Cosmic Journeys

20 jul 2009

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 the origins of the Moon can tell us about our own planet's beginnings.

27 jul 2009

Massive solar eruptions take aim at our high-tech society. 93 million miles away... an angry sun vents its rage. Dark regions, called sunspots, appeared unexpectedly on its surface... a sign of rising tension within. It had been three and a half years since the sun last erupted in fury...at the peak of an 11-year cycle of solar flare-ups.

12 ago 2009

Why some tropical storms erupt into monster hurricanes capable of wrecking coastlines. Can they be predicted? Hurricanes are tropical storms that feed on solar heat captured by the oceans. When conditions are right, a hurricane can release this energy in a fury of wind and rain.

20 ago 2009

From the Cassini spacecraft comes one of the greatest photographic collections. Scientists are using it to uncover a trail of clues pointing to the energy sources and complex chemistry needed to spawn life.

27 set 2009

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, there's evidence of something far more ominous. A breed of black holes that has reached incomprehensible size and destructive power. Just how large, and violent, and strange can they get?

20 out 2009

The mind-blowing answer comes from a theory describing the first micro-moments of our universe. Just as scientists began to make precise measurements of the observable universe, new ideas suggest that our visible patch is an impossibly small portion of the whole.

10 nov 2009

How long will the Universe as we know it survive? The answer depends on whether Stephen Hawking's theory about how black holes decay is right. These strange dense objects are like a clock that tick down to a distant moment when all matter and energy will dissipate into the void.

18 nov 2009

It's the ultimate buddy movie. Pete Conrad and Alan Bean were the second pair of Apollo astronauts to land on the moon. They combined precision with a sense of humor. But it was the rocks they picked up that would define the mission's legacy.

9 dez 2009

Thick dust and blinding starlight have long obscured our vision into the mysterious inner regions of our Milky Way galaxy. And yet, the clues have been piling up that something important, something strange is going on in there. Astronomers tracking stars in the center of the galaxy have found the best proof to date that black holes exist. Now, they are preparing to capture the first direct image of a supermassive black hole.

21 dez 2009

Did Mars long ago develop far enough for life to arise? If so, does anything still live somewhere underground? The search for answers has revealed the forces that long ago doomed the Red Planet.