Rogue Planets: follow your own path

Figure 1. Jupiter like rogue planet illustration

Source: Figure reproduced from NASA (2021).

In a universe full of stars, each star forms its own solar system, and those solar systems inhibit planets that orbit the star. Though, there are instances where these planets are pushed out of their orbits due to the gravitational force of the planets' star - leaving the planets without a solar system (Skibba, 2017), or in other words - making them rogues!

These rogue planets float around space seemingly in their own renegade path orbiting the galactic center, as there are no stars tethering them. And 70 of these rogue planets about the mass of Jupiter have been discovered by scientists (European Southern Observatory, 2021).

Rogue planets might be confused with Exoplanets. The difference is that Exoplanets are all the planets not in our solar system but orbit their own star (Exoplanet Exploration, 2021), and the rogue planets are planets that are also not in our solar system but do not orbit any star (Skibba, 2017). So, while all rogue planets are exoplanets, all exoplanets are not rogue.

References

Skibba, R. (2017). The hunt for rogue planets just got tougher. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature.2017.21445

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2017.21445.pdf

European Southern Observatory. (2021, December 22). ESO telescopes help uncover largest group of rogue planets yet. https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2120/

Exoplanet Exploration. (2021, April 2). What is an exoplanet? NASA. https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/what-is-an-exoplanet/overview/

Exoplanets. (2021, October 6). A Jupiter-Like rogue planet wanders alone in Space. NASA. https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/a-jupiter-like-rogue-planet-wanders-alone-in-space