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Description
More of my astronomical art can be viewed in my DA "paleo and Sci Illo" gallery:

[link]

"Call me Ishmael".

Welcome to the disinherited son of the Solar System. This is the recently theorized "lost" planet of our own star system.

Technically this is not a planet at all. It is a "planemo".

Computer modeling has suggested that the best explanation for the positions of Uranus and Neptune, the distribution of the Kuiper Belt objects and Late Heavy Bombardment is the ejection from the Solar System of a large gas planet. It would have been formed outside the orbit of Saturn. Over 4 billion years ago the planets Jupiter and Saturn assumed a 1:2 orbital resonance. Their combined gravitational tug pumped up the angular momentum of a fifth gas giant.

This planet has been wandering the galaxy without a parent sun ever since. It has been theorized that this phenomenon may be common in the formation of planetary sysems throughout the universe. Indeed there may be as many or more planemos on independent orbits about the galactic barycenter than planets that are gravitationally locked to their parent stars.

This is important because when stars exhaust their nuclear fuel and die many destroy their planetary systems in the process. Planemos, however can survive their original stars by billions of years. In short, this lost child of the Solar System may potentially outlive its sister planets by tens of billions of years.

The view in this drawing is from the surface of a moon of the planemo that was carried away with it. This moon is kept dynamic by gravitational friction as it orbits the gas giant. Like Jupiter's moon Europa, its icy surface is constantly being remodeled. It also has a subsurface ocean of liquid water that could host carbon based lifeforms. This means that the ecosystem of this moon would endure long after our Sun has consumed the Earth during its red giant phase. It would still survive after the Sun has become a white dwarf.

art & text (c) John P. Alexander

Description
More of my astronomical art can be viewed in my DA "paleo and Sci Illo" gallery:

[link]

"Call me Ishmael".

Welcome to the disinherited son of the Solar System. This is the recently theorized "lost" planet of our own star system.

Technically this is not a planet at all. It is a "planemo".

Computer modeling has suggested that the best explanation for the positions of Uranus and Neptune, the distribution of the Kuiper Belt objects and Late Heavy Bombardment is the ejection from the Solar System of a large gas planet. It would have been formed outside the orbit of Saturn. Over 4 billion years ago the planets Jupiter and Saturn assumed a 1:2 orbital resonance. Their combined gravitational tug pumped up the angular momentum of a fifth gas giant.

This planet has been wandering the galaxy without a parent sun ever since. It has been theorized that this phenomenon may be common in the formation of planetary sysems throughout the universe. Indeed there may be as many or more planemos on independent orbits about the galactic barycenter than planets that are gravitationally locked to their parent stars.

This is important because when stars exhaust their nuclear fuel and die many destroy their planetary systems in the process. Planemos, however can survive their original stars by billions of years. In short, this lost child of the Solar System may potentially outlive its sister planets by tens of billions of years.

The view in this drawing is from the surface of a moon of the planemo that was carried away with it. This moon is kept dynamic by gravitational friction as it orbits the gas giant. Like Jupiter's moon Europa, its icy surface is constantly being remodeled. It also has a subsurface ocean of liquid water that could host carbon based lifeforms. This means that the ecosystem of this moon would endure long after our Sun has consumed the Earth during its red giant phase. It would still survive after the Sun has become a white dwarf.

art & text (c) John P. Alexander