Cosmic Journeys

Our Milky Way Galaxy is thought to harbor millions of black holes the ultra dense remnants of dead stars But now in the universe far beyond our galaxy theres evidence of something far more ominous A breed of black holes that has reached incomprehensible size and power

Now tens of billions of kilometers from Earth the two Voyager spacecraft are streaking out into the void What will we learn about our galaxy the Universe and ourselves from Voyagers epic journey to the stars

How did the universe begin Where will it end Are there other worlds like Earth This groundbreaking series combs the rubble of exploding stars and dives into gigantic black holes in search of answers What is the search for Earthlike planets telling us about our place in the cosmos Is ours one of countless lifebearing worlds in the galaxy or is it a rare Garden of Eden in a barren universe

Explore one of the deepest mysteries about how our universe came to be  Scientists are mounting new efforts to figure out how matter survived and what happened to its birth twin a mysterious substance known as antimatter

A startling collision in an ancient galaxy slews Earths largest telescopes to a spot in the Hydra constellation Two rapidly spinning neutron stars have violently merged possibly to form a black hole

Hurricanes and typhoons are creatures of tropical seas that sweep up heatladen waters converting it to wind rain and waves Why do a rare few evolve into colossal monsters that leave in their wake a trail of destruction death and despair

Astronomers are probing the highenergy cosmic frontier with a series of key missions Fermi Swift Chandra NuSTAR and Hubble Their goal to find out how the universe works on a fundamental level

A small cadre of scientists is attempting to revolutionize space travel and exploration This actionpacked episode explores a big dream at the moment of its birth taking us along on dramatic balloon flights into colorful geomagnetic storms

Cosmology has been turned on its head by the stunning discovery that the universe is flying apart in all directions at an everincreasing rate The scientists who made this discovery were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics

Mars is a barren rocky planet whose atmosphere is composed mainly of carbon dioxide and dust Did Mars long ago develop far enough for life to arise If so does anything still live anywhere underground Did microcreatures once thrive Is there evidence of fossils Questions abound The search for answers to the question of life has revealed the forces that long ago doomed the Red Planet forever

The Universes immense scales of distance and time cause us to wonder how far it stretches and where it ends Dating back 137 billion years its radius would be the distance a beam of light traveled in that time In fact though its much bigger than that How it got so large so fast was a deep mystery not resolved till a theory arose describing the first micromoments of our Universe

The United States Japan India China Russia and even private companies are planning to send spacecraft to explore the Moon in the near future These missions are looking for resources that may one day allow humans to settle permanently in space The main resource for human sustenance is water which is found in large quantities in the form of ice at the bottom of craters in the lunar poles

Explore the challenges of interstellar flight and the technological possibilities that may one day send us on a long voyage out into the galaxy What imperatives will define the mission exploration and science or a struggle to survive

Scientists have been reconstructing the history of the Moon by scouring its surface mapping its mountains and craters and probing its interior Find out what they are learning about our own planets beginnings

Massive solar eruptions take aim at our hightech society Explore events such as the solar storms of Halloween 2003 and 1859 and dive into the Sun to find out what causes our star to turn angry These storms can create intense currents in Earths magnetosphere and cause the ionosphere and upper thermosphere to heat up They can disrupt radio signals and navigation systems and harm power grids

From the fires of our suns birth twin planets emerged Nature draped one world in the greens and blues of life while enveloping Venus in acid clouds high heat and volcanic flows Why did Venus take such a disastrous turn

From a distance our galaxy would look like a flat spiral some 100000 light years across with pockets of gas clouds of dust and about 400 billion stars rotating around the galaxys center Thick dust and blinding starlight have long obscured our vision into the mysterious inner regions of the galactic center And yet the clues have been piling up that something important something strange is going on

All across the immense reaches of time and space energy is being exchanged transferred released in a great cosmic pinball game we call our universe Here is a progression of energy events from the smallest and coldest to the hottest and most powerful