Comment Re:Not Planets (Score 1) 219
Perhaps that discover will put a stake in that silly redefinition of the word.
And, anyway, this always seemed like the obvious truth. I'd have been shocked if there weren't massive numbers of primary-less planets out there. If you plot star masses versus size, the quantity goes up and up as the mass goes down, to the point they stop radiating. At that point we can't really see them anymore, but there's no reason to doubt that the curve keeps extending.
Some years back (probably in the 1980s), I read an article by an astronomer who had collected lots of info on what was known of the distribution of mass of various sizes. It included a graph of mean size-vs-density, from monatomic H through various common small molecules, on to dust clouds, planets, and stars of various sizes, for our galaxy and a few others that had enough data to be useful. The graph had a long gap between planets (then known only for our solar system) and stars. The writer commented that there was no data at all in this gap, but the two ends did appear to extend to meet each other. So the obvious conjecture was that the distribution continued through the gap, and if so, it would come close to accounting for the "missing mass" needed to explain galaxy rotation.
This was pure conjecture, of course, and since little is actually known about planet formation outside our solar system, it wouldn't be surprising if the actual distribution has dips at various size ranges. But assuming that the gap has the value zero is not very sensible. The obvious approach would be to say that we don't actually know, and Further Research Is Needed.
I wonder if I could find that article again