Tag archive: Planet

A group of astronomers announced today the discovery of more than 50 new planets, including 16 “super-Earth” planets, one of which has the potential to support alien life. This massive batch of new planets, the largest exoplanetary find to date, were uncovered using the  High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) planet-finding technology at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. Of those discovered, the planet with the most… Read More

For the first time in human history, an Earth-made vehicle has successfully entered the orbit of Mercury, the closest planet to our sun. NASA's Messenger spacecraft entered Mercury's orbit at about 9:15pm EST on Thursday after a 30-minute rocket blast pushed the unmanned probe into the planet's gravitational pull, the Los Angeles Times reports. Announcement of Messenger's orbit entry was met with jubilation from the… Read More

Yesterday 501 images and text messages were beamed out from a radio telescope in the Ukraine to a planet 20 light years away. The material, collectively called A Message From Earth, had been put together from a competition by social networking site Bebo covering what people would like aliens to receive. Among the articles are pieces on a first kiss and world peace, the BBC reports. Now in binary format, they’re currently traversing… Read More

They call the data center in Texas The Planet, a place full of servers. But a large fire has taken 9,000 of the servers at The Planet offline, bringing down thousands of web pages around the world. An electrical short reportedly caused the blaze that destroyed three walls around the data center’s electrical equipment room. In a blog post, The Planet team wrote: "We have just been allowed into the building to physically… Read More

Anglo-Italian five piece Planet Funk is aiming to set a new record next month when it launches its single “Stop Me” in the U.K. next month. The twist: the song will only be available for sale to cell phone users. The mobile-only record launch marks a new attempt by bands and distributors to jolt the market for music singles, which, while enjoying some success online via track-by-track sales from venues like Apple's iTunes… Read More