"Get your pens"

"...[and] start rewriting the textbooks today," said Brown, a professor of planetary science at the California Institute of Technology who has hunted for such an object for more than five years.

Did you hear? We've discovered a new planet that is beyond the orbit of Pluto. It's "the first planet discovered in our solar system since astronomer Clyde Tombaugh found Pluto in 1930." Very cool. All it needs now is a more melodious name than 2003UB313. What's even more interesting though is that there are apparently a lot more celestial bodies that are being found in the Kuiper Belt.

Last year Brown's group found Sedna, an object about three-fourths the size of Pluto and whose irregular orbit extends far beyond that of 2003UB313.

On Thursday, astronomers in Spain announced the discovery of another large Kuiper Belt object, which Brown's group had tracked as well. Brown said Friday that his team's observations indicate that world is about the same size as Sedna.

This should give you an idea of how much we have left to discover just in the area around our solar system (not to mention Alpha Centauri and other stars "close" to our sun). Rock on.