So many of the images we see of outer space are either cold and flat—a planet sphere surrounded by scores of pinpoint stars against the backdrop of black space—or they’re artists’ renderings.
The pictures featured in The Beauty of Space Photography are neither of those.

Carl Sagan — he was an astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist and great popularizer of science. He was also, it turns out, a lifelong smoker of cannabis.

Chris Hadfield has spent the past five months on the ISS. And, if you regularly follow our site, you’ll know that the media-savvy astronaut has engaged earthlings with a steady stream of tweets, a series of educational videos (see below), and the occasional entertaining routine.

If you have kids, you’re going to get the inevitable question: Where did the universe come from? And you’re likely going to take a long pause before trying to present the science of the big bang.

The astronauts aboard the International Space Station work every day on all kinds of experiments, from working with robots to preparing for spacewalks. But when they get a break, they often field questions from school children and adults about life in space.

Like many positive terms, the phrase “big bang” originated as a pejorative. Fred Hoyle coined the term in 1949 as a way of deflating the concept of an expanding universe. It stuck, even after Edwin Hubble showed that 13.7 billion years ago, all of the matter in our massive universe was indeed compacted into “one superdense ball.

This map shows the oldest light in our universe, as detected by the Planck mission. Click on the map for a larger image.
By now the Big Bang theory is widely accepted scientifically. The idea is that the universe began to expand rapidly about 14 billion years ago from a dense, hot state and continues to expand to this day.

Perhaps you noticed? During the past two years, the TED brand has morphed into something new. Once known for staging a couple of high-priced annual conferences, TED has recently launched a series of new products: TEDx conferences for the masses, TED Books, TED Radio, TED ED and Ads Worth Spreading.

Name the three figures, living or dead, with whom you would most like to sit down to dinner. Though perhaps a little tired, the challenge still reveals something worth knowing about the respondent’s personality.

On Friday, the world had its eyes focused on the big asteroid flyby. For weeks, we knew it was coming, and we watched it buzz by with mild curiosity. But, that same day, we were all caught off guard by a ten-ton meteorite that blasted into the Siberian town of Chelyabinsk, injuring 1,200 people and causing considerable structural damage.