Exploring Space's Most Bizarre and Enigmatic Discoveries

1. An Independent Rogue Planet That Floats

Found Year: 2012. Who Found It: Canada-France Brown Dwarfs Survey Location: CBDSIR 2149-0403 All planets have a "Sun" that they orbit, according to what we were taught in elementary school about the solar system. All of that changed in 2012 when a rogue planet that didn't seem to circle a dwarf star of its own was discovered by the Canada-France Brown Dwarfs Survey.

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Unknown Planet That Is Abandoning Itself @nasa/Pinterest It is likely that there are millions or perhaps billions of rogue planets in the universe, but CFBDSIR 2149-0403 was the first to be discovered. It looks to be at least seven times the mass of Jupiter and floats through space in a state of aimlessness. To put it another way, CFBDSIR 2149-0403 is a backpacker on a planet.

2. Stars Shooting

Found Year: 2005 Sloan Digital Survey found it. Location: Not specified From wishing upon them to witnessing their brilliance bathe the night sky, "shooting stars" have had a profound effect on people's lives for millennia. Nevertheless, the first proof of a REAL shooting star wasn't discovered until 2005.

Ascending Stars ©Flickr/Mike Renlund Hypervelocity stars—stars that speed across space at hundreds of thousands of miles per second—were found by astronomers at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory during the implementation of the Sloan Digital Survey. How do they accelerate to such levels? In other words, when a supermassive black hole swallows one of the two stars in a binary star system, the second star is flung in the other direction like a bat out of hell.