NEW YORK: Are these planets without orbits? Astronomers have found 10 potential planets as massive as Jupiter wandering through a slice of the Milky Way galaxy, following either very wide orbits or no orbit at all. And scientists think they are more common than the stars. These mysterious bodies, apparently gaseous balls like the largest planets in our solar system, may help scientists understand how planets form. If they orbit stars, their sheer number suggests every star in the galaxy has one or two of them, “which is astounding” because that's five or 10 times the number of stars scientists had thought harbored such gas-giant planets, Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, who wasn't involved in the research, said. The newfound objects either orbit a star more distant than that, or they don't orbit a star at all, the researchers concluded.
