Scientists Discovered a New Type of Alien Planet

Scientists have discovered a new type of alien planet — a humid water world that is larger than Earth but smaller than Uranus.

The standard-bearer for this new class of exoplanet is called GJ 1214b, which astronomers first discovered in December 2009. New observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope suggest that GJ 1214b is a watery world enshrouded by a thick, steamy atmosphere.

"GJ 1214b is like no planet we know of," study lead author Zachory Berta of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., said in a statement. "A huge fraction of its mass is made up of water."

Mysterious Space Elements

Even space itself is mystifying, for example. Recent studies suggest that the fabric of the universe stretches more than 150 billion light-years across -- in spite of the fact that the cosmos is 13.7 billion years old. From super-fast stars to the nature of matter, here we cover other strange and mysterious elements of the universe.



Hypervelocity Stars

If you've ever gazed at the night sky, you've probably wished upon a shooting star (which are really meteors). But shooting stars do exist, and they're as rare as one in 100 million.

In 2005, astronomers find out the first "hypervelocity" star careening out of a galaxy at nearly 530 miles per second (10 times faster than ordinary star movement).

We have ideas about what flings these rare stars into deep space, but aren't certain; anything from off-kilter supernova explosions to supermassive black holes might be responsible.