IN THE DARK CORNERS OF OUR GALAXY, THERE ARE BILLIONS OF ROGUE PLANETS

ROAMING AROUND, STARLESS CAN THEY SUPPORT LIFE?

Its 10,000 years in the future. You are a space explorer, preparing to land on the surface of a
newly discovered world that might support life. This planet is dark, so dark that you cant
identify any of its surface features. All you can see is an ominous black circle blocking the stars.
You enter its atmosphere and descend through a thick layer of clouds detectable only by the
spaceships sensors. There is no light outside your ship. No sunlight. No stars. You turn to your
commander, perplexed, and shout: Wait a minute! This planet has no Sun! What the hell are
we doing here?
The Sun gets a lot of good press. Nearly everyone likes sunny days and rainbows. Solar panels
are virtuous. Sunlight drives photosynthesis, which produces the oxygen we breathe. Our bodies
make such mood-improving substances as vitamin D from sun exposure. Sun worship and solar
deities appear throughout recorded history. We love our Sun.
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Could we make our home on a rogue planet without a Sun?
But, does the Sun live up to the hype? Do we really need it? Yes, we do. If the Sun were to
suddenly turn off, Earth would freeze over into an ice ball. Our planets geological thermostat
the carbonate-silicate cycle is useless without the Sun. Lakes, rivers and ponds would freeze
first. It would take decades but the ocean would eventually freeze solid. Some heat would
continue to leak out of Earths interior at volcanoes and mid-ocean ridges. Eventually, Earth
would look like Hoth, the ice-covered planet from the film The Empire Strikes Back. Most of
Earths life would vanish.
Earth was born and grew up with the Sun. Its not playing fair to just make the Sun disappear.
Lets consider a different type of planet, an Earth that never had a Sun, a rogue or freefloating planet. These planets dont orbit stars. They wander the stars. They are free citizens
of the galaxy. It might seem like the stuff of science fiction but several free-floating gas giants
have been found in recent years. Our own gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn, are leashed to the Sun
on well-behaved orbits, but this might not be the norm in our galaxy. One study, published in
Nature in 2011, suggests that the Milky Way contains two rogue gas giants for every star. That
particular study remains controversial, but most astronomers agree that rogue planets are
common in our galactic neighbourhood. And for every rogue gas giant there are likely to be
several rogue Earth-sized rocky worlds. There are likely tens to hundreds of billions of these
planets in our galaxy.
A free-floating Earth would miss out on many of the things we enjoy on our actual Earth. There
would be no seasons or sunsets. And with no Sun to revolve around, no birthdays. But could a
rogue planet support life, let alone a vibrant biosphere like Earths?

To have any chance of life at least life like our own a free-floating Earth would need liquid
water. And to have liquid water, a planet needs to keep warm. But space is ridiculously cold,
just a few degrees above absolute zero. How could a rogue planet stay warm with no Sun? All
planets generate heat in their interiors. Most of Earths internal heat was delivered by the giant
collisions that built the planet, a large portion of which remains locked inside its crust. This
heat slowly trickles to the surface, providing a source of internal energy that has endured since
the Earth formed. This interior heat will last for billions of years to come, but its a puny amount
of energy, 3,000 times smaller than the sunlight that blasts the Earth daily. A free-floating planet
with no Sun cannot afford to lose any internal heat. Like a person suffering from hypothermia,
a rogue planet needs a really warm blanket.
A layer of ice on a planets surface can act as a strong insulator, locking in a planets heat. If
the ice layer is thick enough, then a planet can maintain an ocean of liquid water beneath the
ice. But to prevent the ocean from freezing for billions of years, the ice layer needs to be at least
10 km (6 miles) thick. Two of Jupiters large moons Europa and Ganymede have oceans
lurking under miles-deep ice layers and might be analogs for these icy rogue planets. Could
Earth, if frozen, transition into this type of planet and still maintain an abode for life in the deep
ocean? Unfortunately, no. Earth is too dry; a global ice layer would only be a few kilometres
thick, too thin to act as a strong insulator. At best, Earth could possibly maintain local liquid
water for example, near a strong heat source such as a volcano, but not a global ocean.
A thick atmosphere can also act to retain a planets internal heat and allow an ice-free rogue
planet to maintain liquid water at its surface. The best atmospheric gas for the job is hydrogen.
Hydrogen is a very efficient thermal blanket, and as a bonus it doesnt condense but rather
remains gaseous even at the ridiculously low temperatures of space. A free-floating Earth with
a thick hydrogen atmosphere could keep its surface temperature above the freezing point of
water. The planet could have lakes and oceans (and possibly life) on its surface. But its
atmosphere would need to be at least 10 to 100 times thicker than Earths.
Free-floating planets are the popcorn kernels that escape from the pot
Lit only by distant stars, a rogue-blanketed planet would be invisible to the human eye. Like
Uranus and Neptune, it would likely have many different cloud layers. No starlight would touch
its surface. The atmosphere would be so smothering that if you stood on its surface and looked
up at the sky, all youd see would be darkness.
Free-floating planets probably formed in orbit around stars. Planets grow within disks of gas
and dust orbiting young stars. Starting from dust grains, a series of collisions grows ever-larger
bodies. Some capture gas and can become giants, like Jupiter and Saturn. Others, like Earth,
are smaller and rockier, and take millions of years to reach their final sizes, and settle into wellordered planetary systems. But these systems are often unstable. Gas giants are so massive that
their gravitational kicks can launch planets into interstellar space. Free-floating planets are the
popcorn kernels that escape from the pot. Many of them will have thick layers of ice, or
hydrogen blankets, and some will have a buddy, if they keep their moons. Tidal heating on an
Earth-like rogue planet from interactions with either its moon or its gas giant companion could
provide an extra source of internal heat.
Even if it has liquid water, could life exist on a planet without a Sun? Organisms on Earths
surface dont all rely on the Sun in the same way. Some forms of life, such as plants and simple

microorganisms, are directly dependent on the Suns energy. These beings are primary
producers. They transform sunlight into chemical energy, directly. Higher orders of life,
including animals, rely mostly indirectly on the Sun by eating primary producers. But scientists
have found some organisms on Earth that do not need the Sun. They are called chemoautotrophs
and they live on the ocean floor. They make their own organic carbon using energy leaking out
from inside the Earth. These organisms form the basis of the thriving ecosystems found around
deep-sea hydrothermal vents.
Photosynthetic organisms convert light energy into chemical energy. In contrast,
chemoautotrophs rely on pre-existing conditions such as the strong changes in temperature
that exist at hydrothermal vents to drive chemical reactions. Photosynthesis is much more
efficient. Its conversion of solar energy into biomass is more than 1,000 times more efficient
than the conversion of internal heat done by chemoautotrophs. But thats on Earth. On a rogue
planet with no Sun as an energy source, life would have a strong incentive to more efficiently
harvest the planets internal heat.
A free-floating planets biosphere must be built on chemoautotrophs. Only chemoautotrophs
can provide the organic carbon required by other, more complex organisms. But because of
their low biological efficiency, a biosphere built on chemoautotrophs would need a large
amount of biomass to be productive. Instead of having one photosynthetic tree growing 1,000
apples, it would need 1,000 chemoautotrophic trees growing one apple each.
Could life arise on a free-floating planet, or would it need to be seeded from somewhere else?
We cant be sure, at least not yet. After all, we still dont know how life originated on Earth.
But there are several theories for the origin of biological metabolism, including the deep sea
vent hypothesis, which propose that hydrothermal vents provided a cradle for Earths earliest
life, and rogue planets are likely to be littered with hydrothermal vents. So life on free-floating
planets could well be homegrown rather than implanted.
What might a dark biosphere look like? Consider analogous biological communities on Earth.
Earths internal heat does not escape uniformly across the planets surface. Rather, certain areas
are hotter than others. Hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor host vibrant local ecosystems
containing an assortment of exotic plants and otherworldly creatures such as two-metre-long
tube worms, scaly-foot snails and eyeless shrimps, among others. The producers in these
ecosystems are our friends the chemoautotrophs. They form thick bacterial mats that serve as
the basic foodstuff of complex food chains. A free-floating planet could be speckled with
biospheres, each clustered around a local heat source. They might even host giant plants such
as tube worms. Each oasis would start off isolated and probably host its own unique species,
but on some rogue planets these ecosystems could merge into a global biosphere.
we could convert a rogue planet into a jumping-off point, a waystation in our larger effort to
spread out into the galaxy
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We might not want to colonise these worlds, especially the icy rogues. It would be difficult to
penetrate a miles-deep ice sheet and even harder to live underneath one. But rogue blanketed
planets might prove tantalising. The lakes or oceans on their surfaces are comparatively easy to
access. Unfortunately, the planets atmosphere would never be breathable for humans, as
oxygen and hydrogen cannot happily co-exist. Before setting out for one, we would want to
know whether its biomass was easy to access, or restricted to the bottom of deep oceans. But
even in the best of circumstances, food production would be difficult given the lack of solar
energy, and we dont have a clue whether the native flora and fauna would be edible. Plus, no
rainbows. So rogue planets probably wouldnt be top priority targets if and when humans start
to colonise the galaxy.
But free-floating planets might have the advantage of proximity. The census of faint objects in
the Suns vicinity is far from complete. A rogue Earthlike planet could be among our closest
galactic neighbours, and in that case colonisation could be worth the effort, because we could
convert a rogue planet into a jumping-off point, a waystation in our larger effort to spread out
into the galaxy.
Imagine being among the first to set foot on a rogue blanketed planet. The photons from your
spaceships floodlights would represent the first visible light to strike the planets surface in
billions of years. Your colony would be isolated from the elements, especially from the
poisonous atmosphere. Your children would grow up without ever seeing the stars or playing
outside (without spacesuits, at least). But as a consolation youd know that your sacrifices were
necessary, for humanity to take its first step toward the stars.
9 April 2015