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Isaac Newton's gravity theory released
Isaac Newton discovered gravity and the legend says that he sat under an apple tree and an apple fell down and he started to think why it fell down and did not fly away. If that's true or not we don't know but anyhow he realized that there must be some type of force acting on all objects that make them not fly out in space, he called this thing gravity and that's pretty much how he discovered it.
What is gravity? Gravity is the force of that pulls two objects towards each other. -
First ever human in space
The Russian Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was the first ever human to put his foot on the outside of earth. His spaceship Vostok 1 orbited the earth once. This journey took 108 min (one hour and 48 min) , though when they re-entered the earths atmosphere the spaceship's engines couldn't take the forces it was experiencing so that they could land safely so at the height of seven kilometers he actually with the help of a parachute reached the earth again. -
Discovery of Eris
Eris was once classified as the tenth planet of our solar system (it's today classified as a dwarf planet). It was discovered by three men by the help of photos token in October of 2003. Eris was found in the Kuiper Belt and it's mass is bigger than Pluto (Pluto has a bigger volume though), never before had we discovered anything that was bigger than Pluto in the Kuiper belt so we classed it is as the tenth planet of the Milky way. That changed after the IAU definition of a planet in 2006. -
IAU definition of a planet
For a long time people had been discussing what a planet really was and how to define it, so in august of 2006 scientists got together and made a definition of what something must do to be classed as a planet. A planet must... 1. Round itself out by the help of gravity 2. clear it's own neighbourhood 3. orbit a star. But this also resulted in disagreements, some people thought that the rules were right and some people didn't however today these are the rules a planet must follow. -
A star discovered with planets revolving around it
A new solar system has been discovered with seven planets orbiting a single star about 40 light years. It's said that the three planets in the middle may have life on them but the other four are either too far away from the sun or too close and that resulting in them being too hot or cold to be habitable (=a place which is able to fit life).
This system is called the TRAPPIST-1 system and that is because of the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small telescope that first discovered it.
