Based on the inverse correlation between star size and frequency, this doesn't surprise me at all.<p>It seems like there is an obvious further inference to make - people have debated whether life originated on earth or not. Given that the vast majority of planets do not have a star, and given that we know there are chemotrophs even on Earth that prove it is possible to live without a sun, it seems overwhelmingly likely that life came from one of these rogue planets that was large enough to retain enough heat underground for the evolution of life over the first few billion years of the universe. That would also neatly explain why evidence of life appeared so soon after the Earth became solid.
Interstellar travel now seems a lot more hazardous than it did before. To quote one of my TAs in college, "it's the stuff you can't see that gets you" ...
I can't help but think of how the various Star Trek series handled rogue planets... and then later on how IRL science delved into rogue planets as more of a reality than previously realized.
This sort of space real estate is the biggest hindrance to developing long term interstellar traveling tech.<p>With so many asteroids and planets lying around. There is no real motivation to travel very far distances for resources. Once you start mining the first set of asteroids and settling your race in space. You could grow organically, and at some point mine a terrestrial planet. At that point you have so many resources at your disposal it doesn't really make much sense to move out to very large distances unless for science or your population is just multiplying beyond control.
I wonder what happens to the planets in the solar system when a rogue planets gets sucked into the star (sun) ?<p>I mean, yeah it'd be bad if a rogue planet smashed into us, or even came close enough to mess with our gravitational pool (or the moons). but I imagine if an earth sized or bigger slammed into the sun, that we'd feel the effects of this.<p>massive solar flare roasting our planet alive?
a shower of ejecta from the collision that we pass through?
it changes the mass of the sun in a significant way that changes the pull it has on the planets around it?