The Universe: Ancient Mysteries Solved

There are billions of stars in the Universe, but one alone dominates our celestial neighborhood, the Sun. It's so large that within its boundaries you could fit one million Earths.

It's home to the largest volcano in the Solar System...and a colossal, boulder-strewn valley that would make the Grand Canyon look like a streambed.

The Earth has become a dangerous place to live in the Universe. It's only a matter of time before a cosmic force will annihilate the planet.

Half a billion miles from earth exists a mini solar system of over 60 moons rotating around a powerful planet of gas. It's flowing colors and spots hold strange beauty, but contain violent storms and jet streams.

It's so close...yet so far away. For thousands of years, mankind has found comfort in its presence. It's been a lantern for nighttime travelers...a timekeeper for farmers...and a location finder for sailors at sea.

Take a high performance ride through the formation of the third planet from the Sun, Earth. A survivor of one of the most violent "neighborhoods" in the universe, learn how earth was created and discover what creatures hold clues to how life began.

Scorched by their proximity to the sun, Mercury and Venus are hostile worlds; one gouged with craters from cosmic collisions and the other a vortex of sulfur, carbon dioxide and acid rain.

Are the rings of Saturn a real celestial phenomenon or merely a cosmic Illusion? Technology allows the experts to get closer to the furthest planet visible to the naked eye. Old questions are answered and new ones arise.

To know our place in the universe take a look far, far away to the realm of Alien Galaxies. Our galaxy is one of hundreds of billions in the universe. The Milky Way consists of more than a billion stars, our sun being only one of them.

Ignited by the power of the atom, burning with light, heat and wrath, stars are anything but peaceful. They collide, devour each other, and explode in enormous supernovas--the biggest explosions in the Universe.

New discoveries regarding the Outer Planets are creating a fundamental rethinking of our solar system. Uranus is a toxic combination of hydrogen, helium and methane.

Take a tour of the cosmic hot zones--black holes, galaxy mergers, gamma ray bursts and magnetars. Super massive black holes can literally "lasso" the Earth out of the solar system.

In a galaxy filled with a billion stars, in a universe filled with a hundred billion galaxies--are we alone? SETI--the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence--is a privately funded project using radio telescopes.

It all began inside a violent, blinding explosion that threw everything into chaos. Long after, our greatest thinkers have peered into that chaos in search of order, logic and the answers to where we began.