Ikaros will demonstrate the principle of solar sailing, which has long been touted as a means of moving spacecraft around the Solar System.

BBC: Mini-camera pictures Japan's Ikaros solar sail

By using lasers, NASA is now on the verge of revolutionizing and speeding up delivery of data now dispatched from outer space and all around the solar system, the agency said.

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Without it such a galaxy's outer parts would spin more slowly than the inner ones (just as the outer planets of the solar system move around the sun more slowly than the earth does).

ECONOMIST: The galactic gourmand

"First, this icy 'super-Earth' dominates the region around its star that in our Solar System is populated by the gas-giant planets, Jupiter and Saturn, " he said.

BBC: NEWS | Science/Nature | Planet hunters find 'super-Earth'

Some galaxies contain black holes with billions of times the mass of the sun, occupying a volume no bigger across than the orbit of Neptune around our solar system but extending their influence through a cosmic bubble 30 million light years across.

WSJ: Book Review: Gravity's Engines

"It means we're really in the arena where it's possible to detect all the planets of our Solar System, but around other stars, " he told BBC News.

BBC: Exoplanet Kepler 37b is tiniest yet - smaller than Mercury

Our solar system has been around for 4.6 billion years, and the earliest signs of life on Earth date from about 3.8 billion years ago.

MSN: Alien Earths may be plentiful in our Milky Way galaxy

At a time when rovers are exploring Mars, a satellite is looping around Saturn's rings and a body larger than Pluto was recently found in the far reaches of the solar system, the reader who wants to catch up on developments could have done with a book of more uniform quality.

ECONOMIST: Twirls and swirls from outer space