The Dark Frontier: How Planets Build Worlds Without Stars

By Michael Evans Paulson

The Dark Frontier: How Planets Build Worlds Without Stars
For centuries, we believed planets could only form in the warm embrace of a star's light. Then came the James Webb Space Telescope-and the cosmos rewrote the rules.
Between August and October 2024, Webb's unprecedented infrared vision uncovered something no astronomer expected: massive, starless worlds adrift in the cold, with swirling disks of dust and gas-potential cradles for moons, even entire miniature planetary systems. These were not failed stars or distant exiles flung from their birthplaces. They were worlds built in the dark, forging their own cosmic destinies without the guidance of a sun.
In The Dark Frontier, you'll journey from the basics of rogue planets and the mechanics of disk formation, to the surprising detection of silicate grains-seeds of future planets-forming in these alien environments. You'll meet the scientists, like Dr. Belinda Damian and her University of St Andrews team, whose persistence pushed past decades of astronomical dogma. Along the way, you'll explore the implications for life, the philosophical shockwaves in redefining what a "solar system" even means, and the staggering possibility that the galaxy teems with unseen, unlit worlds.
Blending cutting-edge astrophysics with a deep cosmic perspective, this book invites you to the very edge of discovery-where the light of knowledge meets the vastness of the unknown.
The stars may not be the only beacons in our galaxy.

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0FMJWCSC3
• ISBN13: 9798298065931
• Release Date: August 2025
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 162 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"