2. “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. “ Carl Sagan.
Understanding from the unknown. Comprehension from the cosmos. Insight from the
infinite. The relationship between discovery and exploration has driven human
curiosity for all recorded history. Since the time of the ancient philosophers, we have
striven to comprehend our place in the universe and have looked to the heavens for
answers to the questions: Where do we came from? Are we alone? Where are we
going?
Exploration and discovery have been especially important to the world
experience. Astronomers, astronauts, voyagers, and frontiers showed our nation the
importance of the knowledge, technology, resources, and inspiration that flow
from, exploration.
In this topic about recent discoveries and breakthroughs of Earth and Space
explorations, we showed various recent discoveries reports about planets, stars and
other heavenly bodies. We also included some breathtaking captions and magnificent
videos about Earth and Space exploration for further realization.

3. There are 209 known planets outside the solar
system, but there are even more out there, and
astronomers need help finding them. The out of this world
project is called SYSTEMIC. It‟s a free web program that
lets anyone hunt outer-space data to find our cosmic
neighbors, which is not a one man job. Dr. Laughlin
explains, “ The kinds of computations that we need to do
are computations that require a lot of computer power.
They can farmed out to a large number of individual
computers .” More than 4,000 possible planets have been
submitted, and four are awaiting confirmation.

5. It took billions of years and the perfect conditions
for our Earth to grow and form. Now, those same
conditions can be seen in space, shaping a similar planet.
Far, far away. Something amazing is brewing in space.
Swirling around a giant star similar to our
sun, astrophysicists have spotted the very early stages of a
planet taking shape. Astronomers think they are seeing a
formation of a planet—terrestrial planet—rocky planet like
the Earth, around the star. The Earth like planet is about
430 light years away or 2.5 trillion miles from Earth. It’s
inside a huge dust belt—bigger than our asteroid belt—
with enough dusty material to build a planet.

6. The material is forming at just the same distance, or close the same
distance where the Earth formed from the sun. to find the planet,
astronomers used images captured by the Spitzer Space telescope. It
looks for infrared light or heat radiating from the dusty materials.
The images also confirm the rocky fragments forming a new planet
are similar to materials found in the Earth‟s crust and core. So, The
body that‟s going to form—the planet that „s going to form—isn‟t going
to be gas giant with incredibly thick atmosphere. It‟s going to be a
rocky planet like Mars or Venus or the Earth. There‟s also an outer
ice belt circling the young planet, making it more likely that water
could reach the new planet‟s surface and maybe even life; but don‟t
wait around for signs of life. The planet still needs another 100 million
years before it‟s completely formed. Astronomers say the star the
new planet is spinning around is between ten and 16 million years old,
which is the perfect age for forming Earth-like planets.

7. Astronomers announce three
stunning space discoveries. Could
these findings mean we are not
alone in the universe?

8. Astronomers say they may found at least half of
the universe’s “missing mass”. Since 1930s, scientists
have been looking for this invisible mass called dark
matter. Which they say keeps galaxies from flying apart.
( By their calculations, all visible stars don’t have enough
mass, and therefore gravitational pull, to hold galaxies
together.
How did astronomers find this dark matter? They
detected increases in the brightness of stars in a nearby
galaxy. This brightening, they say, could only be caused
by large objects passing in front of the stars. The
objects’ mass indicates that they are white dwarfs. Or
burned-out stars. If enough of these dead stars exist in
space, they could make up half of the universe’s missing
mass. What about the other half? The scientists are still
looking.

10. New photos from the Hubble telescope reveal
that the universe may be a lot more crowded than
scientists once thought. Like this one, reveal some
1,500 galaxies (groups of stars like our Milky Way) in a
tiny speck of space. Based on their view of that
speck, scientists now estimate there may be 50 million
galaxies in the universe-5 times their previous
estimate. With 50 to 100 billion stars in each
galaxy, the universe may contain
5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, or 1022 x 5 stars- or
about one trillion stars for every person on Earth.!

11. Computer simulations conducted by David Nesvorny of the
Southwest Research Institute show that the outer Solar System
may have possessed five giant gas planets, one of which was
booted out as Jupiter jumped around in its orbit.
Dynamical instabilities are common in a newborn solar system as
planets settle in their new-found orbits. Evidence for a
gravitational disturbance of rocky planetary building blocks in our
own Solar System is recorded in the impact crater history of our
battered Moon's ancient surface just 600 million years after its
formation. These cosmic collisions resulted from the outer giant
planets' gravity unsettling smaller objects and sending them
careering headlong into the inner Solar System.

12. An artist's impression of a Neptune-like planet ejected from the early Solar
System. Image: Southwest Research Institute. At the same time, other small
objects were flung into the outer icy reaches of the Solar System's Kuiper
Belt, and Jupiter is thought to have migrated inwards on its orbit. But, says
Nesvorny, a slow-moving Jupiter would likely have wrecked havoc in the inner
Solar System, the transfer of momentum possibly even causing Earth to collide
with Mars or Venus.
The "jumping-Jupiter" theory is indeed less harmful to the inner Solar
System, but at the cost of either Neptune or Uranus being ejected
instead, Nesvorny's computer simulations revealed.
Placing a fifth planet with a similar mass to Uranus or Neptune into the system
seemed to solve the conundrum. In this scenario, one planet was booted out of
the Solar System due to interactions with Jupiter, leaving the current four planets
and the ability of Jupiter to still jump inwards, but without implicating the rocky
inner planets.
“The possibility that the Solar System had more than four giant planets
initially, and ejected some, appears to be conceivable in view of the recent
discovery of a large number of free-floating planets in interstellar
space, indicating the planet ejection process could be a common occurrence,”
adds Nesvorny.