Can planets be found away from stars?

Yes :)

Not really. For starters, a planet that was found 'away from' a star wouldn't be a planet, since by definition a planet is a massive body orbiting a star (assuming it is not a star itself, in which case it would be a binary system).

It's also rare for masses such as a planet to occur away from stars, since every element in the universe heavier than hydrogen (which is all of them, besides hydrogen of course) was formed in the core of a star, and these new elements are then either fused further, or remain in the star as it dies, or are flung out into space by a supernova event. But as I said earlier, non-orbiting masses in the universe aren't usually described as planets.

Yes, and they have been. In general, they are called "rogue planets".

In the original "Planet-X" hoax (we all died in May 2003), the fake Planet-X was described as a rogue planet, travelling on its own through the Galaxy (not in orbit around any star).

When the search began for "dark matter", some scientists were proposing some yet unknown type of particles that would have mass, that would not interact through electromagnetism (i.e., they would not be visible with "light") but could still interact through a force called the Weak nuclear force.

These particles were called Weakly Interacting Massive Particles.

Quickly, they became known by the acronym WIMPs (and yes, there were puns and plays-on-word)

Other scientists thought that the dark matter could be normal matter in the form of rogue planets that were roaming all over the Galaxy: not only in the disk (where we are) but also in the rest of the Galaxy (the portion called the halo). Because of the puns with the WIMPs, these possible objects where called Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Objects (MACHO). The name was chosen on purpose so that they could have that acronym.**

A search was conducted for these objects. They did find a few rogue planets, some brown dwarfs and even faint red dwarfs, but not enough to explain the "missing dark matter".

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Despite the general definition of planets as being objects in orbit around our Sun (those in orbit around other stars are now called exoplanets), the objects that were objects similar to planets, not in orbit around stars, were reported in official papers as "planets" (and as "rogue planets"). Therefore, they were officially called "planets" (MACHO is a general term that would include any "dark" normal object in the Galaxy, including the rogue planets, but also brown dwarfs, quiet neutron stars and also black holes).

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**

After that, someone even proposed Robust Association of Massive Baryonic Objects (RAMBOs) for another type of object that could explain dark matter. But these have nothing to do with rogue planets.

Theoretically a planet can be "slingshot" out of it's solar system gravitationally by passing too close to its star and/or another planet. It could also be blasted out of orbit if the star explodes. But can it be found? With current technology, probably not. At least not by humans. (^.^)

Yes.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/25/rogue-pla...

Absolutely.

No

No!!