Planets scaled to sit on your desk, hold in your hand or collect in jar, these micro-wonders let you collect constellations, moons, even entire solar systems.

Made by the Little Planet Factory in London, these 3D-printed models come with various degrees of detail, from real (raised ridges for Earthen land forms) to speculative (terraformed versions of Mars).

Collectors can choose entire sets and series that work in tandem, illustrating just how big Jupiter is and how small our own Terra can be, or pick individual bodies, like a larger-sized version of the moon.

Their creations get particularly inventive when they enter Russian doll territory, allowing you to select versions inside other versions, like Venus with and without its surrounding gas clouds (open the shell to get the latter).

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Hyperion is a coastal redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) in Northern California,  measured at 379 feet, making it the tallest known living tree on the planet, but its location is a secret.

Discovered in 2006, one might expect to find this monumental tree prominently marked on a map, but, in fact, its spot in the Redwood National and State Parks system is concealed for its protection.

The worry goes: people would not only pose a potential threat to the tree, but in getting to it would disturb the surrounding ecosystem as well. So unless you are a researcher, naturalist, park ranger of elite photographer, you may have to satisfy yourself with pictures and speculation of this unique world wonder.

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Many planetary fans were disappointed when Pluto was downgraded to the status of “dwarf planet,” but a recent discovery shows there was another and much more mysterious ninth planet waiting in the wings all along, dubbed, for now, simply: Planet X.

“During the solar system’s infancy 4.5 billion years ago,” say astronomers, “the giant planet was knocked out of the planet-forming region near the sun. Slowed down by gas, the planet settled into a distant elliptical orbit, where it still lurks today.”

Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena put forward strong evidence for the existence of this yet-unseen planet, which had been posited previously but insufficiently supported by facts (like gravitational effects and other byproducts of its periodic passing). On curious byproduct of the discovery is that the solar system is much bigger than we imagine, stretched out by the wide-ranging orbit of this last piece of the Sol planetary puzzle.

“Batygin and Brown inferred its presence from the peculiar clustering of six previously known objects that orbit beyond Neptune. They say there’s only a 0.007% chance, or about one in 15,000, that the clustering could be a coincidence. Instead, they say, a planet with the mass of 10 Earths has shepherded the six objects into their strange elliptical orbits, tilted out of the plane of the solar system.” Meanwhile, astronomers are tilting their telescopes to try and catch a peek of this mystery planet, and some will no doubt remain skeptical until they can see it with their own eyes.

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The idea of oceans on other celestial bodies orbiting our sun was once very much a thing of mystery, and a big deal in the case of Mars, but we have since discovered numerous surprising bodies of water on dwarf planets and planetary moons.

Water, particularly in liquid form, is critical to life as we know it, making such discoveries by probes and other robotic explorers all the more important to humanity. A NASA chief scientist was recently so bold as to claim the following at a conference: “I believe we are going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth in the next decade and definitive evidence in the next 10 to 20 years.”

Nor are extreme conditions necessarily life-prohibitive: “life, at least the simplest forms, may survive in more environments than once believed. Indeed, even on Earth, life is ubiquitous, from scalding volcanic vents to frozen wastes. And we may not, as it turns out, need to travel light years to find extraterrestrial oceans or observe our first alien life forms. The proverbial backyard may suffice.” Even at great distances from our planet, on cold spheres like Europa, liquid water can be found thanks to heat energy and friction. Whether we will find more than building blocks and elementary life within (or beyond) our star is hard to say, but news of known extraterrestrial life may indeed not be too far away.

The post Alien Waters: 9 Extraterrestrial Oceans in Our Solar System first appeared on Gajitz.