2010 In Retrospect
Planets beyond solar family
The discovery of a planet orbiting a dim dwarf star about 20 light-years from Earth has encouraged astronomers in their hunt for habitable, and maybe even inhabited, worlds elsewhere in the galaxy astronomers suspect that dozens of potentially habitable worlds will be discovered as the number of known exoplanets continues to climb. Dark glimmers An excess of gamma rays emanating from the galaxy's center may indicate the presence of dark matter, an exotic material that has never been observed but must exist to keep galaxies and galaxy clusters from flying apart. LHC revs up The Large Hadron Collider sets a record for the highest-energy collision of subatomic particles. Early light dawns The Planck spacecraft obtains the sharpest view yet of the early universe while an older craft looking just as far back in time refines the age of the cosmos Milky Way bubbles Astronomers discover two giantblobs of gamma rayemitting gas above and below the galaxy's center, probably produced by the supermassive black hole presumed to lurk there. Full of stars The abundance of red dwarfs in eight nearby galaxies suggests the stellar population of the universe may be three times current estimates
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