New Planets Discovered!

Two new planets were discovered by some very young scientists this week. They are so excited they can hardly hold still! The official announcement of this amazing discovery will be made tomorrow at the International Conference of Space Exploration and Young Discoverers (SEYD.)

Ollie, 5 years old and Nicholas, 7, the brothers who found the new planets, will be honored at the conference. They will be available during the conference to answer any questions other kids might have about how they got interested in exploring space and looking for secret planets.

The giant planets are to be named at the Conference of SEYD, after Ollie and Nicholas Somers-Shaughnessy, of Vancouver, BC. The largest planet, Planet Nicholas, appears to be a really hot world of gas, fire and swirling shards of "super-heated ice."

"Planet Nicholas is moving towards the Somers Nebula, so it probably will just keep getting hotter and hotter for the next 500 trillion years or so," quipped Nicholas. He added, "I don't think anything could live there, but you never know."

Nicholas' younger brother Ollie interjected, "The planet I found is very, very different from my brother's planet!" Jumping up and down with excitement, Ollie speculated that his planet, named Planet Ollie, is covered with water "about the temperature of a perfectly warm bath, and I am very, very sure there are creatures living there. It seems like a pretty nice planet, if you ask me!"

When asked what kind of creatures he thinks live on his watery planet, Ollie elaborated on his discovery to the crowd of enthusiastic scientists and astronauts, "Well, I think it's alot like Earth. What might live there are creatures like a millions bazillion-gazillion microscopic glow-in-the-dark bugs and small fish, because you can see how colorful the planet is. Also I guess there are giant sea-dinosaurs like we used to have on Earth!" All in all, Ollie's description of the planet he found was extremely imaginative.

Dr. Knowsalot, one of the most famous scientists teaching at the conference, explained that Ollie had also discovered a moon orbiting Planet Ollie. When asked about the moon, Ollie quipped, "It's a very big moon - bigger than Earth's moon for sure. It doesn't have any water, so it's the exact opposite of the planet. There is also a gigantahugeous bunch of asteroids that are maybe going to hit Planet Ollie in the next couple of years. I'm not so sure I like that idea ...."

Knowsalot reassured Ollie and the audience that the asteroids probably wouldn't hurt anything on the planet.

"Planet Ollie and Planet Nicholas are part of a solar system far, far, far, far, far away from ours," said Ollie, "and they have more than one sun if you can believe it!"

When asked what he thinks is so special about Planet Nicholas, and whether he thinks humans might someday be able to survive the heat and flames there, Nicholas replied, "Of course, humans might be able to get there ... but I'm not so sure about living there. We would need to have special suits to wear and it would take an awfully lot of extra oxygen for us to breath. The fires on Planet Nicholas are using up most of the oxygen."

Dr. Knowsalot prompted, "If the flames are using up the oxygen -- which I suppose they would -- then in order for the fires to keep burning, there must be some contiinuous source of oxygen on Planet Nicholas." Nicholas thoughtfully answered, "That's why we have to study my planet some more so we can discover what's making oxygen there!"

So, tune in to your local news channel tomorrow afternoon, when Nicholas and Oliver Somers-Shaughnessy (or maybe it's Shaughnessy-Somers -- couldn't quite get that out of them) will be presented with Canadian postage stamps with their planets right on the stamps. They're going to be famous and it will be great if someday you can tell your grandchildren that you were around when these two wonderful planets were discovered.