the journal "Bulletin of Knowledge".

One reader argued this way. The inhabitants of other worlds did not visit the Earth. The earth is not the only cultural center of the universe. On other planets, there may be more high cultures. And since no one has flown to us from other worlds so far, then interplanetary travel in general is an impossible dream.

But this way of putting the question is wrong. Indeed, if somewhere in the universe, besides the Earth, there is still life, and, moreover, highly developed, what prevents our neighbors from visiting us?

If the machines of intelligent beings of other worlds have not visited the Earth, then it does not follow from this that they have not visited other planets, Tsiolkovsky said. Yes, and in the distant past, as well as in the distant future, a visit to our planet could or could take place.

Cosmic speeds of tens and hundreds of kilometers per second are still unattainable for modern technology. It is difficult to imagine the light years separating the worlds of suns.

However, if we assume that our celestial neighbors have a very perfect technology, powerful sources of energy, we must also admit the possibility of their visiting the Earth in the past, present or future.

Of course, the arrival of a ship from the depths of the universe is an extraordinary, exceptional phenomenon.

Our Sun is an ordinary, ordinary star, and the universe is infinite both in space and in time. Therefore, speaking about the possibility of visiting the Earth by aliens from other star systems, we must not forget that this can happen extremely rarely. Such an event is much less likely than, for example, the fall of a large meteorite

Great are the difficulties of conquering the distance, which even the fastest messenger - light - travels for years. And for now, we can only fantasize about visiting our planet by the inhabitants of other stars or about flying to the stars.

Astronomy called flights to world space. In this word - the share of truth and at the same time a clear exaggeration. Yes, you can talk about swimming between the stars, but only in the vicinity of the close star- Sun. The road to other stars is a matter of a very distant time.

Carried away by thought far ahead, one can foresee that the future will bring confirmation - irrefutable, visual, visible - of the idea of ​​a plurality of inhabited worlds among the stars.

This confirmation will be given by interstellar ships traveling to other suns, to other planetary families. And then stargazing will find its true meaning.

It's been a long time since the ship left home planet and headed for a distant star

The usual concepts of "day" and "night" have long lost their meaning for travelers. "Night" - when the windows are closed or the lights are off. "Day" - all the rest of the time. You get used to it, and it seems that it has always been like this, as if long years passed in small world bounded by the walls of the ship.

A starry sky, an unusual pattern of stars... The ship gradually picked up a monstrous speed in order to be transported to a star, to which a ray of light travels for years.

A few days - and the ship left the solar system. The sun turned into a bright star, and the ship rushed at a speed already comparable to the speed of light. And then the travelers saw the stars - not twinkling silver dots, which are visible from the Earth, and not multi-colored carnations that dotted the sky, as they seem to be behind the atmosphere. The stars, to which the heavenly ship flew towards and from which the heavenly ship moved away, changed color, shimmering with different lights, like a fabulous firework. Their radiance changed color, just as the tone of the whistle of a steam locomotive rushing towards us changes at high speed.

Weeks, months go by...

The telescope can already see a round dance of bright points around a small star. And now this is not a distant star, but a bright disk, similar to our Sun, whose light is painful to look at.

There are still millions of kilometers ahead, but it's time to start braking. Engines included. Like a tailed comet, an interstellar ship rushes through the sky. The islands of the universe, the family of another star, another sun, is close at hand.

New wonders are opening up before travelers. The planet, to which the ship is now approaching, turned out to have an atmosphere, it is all in a white shroud of clouds. There is, apparently, the atmosphere of another "oncoming" planet - it is covered with a bluish haze, like a veil hiding its surface.

It is difficult to see what is behind this veil - clouds are floating on it. Something dazzlingly bright flashed through the gap. What's this? The sea that reflects the rays of the sun? Or maybe snowy mountain peaks?

The ship circled the planet, gradually, circle after circle, descending more and more. It is visible now quite well - a huge plate, covered with clouds.

Instruments show that there is oxygen in the planet's atmosphere. Travelers noticed sparkles of the water surface. Oxygen and water? This means that even life on this unknown planet is possible!

FROM great speed the ship crashed into the planet's atmosphere. The ship's hull began to heat up. Even the cooling units were unable to deal with the heat, and the passenger cabin became unbearably hot. I had to start the brake motors on full power to slow down a bit.

Already much could be seen on the surface of the planet with a simple eye. Along the edge of a large mainland - a long mountain range. Further - huge expanses of water, ice and water again ...

Peering into the relief map spreading below, the stargazers saw a yellow spot behind the mountain range. Desert! Sand! This is a great landing site.

The ship turned towards the surface of the planet and began to rapidly descend. The flight was coming to an end. It became stuffy again in the cockpit. The roar of a hurricane was heard through the walls - the ship, like a meteor, cut through the air of an alien planet.

The yellow spot was getting closer. It's time! Muffled explosions, then another and another... This is the engine running, convulsively choking in short bursts, scorching the "ground" under the ship with hot breath.

The ship struggled with the gravity of the planet. Fire jets roared from the engines. The last jump up - and giant ship began to slowly descend, as if on a pillar of fire. The column is getting smaller and that's it closer place landing. Another moment - and the descent is over. The ship lies on the surface of the planet.

The silence seems oddly strange. The porthole shutters are open again, and the landscape of another world, in the sky of which multi-colored luminaries rise, appears before the eyes of travelers.

Their indefatigable thirst for knowledge has brought them here, under an alien sky, to an alien planet. With excitement they look at other people's skies, at the world of another Sun.

Behind are trillions of miles of travel starship competing in speed with light. Somewhere in the bottomless expanse of heaven there was a star whose name is the Sun, a planet whose name is Earth...

The hatch opens.

Interstellar travelers enter another world...

 5.04.2011 01:20

Astronomy has made great strides in its studies of distant and near stars and galaxies. Hundreds of professionals, millions of amateurs point their telescopes into the starry sky every night.

The planet's most important telescope, NASA's Hubble Orbiting Space Telescope, opens up unprecedented horizons of deep space for astronomers. But, along with great discoveries, Hubble also presents the greatest mysteries. IN JANUARY 1995, a German astronomical journal published short message, to which all scientific, religious and popular publications of the planet immediately responded.

Each publisher drew the attention of their readers to completely different aspects of this message, but the essence was reduced to one thing: the Abode of God was discovered in the Universe.

Oleg KURBATOV

After deciphering a series of images transmitted from the Hubble telescope, a large White City floating in space. NASA representatives did not have time to turn off Free access to the telescope's web server, where all the images received from the Hubble get to be studied in various astronomical laboratories. Thus, photographs taken from the telescope, subsequently (and still) strictly classified for several minutes, became available to users of the worldwide network.

So what did the astronomers see in these amazing photographs? At first it was just a small hazy speck on one of the frames. But when University of Florida professor Ken Wilson decided to take a closer look at the photograph and, in addition to Hubble's optics, armed himself with a hand magnifier, he discovered that the speck had a strange structure that could not be explained either by diffraction in the lens set of the telescope itself, or by interference in communication channel when transmitting an image to Earth.

After a short operational meeting, it was decided to reshoot the section of the starry sky indicated by Professor Wilson with the maximum resolution for Hubble. Huge multimeter lenses space telescope focused on the farthest corner of the universe, accessible to the view of the telescope. Several characteristic clicks of the camera shutter sounded, with which the joker-operator sounded the computer command to fix the image on the telescope. And the “speck” appeared before the astonished scientists on the multi-meter screen of the projection installation of the Hubble control laboratory as a shining structure similar to fantastic city, a kind of hybrid of Swift's "flying island". Laputa and sci-fi projects of the cities of the future.

The huge structure, spread out in the vastness of the Cosmos for many billions of kilometers, shone with an unearthly light. The Floating City was unanimously recognized as the Abode of the Creator, the place where only the throne of the Lord God can be located. NASA spokesman said that the City cannot be inhabited in the usual sense of the word, most likely, the souls of dead people live in it.

However, another, no less fantastic version of the origin has the right to exist. space city. The fact is that in search of extraterrestrial intelligence, the very existence of which has not even been questioned for several decades, scientists are faced with a paradox. If we assume that the Universe is massively populated by many civilizations at various levels of development, then among them there must inevitably be some kind of super-civilizations that not only entered the Cosmos, but actively populated huge spaces Universe. And the activities of these super-civilizations, including engineering - to change natural environment habitat (in this case outer space and objects in the zone of influence) - should be visible at a distance of many millions of light years.

However, until recently, astronomers have not noticed anything like this. And now - a clear man-made object of galactic proportions. It is possible that the City, discovered by Hubble on Catholic Christmas at the end of the 20th century, turned out to be just such a desired engineering structure of an unknown and very powerful extraterrestrial civilization.

The size of the city is amazing. None known to us celestial object unable to compete with this giant. Our Earth in this City would be just a grain of sand on the dusty side of the cosmic avenue. Where does this giant move - and does it move at all? A computer analysis of a series of photographs taken from the Hubble showed that the movement of the City generally coincides with the movement of the surrounding galaxies. That is, relative to the Earth, everything happens within the framework of the theory big bang. Galaxies "scatter", redshift increases with distance, no deviations from common law not visible.

However, during the three-dimensional modeling of the distant part of the Universe, a stunning fact was revealed: it is not a part of the Universe that is removed from us, but we are from it. Why is the reference point moved to the City. Because it was this foggy speck in the photographs that turned out to be in computer model"Center of the Universe". The three-dimensional moving image clearly demonstrated that the galaxies somehow scatter, but precisely from that point of the Universe where the City is located. In other words, all galaxies, including ours, once came out of this particular point in space, and it is around the City that the Universe rotates. Therefore, the first idea of ​​the City as the Abode of God turned out to be extremely successful and close to the truth.

What does this discovery promise to humanity and why has not been heard of for almost seven years Science and religion have long decided to make peace and, to the best of their ability and ability, help each other to reveal the secrets and mysteries of the world around us And if science suddenly collides with insoluble phenomenon, religion almost always gives what is happening completely real explanation, which is gradually being adopted by strict scientific circles.

In this case, the opposite happened, science, with the help of technical means, confirmed or, according to at least, gave weighty proof of the fidelity of the main postulate of religion - the existence of a single Creator living in a shining City in heaven.

However, no matter how expected such a message may be, its consequences are almost unpredictable. The general euphoria of religious fanatics, the collapse of the materialistic foundation modern science- all this can lead to irreversible and dire consequences. Therefore, the photographs were immediately classified, and access to the images of the City of God was given only to people with special powers who really, and not on TV, control life. individual countries and the planet as a whole.

However, secrecy is not the best remedy achieve goals, and there is a master key against any lock. We offer readers one of a series of images transmitted from the Hubble, depicting the mysterious City, floating in the vast depths infinite space. Today we can only wait official reaction state structures and high officials Church to the message about the discovery by astronomers of what for many millennia mankind could only guess.

The US secret services have put in their safes information that is of tremendous importance for the entire universe. But how can you hide such a stunning discovery? Why America arrogated to itself the right to decide what the inhabitants of the Earth can know and what they know early The answer to these questions can only be their removal from the agenda. Either due to the establishment of the complete dominance of the United States on the planet, or as having lost their relevance due to the complete declassification of today's archival secrets and mysteries. Well, we have to wait for the opening time of the American safes in them. The abode of God turned out to be hidden from earthlings more reliably than in the depths of the Universe.

Back in 1960, Frank Drake founded the SETI Research Foundation

Distant giant exoplanet 51 Pegasi b through the eyes of an artist

The planetary system of the red dwarf Gliese 581 is one of the main "candidates for life"

Literally a year later, the Kepler orbital mission will take over the watch, which will search for extraterrestrial life.

The new ATA radio observatory in the Californian desert will also take part in this.

Dr. Seth Shostack argues something like this, scientific director the famous SETI project (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence - "Search for extraterrestrial intelligence"). For Shostak and his colleagues, the impressive number of planets in the universe means one thing: it is extremely unlikely that we are alone. The huge number of stars with planetary systems makes it almost inevitable that somewhere in the depths of space there are other planets like ours - with an atmosphere, liquid oceans of water, a mild stable climate suitable for the origin of life. And if so, - argues Shostak, - then the fact is inevitable that life appeared there and, according to the laws of evolution, after some time gave rise to highly developed creatures that created technological civilizations and managed to establish radio communications.

All this sounds quite logical - if not for one fact. For nearly half a century of work of the SETI project, half a century of constant intense listening to space, scientists have not heard a single whisper from our potential brothers in mind.

However, until 1995, no one was completely sure that anywhere except our solar system planets exist. The first exoplanet discovered was a giant (about 0.5 Jupiter masses) orbiting star 51 in the constellation Pegasus (51 Pegasi b). The speed of the planet was amazing: it made a complete revolution around its star in just 4 Earth days. And based on the data on the brightness of the star and the minimum approach of the planet to it, scientists have shown that the temperature on its surface reaches 1000 °C. From then until today more than 260 exoplanets have been discovered, but none of them can be definitively called the "second Earth". The more astronomers learned about distant worlds, the more alone we felt.

But almost exactly a year ago, a group of Swiss astronomers made startling discovery- the third planet in the Gliese 581 star system turned out to be similar to the Earth, like no other. We wrote about their discovery just in April last year: "Neighbors". The planet was also the smallest (at that time) of the exoplanets known to us - 5.5 times the mass of the earth - and was located just at the right distance from its star, in the "habitable zone", the conditions in which may well support life.

Astronomers have established some other circumstances of this planet - for example, that gravity on it is twice that of the earth; that it is unlikely to have, like ours, quite high mountains, and the local landscape is rather extensive rolling plains. The star Gliese 581 itself is a red dwarf, that is, much colder and larger than the Sun (and, of course, red, not white-yellow) - but thanks to the Rayleigh scattering phenomenon, the sky above the planet will still be blue - however, the clouds will turn out to be rather pink . Although the star is colder than ours, the planet is closer to it than we are to the Sun, so the temperature conditions there are similar to those on Earth. So, almost in passing, it turned out that a large content in the atmosphere of a distant planet greenhouse gases makes her too hot normal life. Of course, there are extremely thermophilic organisms on Earth that live quite comfortably under such conditions - but scientists still assessed the likelihood of life on looking at Gliese 581c rather skeptically. And soon - in the summer of the same 2007 - the neighboring Gliese 581d came out as a "number one candidate" for the title of a habitable exoplanet. We wrote about this planet in the note "Wrong address".

Meanwhile, astronomers keep discovering more and more exoplanets. The most successful in this case was the group of Geoff Marcy from Berkeley, on account of which more than 100 of them. However, none of them even closely resembles the Earth. So scientists are hoping for a new assistant that will come into play in 2009.

This is new orbiting telescope Kepler, whose main task is just to search for exoplanets. The mission is designed for 4 years of work, during which it must study more than 100 thousand stars - astronomers are confident that this data will be more than enough to finally understand how Earth-like planets are common within our galaxy. By the way, even according to the most pessimistic estimates, Kepler should detect at least 50 such planets: it will be a kind of "address book" for the search for alien intelligence.

But that's not all. In the desert, almost 500 km from San Francisco, another large-scale instrument is being built - the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) observatory, the creation of which was paid for by the fund of the famous billionaire, one of the founders of Microsoft, Paul Allen (Paul Allen). It is planned to be an array of 300 giant radio antennas working together, giving them unrivaled insight into the depths of the universe. And the ATA dishes will be directed exactly at those stars where life can potentially appear. Some of them have already been put into operation and have begun the search (we wrote about this project in detail: “Waiting for a signal”). It seems that it remains only to wait a little: if life outside the Earth exists, then it will be found.

By the way, there is another likely habitat for the “little green men” - the double star system HD 113766. Actually, no planets have been found in it yet, but all the conditions for its formation exist - read: “A planet like ours”. Meanwhile, other scientists decided not to wait until someone else's signal reaches our devices - and send their own into space ("

Planets for us - gas giants or solid worlds orbiting the parent star. And while the stars are leaving, the Milky Way is littered with hundreds of billions of such planets, including our own, the only and so far unique Earth. And each planet, in principle, has its own and also unique story of birth and life. Some of them are massive and bright, others are small and dim; some were born a couple of million years ago, others can compete with the age of the universe itself. But there is one common feature with which we endow all these planets: the solar system. As the Kepler mission and other searches for exoplanets have shown, if you want to find planets, just point your finger at a star and look around it: around it you will find one, but a whole system of planets.

And yet - in addition to the stars and all the bodies that revolve around them - there must be a great many planets not attached to the central star at all: rogue planets. Scientists believe this is true anywhere in the universe, from small star clusters and interstellar space to the cores of giant galaxies. As far as we know, there are as many starless planets in space as there are stars themselves - and maybe more. It follows that for every point of light you see, there are many more massive points that you can't see because they don't emit visible light.

Through observation, we found whole line possible candidates for rogue planets. "Candidate" is important word; we can't be sure these planets are true because we don't have a good confirmation technique this fact. Even with our best modern equipment they are so difficult to detect that we must imply the presence of much more worlds than we have already found. But we have already found something and can draw conclusions. Where do these alien planets come from?

One of the most convincing sources of all these planets is near us, and we cherish it very much.

We know how solar systems form: after gravitational collapse creates a region of space in which fusion ignites, a protoplanetary disk gathers around the central star. Gravitational perturbations appear regularly in this disk, attracting more and more substance from its surroundings, while the heat of the newly formed central star slowly blows the lightest gas into the interstellar medium. Over time, gravitational perturbations grow into asteroids, solid planets and gas giants.

But the fact is that these worlds not only revolve around their star, but also gravitationally pull each other together. Over time, these planets migrate to the most stable configurations they can achieve: the most massive worlds take their most stable places, often sacrificing other smaller worlds. What happens to the "losers" in the cosmic battle for planetary advantage? They are absorbed in the process of merging, fall into the Sun or are ejected from the solar system into interstellar space.

Recent simulations have shown that for every planet-rich solar system like our own (with gas giants), at least one gas giant will be ejected into the interstellar medium, where it will be doomed to wander the galaxy by a wandering rogue planet. At the same time, the number solid worlds smaller ones thrown out of the system can reach 5-10. This, in principle, is the largest source of rogue planets, and there are probably hundreds of billions of them in our own galaxy.

Particularly amusing is that when scientists conduct theoretical calculations, ejected planets from young solar systems turn out to be half as many as the expected number of rogue planets. Where do they come from then? To understand where most starless planets come from, we need to take a broader look at one time: not only when our solar system formed, but also at the cluster of stars (and star systems) that formed at the same time.

Star clusters are formed by the slow collapse of cold gas, mostly hydrogen, and typically originate in a pre-existing galaxy. Deep in the collapsing clouds, gravitational instabilities form and the first, most massive instabilities attract more and more matter. When enough matter is collected in a small region of space and the density and temperature in the core become high enough, nuclear fusion begins and stars form.

But not one star and star system is born, but many of them, since each cloud that collapses to form new star, contains enough matter to form many stars. Along with this, something happens. largest educated star also the hottest and bluest, that is, it radiates the most ionizing, ultraviolet radiation. And this star is starting one of the most active races to take his place in space.

If you look into a star-forming nebula, you can see two processes occurring simultaneously:

• Gravity is trying to pull matter in the direction of this young, growing gravitational overdensity
• Radiation burns out neutral gas and pushes it back into the interstellar medium

Who will win?

The answer depends on what counts as a win. The largest gravitational superdensities form the largest, hottest and blue stars- but such stars are extremely rare. Smaller superdensities (still large) form other stars, but as the mass decreases, more and more of them become. That is why, when we look deep into a cluster of young stars, it is easy to see the brightest (blue or otherwise) stars, but they are greatly outnumbered by yellow (and red) stars with less mass.

If not for the radiation emitted by young stars, these dim, red and yellow stars would continue to grow, would become more massive and brighter, would flare up more strongly. Stars (in main sequence) are different types, from O stars (the hottest, largest, and bluest) to M stars (the smallest, coolest, reddest, and least massive). And although the majority of stars - ¾ - are M-class stars, and less than 1% of all stars are O- or B-type stars, the total mass of the last two types of stars is comparable to the total mass of M-type stars. It takes about 250 M-class stars to match the mass of an O star.

As it turns out, about 90% of the original gas and dust that was in this star-forming nebula is blown out into the interstellar medium and does not go into star formation. Most massive stars form faster and begin to blow material out of the nebula. In just a couple of million years, there is less and less material left, and new stars stop forming. The remaining gas with dust completely burn out.

And now the most interesting. Not only M-class stars - with a mass between 8% and 40% of the sun - are the most common type of stars in the universe. There are many Moreover, which could be M-class stars if stars with large mass do not burn excess material.

In other words, for every star formed, there are many more failed stars that just didn't make it. critical mass: and there can be from tens to hundreds of thousands of such stars for each formed star.

Just imagine: our own solar system contains hundreds or even thousands of objects that potentially fit the geophysical definition of a planet, but have been astronomically ruled out just by virtue of their orbital position. Now imagine that for every star like our Sun, there are hundreds of failed stars that simply haven't gained enough mass to trigger fusion in the core. These are homeless planets - or rogue planets - which are much more than planets like ours, orbiting stars. Orphan planets may or may not have an atmosphere and are extremely difficult to detect, especially the smallest ones. But think about it: for every planet like ours in the galaxy, there could be up to 100,000 planets that not only don't orbit the star now, but never did. Finding them is very difficult.

So while we may have a few planets ejected from early solar systems, and even a handful of such worlds in a galaxy that hail from the solar system, the vast majority of all planets in the galaxy never held on to stars. Rogue planets roam the galaxy, doomed to forever wander in darkness, and never know the warmth of their parent star. Their potential parents, perhaps, never even became stars. There could be a quadrillion of these wandering worlds in the galaxy that we haven't even really begun to discover yet.

The science

The discovery of a new exoplanet, which is not associated with a single star, perhaps, surprises few people. Over the past few years, astronomers have repeatedly discovered such lonely worlds, so many of them are already known that, according to scientists, planets wandering alone in the Universe already rather a rule than an exception.

For example, one 2011 study estimated that the number of orphan planets in our galaxy already outnumbers the number of "normal" planets that orbit their parent stars by at least 50 percent. If so, then there are about a billion lonely planets in the Milky Way galaxy.

Scientists believe that among the lonely wandering planets, gas giants may be in the minority. “Today we know that massive lone planets are quite rare and that they usually include planets with a mass equal to that of Neptune or the Earth., the astronomers said. - We also know that massive objects must have a harder time escaping star systems than lighter ones."

It is incredible that lonely planets are relatively close to us. Telescopes of the future will allow us to learn more about lonely planets that will not be obscured by nearby bright stars.

Mysterious Orphan Planet Discovered

A planet of the Jupiter class, which is not associated with any star, but wanders freely in the vastness of space, was discovered by astronomers using direct observations. It is believed that such a phenomenon is quite frequent occurrence, however, it is very difficult to trace such "orphan planets".

Researchers have hunted for stars known as brown dwarfs, sometimes also referred to as "loser stars" because these objects manage to grow to the size of a star from collapsing balls of gas and dust, but they never reach the mass required to so that thermonuclear reactions begin in their nuclei. However, when scientists discovered the object, which was given the name CFBDSIR2149, located at a distance of 130 light years from Earth, they began to suspect that it was not a star at all.

Lonely planet or star?

To determine chemical composition object, astronomers analyzed infrared radiation object 2149. Using these data, it would be possible to determine its mass and temperature, and then its age. They found that the object is between 50 and 120 million years old, its average temperature is 400 degrees Celsius, and its mass is 7 Jupiter masses.

"This planet is similar to Jupiter in the first million years of its existence- said the astrophysicist Etienne Artigau from the University of Montreal. - It cannot be said that this was an unexpected discovery for us, but it is very difficult to find such an object."

The astronomers' first hunches that they had discovered something strange was that the object 2149 had a very young group of stars as its companion. They hypothesized that the object formed with these stars and cooled quickly, but that must mean it is very small. It is also likely that the object may be a brown dwarf star, albeit a rather small one, which is located near the moving cluster of stars AB Doradus.

However, a separate analysis showed that the object 2149 with a probability of 87 percent moves with the cluster of stars. This could mean that it formed far away from the parent star, or was pushed out by gravitational forces from the original star system.

This discovery was followed by indirect observations of 10 free-roaming planets the size of Jupiter, which are in the center Milky Way and which were detected using an exoplanet detection technique called Gravitational Microlensing.

This method assumes that a star or planet passes in front of another, more remote object. Gravitational forces due to the mass of closer cosmic body warps the light of a distant object, causing a near object to increase in brightness by certain period time. Small objects like planets cause less light distortion than larger objects like stars.

Orphan planets can also be seen in areas where stars are forming in the constellation Orion. "For the first time, we have found an object outside the region of star formation by direct observation" Artigau said. Astronomers will continue to study object 2149 in the hope of finding out more details regarding its position and direction of motion.