The Universe: Ancient Mysteries Solved

For most, it's the deadly centerpiece of the film Star Wars. But in truth, real death stars are in the final stage of life before they explode into supernovae.

Without the moon, Earth would be a very different and desolate place today--four hours of sunlight with pitch-black nights, steady 100-mph winds spawning giant hurricanes that last for months, and virtually no complex life forms, much less humans.

Every year, thousands of objects both natural and manmade plummet through our atmosphere and crash into the Earth.

The Universe is full of explosions that both create and destroy. The Chicxulub impact on the Yucatan peninsula, which may have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, was two million times more powerful than the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated.

They are breathtaking, lethal and a constant source of surprise. The stunning rings of Saturn have mesmerized countless scientists over the centuries.

Don't try this at home! In this episode, our experts cook up ten ways you could destroy the earth, including: swallowing it with a microscopic black hole.

They are the one-stop-shopping places for learning all about the nature and variety of stars in the Universe.

From ground-based lasers to telephone-pole sized rods hurtling from space at two miles per second to the far out weapons of the distant future, it's time to 'lock and load' for Space Wars.

On alien planets, they rain from the sky as scalding iron. On distant moons, even at hundreds of degrees below zero, they slosh around in pristine lakes of methane.

They sort of sound like the same phenomenon, but Pulsars and Quasars are very different. Pulsars are tiny--only a few miles across--but they spin as fast as a kitchen blender.

Warp speed, transporters, wormholes and lasers--they are all staples of science fiction books, movies, and TV shows. But the fantastic world of tomorrow is quickly becoming the futuristic world of today.

Ours is a universe of energy, from powerful jets ejected from black holes to the nuclear fury of our Sun. Electric, thermal, kinetic and magnetic energy are just a few that keep our universe balanced.