Thanks to the advancement of satellite technology and telescope precision we are now finding newly discovered wonderment in our very own solar system. From Mars to Saturn to the outer rim of the solar system itself new developments are changing science’s understanding of our own star system orbiting “Sol” our very own yellow dwarf star.

A new frozen planet has been detected further out than Pluto. It hides from behind the Oort cloud, a mass of primordial dust and fragments of planets that never formed. Here another cold planet orbits from a vast distance where properties of gases and liquids are severely altered by the extreme frigidity of the distance celestial body. In these bizarre environments liquid methane falls like freezing rain, volcanoes made of slush at 200 degrees below zero rise through the frozen crust that is 300 degrees below zero. Hundreds of years will pass by with a single complete orbit around the sun from this distant outer position.

In great contrast let us go to Venus, a cloud covered furnace, where atmospheric pressure and temperatures of 850 degrees Fahrenheit on the surface make even hardened soft landing satellites fail in minutes and with luck a few hours. The Pioneer Centaur Venus probe detected Phosphine gas in the cloud decks of the upper atmosphere. According to exo-biologists this gas can only exist if live carbon based life has interacted with a planetary environment. How could life exist as we know it in the upper atmosphere of the Venusian poison gas furnace where clouds of sulfuric acid drift high above the sweltering ground? NASA plans to go back to confirm those readings just a they vowed to re-check the test for past organic life on the surface of Mars as one of the experiments aboard the Viking Mission soft lander that settled on the surface of the Red Planet in 1976. Scientist Gil Levins devised a simple test to determine if organic life had left a trace in the Martian soil and it came back positive! However, NASA disputed the finding and proposed to re-enact that test again in the future.

Traveling back into the frigid distances from the sun we find that recently Saturn has revealed another 62 moons making its total celestial system of 145 known orbiting moons. The amazing vastness of its own planetary system leave astronomers speechless. However, if we blast off again headed for Mars and overlook the odd counter rotating and fast orbit of Phobos we find a satellite photo of much shocking detail. Apparently a 3 mile high monolith stands on the surface of the Martian moon. Like something out of “2001 A Space Oddity” Stanley Kubrick’s directorial masterpiece, we find reality is even stranger than fiction!

Mars has two odd effects that of mystery and amazement. In 2012 a mile and a half high jet of steam or gas was ejected from below the surface of Mars. One scientist proclaimed that with the lack geothermal activity on Mars due to the inner core no long being molten as it is on Earth and therefore how our planet creates an electromagnetic field that shields earth from the sun’s deadly solar radiation and deflects it via the Van Allen Radiation Belt along with the ultra violet rays that could destroy life, Mars isn’t supposed to be able to eject anything like escaping gasses or steam from beneath its surface. The NASA researcher claimed it could only have been caused by industrial activity underground!

The angry Red Planet possesses another surprise! It has the largest mountain in the entire solar system of any planet or moon. Olympus Mons is twice the height of Mount Everest and stands 16 miles tall. The entire mass of the mountain would reach over 68 thousand feet beyond the altitude of most jet aircraft if it existed on earth. It’s a shield volcano that erupted many times in the past extending back a billion years spewing liquid basalt lava. Yet, Mars is now volcanically inactive. The base of the entire mountain is the size of the state of Arizona with the actual caldera being 53 miles across. Olympus Mons would dwarf Mona Kea in Hawaii.

We are finding that many possibilities arise from the new discoveries of our solar system with evidence to suggest that violent collisions, comets, and asteroids have rendered catastrophic changes on other planets that dictated whether or not life would exist, and in the case of Mars there appears to be artificial evidence of some kind of intelligent activity as perhaps even a war that wiped out a civilization may have occurred on the Red Planet. These anomalies and traces of ancient events are being slowly pieced together so that cosmologists can paint a more accurate picture.