Five exoplanets (planets beyond our solar system) have just been discovered by NASA's Kepler telescope. Launched in March of last year, the Kepler telescope is set up for discovering Earth-sized planets. The five exoplanets discovered, range from Neptune sized, to the size of Jupiter. The estimated temperature of all the planets found is too great to yield any forms of life that are currently known by science. Too bad. We were really hoping to find out about our new alien overlords early on in 2010. I guess we'll all have to wait just a little longer.

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Above South Sulawesi, Indonesia an asteroid struck the atmosphere on October 8th. Scientists said monitoring stations 10,000 miles away could hear the blast from the asteroid.

The asteroid, estimated to have been around 10 metres (30ft) across, hit the atmosphere at an estimated 45,000mph. The sudden deceleration caused it to heat up rapidly and explode with the force of 50,000 tons of TNT.

Luckily, due to the height of the explosion – estimated at between 15 and 20 km (nine to 12 miles) above sea level – no damage was caused on the ground.

However, if the object had been slightly larger – 20 to 30 metres (60 to 90ft) across – it could easily have caused extensive damage and loss of life, say researchers.

Very few objects smaller than 100 meters (300ft) across have been spotted and catalogued by astronomers.

Holy Shit! This is of our concern, Dude.

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Do you like sitting around all day and surfing the innerlux? Well, how do you feel about getting paid to lie around while you race down those shiny silver tubes? NASA has been paying people up to $160 to lie in a bed all day and use computers, watch movies, and soil themselves silly (that's how we see it at least.) They're doing this as a part of a study to test the effects of micro-gravity.

Sign us up.

via Gizmodo