Are there any stars that do not have a planetary system?

In summary, astronomers have found that nearly every sun has planets, but some stars lack them. It is currently unknown if there are any stars without planets.
  • #1
pixel01
688
1
At first, scientists found stars with planets and think that there are suns with planetary system. But it seems now that every sun has planets. My questiion is are there any suns without a planet.
 
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  • #2
Blue giants seem to be poor breeding grounds for planets. Perhaps because they blow off their accretion disc before sizable planets can coalesce, or they are too massive for companion planet detection. Otherwise, it appears planetary companions are the norm for nearly every star. Planetary companions have even been detected orbiting neutron stars, which is pretty weird. They are, however, probably not good candidates for SETI study.
 
  • #3
Stars that form around the central black holes of galaxies could also be good candidates.
 
  • #4
I suppose a good place to start exploring this question would be to ask, " do we currently have the technology to look at a star and say, with any degree of certainty, that it does not have a planet orbiting it?" Until we can do that, we cannot say for certain that there is any star without a planet.
 
  • #5
LURCH said:
I suppose a good place to start exploring this question would be to ask, " do we currently have the technology to look at a star and say, with any degree of certainty, that it does not have a planet orbiting it?" Until we can do that, we cannot say for certain that there is any star without a planet.

Given the sheer number of stars in the universe, it's a safe bet that there exists at least one star with no planets. While it seems likely that most, if not all, stars form with planets around them, things can happen to remove them later such as a close encounter with another star.
 
  • #6
How many man on Earth over 50 yrs old and has no kids? Plenty of them. Can't i say this for stars? Without planets? I can't give you any evidence at the moment but I'm pretty sure there must be plenty of stars without planets. However if we think planetary systems and atoms structures are more similar than above example, then we can't see any atom nuclei without elcetrons at the first look, but actually we find places in universe where there are plenty of atom nuclei together and without electrons around, like in neutron stars. So still there are high possibilities for existence of stars without planets.
According to a scientific article first stars had no planets. Only later generations of stars, that contain more metal, were able to have planetary companions. To reach this conclusion astronomers looked at 754 nearby stars. Some of surveyed stars had planets but most did not. To read more: BBC News, Science/Nature, First Stars Had No Planets
 
  • #7
I think those gas blobs that have rotation movement would from stars with acretion disks and planets may form from that.
Those gas blobs that have no rotation movement will never have an acretion disk and no planets are from.
 
  • #8
This is unanswerable. If you see a star that seems not to have planets, how do you know that it really doesn't have planets rather than planets that are too small, too far out or too close into detect?
 
  • #9
Those half-dozen or so stars at the center of our Milky Way galaxy which are whipping around what is presumed to be a supermassive black hole with 2-3 million solar masses having orbital periods measure in mere days probably don't have any planets now, even if they once did.
 
  • #10
negitron said:
... it seems likely that most, if not all, stars form with planets around them...
I think this is an exceedingly bold claim.
 
  • #11
pixel01 said:
My questiion is are there any suns without a planet.

I'm going to say yes. Given the vast number of galaxies, and the vast number of stars within a galaxy, surely at least one sun in the universe has no planets. The problem is, you need to find an example to really prove the answer. I don't think we have the technology to prove that a star has no planets. It's often difficult to prove a negative.
 
  • #12
elect_eng said:
I'm going to say yes. Given the vast number of galaxies, and the vast number of stars within a galaxy, surely at least one sun in the universe has no planets. The problem is, you need to find an example to really prove the answer. I don't think we have the technology to prove that a star has no planets. It's often difficult to prove a negative.
I'm going to guess that the OP wasn't looking for 'only one in the universe', but was looking for 'is it rare'.
 
  • #13
DaveC426913 said:
I think this is an exceedingly bold claim.

You're probably right, on further thought. Claim retracted.
 
  • #14
DaveC426913 said:
I'm going to guess that the OP wasn't looking for 'only one in the universe', but was looking for 'is it rare'.

Why make a guess that changes the clear meaning of the stated question? However, if guessing is allowed, then you should guess that I didn't really mean that there is only one in the universe, but only that they are probably rare. The main point is that it is very difficult to determine just how rare they might be. Any star that shows no sign of a planet, might still have one. It's much easier to prove that a star has a planet, than prove that it does not.
 
  • #15
elect_eng said:
Why make a guess that changes the clear meaning of the stated question?
Because I think even the OP knows that the answer to his question - if taken literally - is trivial.

Of course, there is at least one planet somewhere in the entire universe, for one reason or another, that has no planets. End of thread.

Only looser interpretations of the question lead to further discussion.
 
  • #16
DaveC426913 said:
Because I think even the OP knows that the answer to his question - if taken literally - is trivial.

Of course, there is at least one planet somewhere in the entire universe, for one reason or another, that has no planets. End of thread.

Only looser interpretations of the question lead to further discussion.

I guess you missed my subtlety. What I was trying to say was; why did you give the OP the benefit of the doubt by guessing that his question should not be interpreted literally, and not do me the same favor in interpreting my answer? My point was not that there is one star without a planet, but that determining the rarity is difficult.
 
  • #17
I thought that it was nearly impossible for a binary star system to have planets. Binary star systems are very common.
 
  • #19
Integral said:
I thought that it was nearly impossible for a binary star system to have planets. Binary star systems are very common.

55 Cancri A has 5 discovered exoplanets and is part of a binary system.
 
  • #20
Any star that happened to randomly pass within ~5 AUs of another star will have all its planets ejected into interstellar space, likely leaving both stars with no planets. But how often does this happen? Using the close stellar encounter formula from the abstract of Joan Garcia-Sanchez's paper "Stellar Encounters with the Oort Cloud based on Hipparcos", available in calculator form here:
http://orbitsimulator.com/formulas/cse.html ,
stars in the sun's neighborhood are likely to have such an encounter about every 400,000 Billion years. So in the last 4 billion years, one out of every 100,000 stars should have suffer such a fate. That makes thousands of planetless stars per galaxy by this process alone. The odds are probably much higher as many stars begin their lives in clusters, where close stellar encounters are more frequent.
 
  • #21
Integral said:
I thought that it was nearly impossible for a binary star system to have planets. Binary star systems are very common.
In my opinion planetary systems are formed namely in binary systems. Our solar system is no exception to this rule. The role of the second component in it make an underdeveloped Star - the Jupiter, which is formed by special way. Then Jupiter promotes formation of other planets. http://www.thescienceforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=15901&start=0 [Broken]
 
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  • #22
Jupiter isn't anywhere near big enough to be called a star, underdeveloped or otherwise.
 
  • #23
negitron said:
Jupiter isn't anywhere near big enough to be called a star, underdeveloped or otherwise.
Yes, of course, it is tiny to start the fusion reaction. But this does not prevent it to form in the same way as stars (ie, compression of gas-dust cloud).
 
  • #24
Um, ALL celestial bodies form in that manner. Including the one you're sitting on.
 
  • #25
negitron said:
Um, ALL celestial bodies form in that manner. Including the one you're sitting on.

In this case, size does matter doesn't it?. A star should have an accretion disk. Bodies like Jupiter and Satturn have rings while the inner planets do not.
 
  • #26
pixel01 said:
In this case, size does matter doesn't it?. A star should have an accretion disk. Bodies like Jupiter and Satturn have rings while the inner planets do not.
I'm not sure that what Jupiter and Saturn have is what's called an accretion disc. In fact, I think they're the opposite.

In an accretion disc around a star, planets can form. In a planetary disc, a moonlet has not been allowed to form. I suspect that the biggest factor differentiating the two is the distance from the central body.
 
  • #27
DaveC426913 said:
I suspect that the biggest factor differentiating the two is the distance from the central body.
Within our planetary system, there are at least 3 «planetary» systems - systems of satellites of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus. By size, these systems differ from each other radically. However, between them there is a huge similarity. In all systems there are 2 commensurabilities, which show, that they are created in accordance to single scenario.
 
  • #28
DaveC426913 said:
I'm not sure that what Jupiter and Saturn have is what's called an accretion disc. In fact, I think they're the opposite.

QUOTE]

I read in some articles that the rings around Jupiter or at least Saturn have been proved recently formed as long as the planets itself
 
  • #29
Agreed, planetary rings appear to be short lived.
 

1. Are there any stars that do not have a planetary system?

Yes, there are stars that do not have a planetary system. These are known as "failed stars" or brown dwarfs. They are too small to sustain nuclear fusion and therefore do not have planets orbiting around them.

2. How many stars are estimated to not have a planetary system?

It is estimated that up to 25% of stars do not have a planetary system. This number may vary depending on the method used to detect planets and the sensitivity of the instruments.

3. Can a star lose its planetary system?

It is possible for a star to lose its planetary system. This can happen due to various reasons such as gravitational interactions with other stars, collisions with other objects, or the star's own evolution. However, it is not a common occurrence.

4. Is it possible for a star to have multiple planetary systems?

Yes, it is possible for a star to have multiple planetary systems. In fact, our own Sun is a part of a planetary system known as the "Solar System". There are also multiple star systems, where two or more stars have their own planetary systems.

5. Are there any stars that have been confirmed to not have a planetary system?

There have been some stars that have been confirmed to not have a planetary system. These include the brown dwarfs and some very young or very old stars that may not have had enough time to form planets. However, as technology and our understanding of the universe improves, this number may change.

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