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"I think engineering will supply our demand for a "spiritual" life after meat death."
- Bart Kosko
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| Rogue Planet | ||
| A planet without a sun, it wanders through galactic space. |
| "...Blue giant suns aren't supposed to have planets. But this one does."
"That is recorded, like most news," said the machine, unimpressed. "Your tentative explanation of the phenomenon was later verified. While the star was condensing, a nucleus still surrounded by an extensive nebular envelope, a swarm of rogue planets chanced by. Losing energy to friction with the nebula, they were captured. "Sunless planets are common. They are estimated to number a thousand or more times the stars. That is, nonluminous bodies, ranging in size from superjovian to asteroidal, are believed to occupy interstellar space in an amount greater by three orders of magnitude than the nuclear-reacting self-luminous bodies called stars. Nevertheless, astronomical distances are such that the probability of an object like this passing near a star is vanishingly small. Indeed, explorers have not come upon many rogues even in mid-space. An actual capture must be so rare that the case you found may well be unique in the galaxy. |
| Technovelgy from Satan's World,
by Poul Anderson. Published by Doubleday in 1967 Additional resources -
|
The phrase occurs earlier in The Pulsating Planet (1941) by John Broome, but I don't think it referred to a world untethered to a sun:
See also rogue world from George R.R. Martin's 1977 novel Dying of the Light as well as the wandering worlds from When Worlds Collide (1934) by Edwin Balmer (w/P. Wylie).
He wheeled with only one thought — to get to the transmitter in his cruiser and send out a danger signal that would bring every System ship within ray-range hurtling to the rogue planet.
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Rogue Planet-related
news articles:
- A Rogue Planet - Right In Our Neighborhood
- Smallest Rogue Planet Discovered In Milky Way
| JWST Finds Bucking Centaur 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1 |
| First Trips To Mars Announced By Elon Musk |
| Lava Tubes On Moon And Mars |
| SpaceX EVA Spacesuit Tested By Polaris Dawn Crew |
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'... the expressionless face before me was therefore that of the golem-wrestler, Rolem, a creature that could be set for five times the strength of a human being.'
'Waldo put his arms into the primary pair before him; all three pairs, including the secondary pair mounted before the machine, came to life.'
'... the glittering little rocket bolted to the black iron behind him.'
'The slender stalks of a sunshade-photocell collector...'
'The operation that had transformed half his body... had located the control switchboard in his teeth.'
