Giant new world that dwarfs our solar system discovered

An international team of scientists has found a Godzilla solar system so extraordinarily large that one far-flung planet orbits its host star at a distance of more than 1 trillion kilometres.

The giant gaseous planet, prosaically dubbed 2MASS J2126−8140, takes almost a million Earth years to orbit its star, which lies 100 light years away.

more…

8.5 light minutes is small in the scheme of things…

What the fuck

I’ve been realising lately (based on Kepler data) that the distance distribution of the orbital radii of planets closely resembles the distance distribution of the orbital radii of multiple stars. Proxima Centauri has an orbital period somewhere between 100,000 and 500,000 years. Which isn’t too far short of 2MASS J2126−8140.

I also balk at the word “giant”. Proxima Centauri has a diameter only 1.4 times that of Jupiter. Some brown dwarfs have diameters smaller than Jupiter. So a “giant planet” may not be a planet at all.

dv said:

What the fuck

Which aspects of the fuck would you like more information about?

The Rev Dodgson said:

dv said:

What the fuck

Which aspects of the fuck would you like more information about?

If you are capable, I’d like to know the things I don’t know.

roughbarked said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

dv said:

What the fuck

Which aspects of the fuck would you like more information about?

If you are capable, I’d like to know the things I don’t know.

But I don’t know what you don’t know, and even if I did, I probably wouldn’t know it either.

The Rev Dodgson said:

roughbarked said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Which aspects of the fuck would you like more information about?

If you are capable, I’d like to know the things I don’t know.

But I don’t know what you don’t know, and even if I did, I probably wouldn’t know it either.

One of the best answers I’ve had here. :)

mollwollfumble said:

I’ve been realising lately (based on Kepler data) that the distance distribution of the orbital radii of planets closely resembles the distance distribution of the orbital radii of multiple stars. Proxima Centauri has an orbital period somewhere between 100,000 and 500,000 years. Which isn’t too far short of 2MASS J2126−8140.

I also balk at the word “giant”. Proxima Centauri has a diameter only 1.4 times that of Jupiter. Some brown dwarfs have diameters smaller than Jupiter. So a “giant planet” may not be a planet at all.

Looking up the preprint paper. http://arxiv.org/pdf/1601.06162v1.pdf

2MASS J21265040−8140293 is an L3 dwarf. I normally don’t count anything as a planet until it hits Y0. The sequence is MLTY. M dwarfs are mostly red dwarfs. L and T dwarfs are mostly brown dwarfs, and Y dwarfs are mostly planets. Being L3 means that it’s a full spectral class (T) away from being a planet. Larger number means cooler and closer to being a planet, a L10 would be the same as a T0 for example.

To give you some other examples.
Proxima centauri is type M5.5.
Luhman 16a (nearest brown dwarf) is L8.
Luhman 16b (its slightly fainter companion brown dwarf) is T1.
WISE 0855−0714 (also closer than Wolf 359) is Y, so may be a planet.

At L3, we have to call 2MASS J21265040−8140293 a brown dwarf.

There are four other known “planets” in extra-wide orbits.
“WD 0806-661B (2500 AU) was discovered with a targeted observation of a nearby white dwarf, GU Psc b (2000 AU ) was found with a targeted observation of a young nearby moving group member, SR12 C by observations of a T Tauri binary in ρ Ophiuchus (1100 AU ), whilst Ross 458 C (1160 AU, 5–14 MJ ) was discovered in widefield survey data and then identified as having a common proper motion with its host binary.”