Rogue Planet - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

In the novel When Worlds Collide (serialised 1932) by Edwin Balmer and Phillip Wylie, Earth is first devastated, and then destroyed, by "Bronson Alpha", a gas-giant-sized rogue planet, orbited by "Bronson Beta", an Earth-sized satellite. Fortunately, advance warning enables several groups of survivors to escape to Bronson Beta, which is torn away from its former primary by the gravitational impact of the Bronson Alpha/Earth collision — and takes up the former orbit of the destroyed Earth. In the film version (1951) of the novel, Bronson Alpha was reimagined as a dwarf star and renamed "Bellus", while Bronson Beta was designated "Zyra."

The short story A Pail of Air by Fritz Leiber, which first appeared in the December 1951 issue of Galaxy Magazine and aired on the radio drama X Minus One in March 1956, is narrated by a boy living on Earth after it has been torn from the Sun's gravity and captured by a passing "dark star". Although Earth now orbits this "dark star" (which might be a black hole or cool brown dwarf), it shares many characteristics with an interstellar planet.

In the novel Wolfbane by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth (originally serialised in Galaxy in 1957), a rogue planet, populated by strange machines known as Pyramids, steals the Earth from the Solar System, taking it off into interstellar space.

In the March 1963 issue of Adventure Comics, Edmond Hamilton introduces the character Night Girl, whose home world Kathoon has no sun.

In Fritz Leiber's novel The Wanderer, Earth encounters two ambulatory rogue planets. One, The Wanderer, is inhabited by nonconformist felinoid aliens, while The Stranger is a 'police world' that is pursuing the renegade felinoids. There are gravitational and tidal upheavals and the Moon is destroyed.

In the novel The Witches of Karres (1966) by James H. Schmitz, expanded from a 1949 novelette, the rogue planet Karres can be moved through space by means of psychic powers.

In the 1966 Doctor Who story The Tenth Planet, Mondas, home of the Cybermen, is said to be Earth's twin which was knocked out of Solar orbit during prehistoric times, returning in 1986. In Revenge of the Cybermen, the Cybermen waged war on the inhabitants of a rogue planetoid, a remnant of the destroyed planet Voga.

The Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Squire of Gothos" is set on a rogue planet, uninhabitable except for a small patch maintained by a superhuman being.

The first known use of "rogue planet" as term for such detached worlds occurred in Poul Anderson's Polesotechnic League novel Satan's World (1969).

In the British science-fiction television series Space: 1999, the pilot episode (1975) has a rogue planet, Meta, coming near Earth. Moonbase Alpha personnel are trying to launch a probe to investigate the planet. Later in the episode, Earth's Moon is knocked out of orbit by an explosion at its nuclear waste dump, becoming a wandering planet. A tie-up episode filmed years after the series ended for a fan convention led fans to speculate that the rogue planet Meta in the first episode was actually the Moon after some space-time warp and transformation.

The rogue planet of Worlorn is the scene of action in George R. R. Martin’s novel Dying of the Light.

In the Warhammer 40,000 universe, the Temple of the Culexus Assassins of the Officio Assassinorum is thought to be located deep under the surface of a 'dead' rogue planet.

In the first series of Transformers comics published by Marvel Comics, the planet of Cybertron is a rogue planet that was dislodged from its original orbit in the Alpha Centauri system by weapons of mass destruction. The wars were initiated by the villain, Megatron, whose goal was to build gigantic propulsion engines to deliberately modify Cybertron into a rogue planet that served as a flagship for interstellar conquest. Cybertron is shown to have a surface temperature and atmosphere in which humans can survive, though it has no native organic life forms. Transformers are shown to first encounter Earth when Cybertron's interstellar path took it through the asteroid belt of the Solar System.

In the Red Dwarf books, the Earth becomes a rogue planet when it is torn from its orbit by exploding sewage.

The homeworld of the Founders in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is a rogue planet in a nebula; it has climatic conditions capable of supporting humanoid life.

From the 2nd season of Mainframe Entertainment's War Planets cartoon onward, the titular planets were forced to become rogue planets in order to escape being consumed by the Beast Planet, which they achieved with colossal "World Engine" propulsion systems created by a lost civilization.

The planet Zonama Sekot in the Star Wars fictional universe was first introduced in the novel Rogue Planet and later expanded on in the New Jedi Order series. The planet, which is in fact a sentient life form itself, is home to life unlike any other in the galaxy, including organic spaceships.

Rogue planets feature in two of American science fiction author Jack McDevitt's novels: Deepsix (2001) and Seeker (2005).

In the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Rogue Planet", Enterprise happens upon a rogue planet with an Earth-like atmosphere. The planet was heated by volcanic vents that sent heat into the atmosphere, thus sustaining the ecology of the planet.

In the novel Sunstorm, by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter, the eponymous sunstorm is caused by the impact into the Sun of a gas giant diverted from Altair roughly two thousand years before. As it passed through the Solar System, it was visible as the Star of Bethlehem.

In the film Melancholia by Lars von Trier, a fictional rogue planet called Melancholia first approaches, then collides with the Earth.

In the online game Cartoon Network Universe: FusionFall, Earth is under attack by Fuse, the ruler of a possibly Saturn-sized rogue planet named Planet Fusion. Planet Fusion is said to be over a thousand years old, and to have collided with many other (previously) inhabitable planets; Earth is its next victim. Two other known attacks have been on the Glorft homeworld (who used their robots to repel the invasion) and the Ectonurite homeworld, Anur Phaetos (who then became allies with Fuse).

The video game Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (2004) takes place on a rogue planet named Aether.

The Starshield novels feature a legendary rogue world.

The Mass Effect universe's codex entries identify numerous planets as "captured" rogue planets that have since begun orbiting stars