Before, scientists have held the belief that we'll need to send a lander to dig on the surface of other celestial bodies to figure out what their subsurfaces are composed of. Recently though, they figured out a way for explorers to retrieve this information without even having to land. Details after the "read more" link below.

Scientists have found two gas giant planets 5,000 light years away in a solar system that's quite like ours. The planets themselves, in fact, are similar to our own gas giants, Saturn and Jupiter. The discovery has raised hopes that we may find an Earth-like planet that may harbor life. More details in the full article.

Ever wonder if there's life outside planet Earth? If so, then you might probably be interested by the new found information by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Ideally, this planet should be filled with carbon monoxide, but in reality the astronomers were able to detect water vapor. More information in the full article.

NASA is aiming high with several new missions planned out after forwarding its request for the fiscal budget of 2009. These include three new robotic missions to the Moon, two new Earth science missions, and an ambitious mission to the outer solar system. You can take a look at more details on these ambitious new plans in the full article after the jump!

According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), everyone who enjoy viewing the dark sky at dawn are in for a surprise on February 1. Venus and Jupiter will come so close to each other that your eyes won't be able to resist. For more details, check out the full article.

Back in 1999, Comet Holmes was too small for the Hubble telescope to measure. One night, the comet suddenly brightened over a million-fold in a single day with a debris cloud measuring 1.4 million kilometers, only slightly larger than our own sun. What caused this sudden eruption of dust and light? Unfortunately, Hubble still doesn't have the answers. Check the full article for more details.

A team of U.S. astronomers has announced recently that they have found another planet around the star known as 55 Cancri. This solar system is around 41 light years away from Earth and the new planet discovered is the fifth planet found to be revolving around the said star.

But more than the discovery of the planet, astronomers are more intrigued about the planetary system being supported by 55 Cancri. More details on this after the jump.

We posted an article one month ago that invited readers to do a little thought exercise. Here's what we said: "On the 5th of November we're going to post an article or two about video games, gadgets, technology, and general geekness ... the things about video gaming and technology that ought not be forgotten."

So here's our list of some video gaming and technology moments worth remembering. Hope this gets you thinking (and feeling nostalgic too!). And we look forward to your comments (and arguments). What do you remember and wish that the world will never forget?

Between Mars and Jupiter lies the Asteroid Belt, where large chunks of the 170 km wide Baptistina asteroid had strayed to our side of the Solar System and hit the Moon and the Earth. One of the galactic boulders that hit our world may be the one that caused a mass extinction 65 million years ago and had wiped out the dinosaurs.

Scientists from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and Charles University in Prague believe that the Baptistina asteroid was hit by another asteroid measuring 60 km in diameter, causing it to spew out about 140,000 smaller pieces measuring 1 km each, and 300 more measuring 10 km each. Some of the fragments eventually broke out of orbit from the main body, with 2% of them hitting the Earth.

Scientists put the huge galactic drama within Earth's timeline, and found that the Baptistina collision may have caused the huge amount of craters whose ages go back 100 to 150 million years ago. They surmise that 20% of asteroid impact may have been caused by asteroids that broke off from the larger Baptistina family.

The event also ties up with a 85 km crater (called Tycho) on the moon, which was formed 108 million years ago. Scientists are excited at the prospects of connecting up the Baptistina collision to events on the Earth, the Moon and even on other planets. They hope to find out the implications the impact had on the geological and biological history of Earth. Maybe even how it affected human evolution.

Far-out. Strange. Weird. It's what astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts think of their newest find, the planet HAT-P-2b, the second planet found with the HATnet global network of automated telescopes, as Kate Ravilious of National Geographic News reports.

The superdense gas giant, spotted 440 light-years away in the constellation Hercules, astounded astronomers by not only being the largest planet found so far, but by having a plethora of features so unique that those who have been studying it up to now can't stop talking about how weird it is.

In a statement given to National Geographic, Center of Astrophysics Gaspar Bakos had this to say:
"This planet is so unusual that at first we thought it was a false alarm—something that appeared to be a planet but wasn't. But we eliminated every other possibility, so we knew we had a really weird planet."

So what's really weird about HAT-P-2b anyhow? Well, for starters, its gravity is fifteen times stronger than that of our planet's, which would mean walking around with fifteen times your own body weight. Second, temperatures in HAT-P-2b can reach up from 1000° to 2000ºC, which is pretty hot. Third, a year on HAT-P-2b equals less than six days on Earth (Birthday parties every week! Yay!). Fourth, it's slightly bigger than Jupiter, but eight times as dense - and weighs just as much as 2,500 Earths.

But that's not really weird, you say, when you take into consideration that they're other planets, hence they're not really 'ordinary'. It's not just those factoids that have the astronomers over at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center all starry-eyed, though - it's HAT-P-2b's unusual boomerang orbit that's got their attention. To wit - HAT-P-2b closes to within 3.1 million miles (that's 5 million kilometers) of its star before swinging out to around 9.6 million miles (15 million kilometers) away, all in the span of 5.6 days. Now THAT's weird.

Despite all the weirdness, however, the boys in white may have an answer - another planet, hiding in the shadows of space, could be causing HAT-P-2b's elliptical orbit. "It is possible that [HAT-P-2b] is interacting with another planet further out that we haven't seen," Bakos says.