There are probably more than a million planets in the universe for every single grain of sand on Earth. That’s a lot of planets. My guess is that there probably is life elsewhere in the Universe.
The good thing about space is that – even though it has lots of dangerous stuff floating in it, and lots of exploding stars – it’s so big and empty that it almost doesn’t matter.
NASA/CXC/U.Texas
Brad Carter, University of Southern Queensland and Jake Clark, University of Southern Queensland
There are lots of places where it’s much, much hotter than the Sun. And the amazing thing is that this heat also makes new atoms - tiny particles that have made their way long ago from stars to us.
Imagine This is a co-production between ABC KIDS listen and The Conversation, based on The Conversation’s Curious Kids article series. Season two has launched!
Sunanda Creagh, The Conversation and Molly Glassey, The Conversation
These school holidays, check out the podcast Imagine This, a co-production between ABC KIDS listen and The Conversation. And comb through our Curious Kids series.
Andrew Pontzen, Fabio Governato/Wikimedia Commons.
Our brain cells do look a lot like a map of the universe – but that doesn’t mean they’re the same thing.
Nervous about how southern television viewers would react, NBC executives closely monitored the filming of the kiss between Nichelle Nichols and William Shatner.
U.S. Air Force
The career arc of Nichelle Nichols – the first black woman to have a continuing co-starring role on TV – shows how diverse casting can have as much of an impact off the screen as it does on it.
Anish Kapoor made “Cloud Gate”, a giant bean-shaped mirror in Chicago. Visitors play with the light in the city and its surroundings, where our future lays.
The other galaxies are there, but they are hiding a very long way away.
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We are in the Milky Way. If you travelled on an extremely fast spaceship for more than two million years, you would reach our neighbour, the Andromeda galaxy. All other galaxies are even further away.
Space mining has the potential to provide a greater supply of resources either for being exploited locally for construction or being sent back to earth.
A US Delta IV rocket lifts off.
United Launch Alliance/AFSPC
The pull created by a black hole is so strong that if you get too close to one – even if you are travelling away from it at the fastest speed it is possible to go – you will never be able escape.
The existence of wormholes is not forbidden by our current theories of the universe. So we can say that they do exist in theory.
Marcella Cheng/The Conversation NY-BD-CC
A wormhole is like a tunnel connecting two places in space. They would be incredibly useful and are great for science-fiction stories.
The problem is we haven’t found any evidence of them existing.
What could a ‘relativistic camera’ capture on the way to Alpha Centauri?
ESA/NASA
An astronomer suggests an idea to piggyback on the ambitious Breakthrough Starshot project that aims to send nano spacecraft to Alpha Centauri at a major fraction of the speed of light.
From moon landing to space arms race.
NASA/Neil Armstrong