So they found a planet that is not orbiting a star.

I rename it : The Planet Leopard

how can it be 12 million years old and 80 million light years away?

shirley that makes it 92 million years old if it still exists ?

80 lycnot 80m ly ?

This is your classic binge-drinker planet who gets all worked up storms off and then finds his own way home the next morning.

That's what I read,if you google its number in the brackets there is a few stories about it.

Moon Base Alpha found.

but its only 80 years old in space time.(I think)

If it's not orbiting a star then it's not technically a planet, it's a planet sized rock. It may have orbited a star once and been ejected into space by gravitational interaction with other planets or another nearby star. Any of the sun's inner planets, earth included, could be ejected from orbit in this way at some time in the future.

80 light years not 80 million.

Find more about it here:
.
http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/science-free-floating-exoplanet-01450.html

Find it quite strange that they can find a planet 80 light years away that doesn't have a star nearby to illuminate it (so therefore very dim) or a something influenced by it (in a form of orbit) to see the perturbation?

sorry Donny correction 80 light years from earth.

Infrared? It's back of an alien rocket engine. Problem solved.

ah ok, cheers just checking and brassneck

i've  just looked it up  too, great stuff....giving off mainly infra red light

Have just read the article. It's six times the mass of Jupiter so it should be close to becoming a star in its own right and is already emitting radiation. It's not rocky so likely to be a ball of mainly hydrogen.

[q]According to the researchers, there are at least two good reasons to believe PSO J318.5-22 belongs to a collection of young stars called the Beta Pictoris moving group. One: Like PSO J318.5-22, the Beta Pictoris moving group is thought to have formed around 12-million years ago. Two: Beta Pictoris, the star from which the group takes its name, is known to harbor a young gas-giant planet of its own – one that is roughly eight-times as massive as Jupiter.

Whether PSO J318.5-22 was flung from the Beta Pictoris moving group or formed independently from it by some still-unknown process remains unknown. Be that as it may, Liu and his colleagues believe the planet presents a rare opportunity to do some science far from the blinding light of a nearby star.[/q]

Tbh at that size and emitting enough cr-p to be seen at 80 light years (which is a long way, that's at least 4 bus lengths or two football pitches) my instinct is it's a kind of small maybe dead old star they don't understand.

pso might fuse and become a star itself in the future,nobody thought of that one.Remember brass thought of this idea first.
Now watch some guy saying in few months time that they expect PSO J 318.5 -22 change into a young star.

PSO J318.5-22 is not orbiting a star so it will be much easier for us to study. It is going to provide a wonderful view into the inner workings of gas-giant planets like Jupiter shortly after their birth,” said Dr Niall Deacon

They don't mention it's density but as they are comparing it with the gas giant Jupiter then they must think it will be low since Jupiter is mainly hydrogen.
If that's the case then it's unlikely to be a dead old star which would have a higher density due to helium but it could be a failed star.

its 6 times the mass of Jupiter ,so its really small.

Jupiter is approximately 318 times the mass of the earth.
The Sun is around 1000 times the mass of Jupiter.

Well it might become a wee star in the future

You never know

It could accrete more hydrogen on its travels through space like a snowball effect and eventually reach critical mass to spark into a star. We won't be around to see it.