Asad112209

The study of extreme physics brought us the bomb. It has taken us inside the violent death of a star. Now, it has brought us face to face with the most destructive force in Nature: a supermassive black hole. How large, how powerful, can these monsters get? What can they tell us about the extremes of time and space?

Some believe Mars is calling humanity to our next home. But the real “red planet” is a trickster, strikingly beautiful yet sweetly sinister. Even as a growing armada of instruments arrives, this small cold world continues to conceal its secrets. Settlers beware; Mars may not be what you imagine. The technological means to cross space and bring this small world back to life is just now coming within our grasp. But Mars is likely to change Humanity as much as we change it.

Astronomers have detected more than 5000 planets orbiting other stars. New space telescopes – exploiting aggressive new technologies and backed by Artificial Intelligence, could vastly expand this bounty. Are any of these alien worlds “alive”? Are living creatures common in the cosmos? These are among the most challenging questions science has ever faced. The answers may be found in the early Universe. But because space itself is relentlessly expanding, the light from those early times has been stretching – shifting further and further into the red part of the spectrum. To probe events that far back in time, astronomers must search with sensitive infrared detectors. Enter the Webb Telescope, with its ability to discern details only a 50 million years after “the beginning of time,” along with the details of alien atmospheres in the neighborhood of our Sun.

The universe has long captivated us with its immense scales of distance and time. Many astronomers today have come to believe that what we can see represents only a small fraction of all there is. They are pioneering bold new theories that describe a cosmic landscape that extends far beyond the limits of our vision. What lies beyond the streams of galaxies that extend as far as our telescopes can see? Where does it all end? How do we fit within it?

Our galaxy is made up of some four hundred billion stars and at least a hundred billion planets. How many are like Earth, with an atmosphere, flowing water, complex geology, and abundant life? Astronomers are seeking answers in countless photons racing past the Earth and in bold new theories about how planets form and evolve. What they are finding has only sharpened one of the oldest debates in science: Is biology a powerful and inevitable byproduct of cosmic evolution? Or is it rare, in a galaxy shaped by violence and mayhem?

When natural disasters threaten, we turn to science and technology to warn us… to seek shelter or get out of the way. But can they face the ultimate threat: speeding projectiles from the depths of space? Cutting-edge space missions are underway to deflect and destroy space objects that threaten to rock our world. Can they save the planet from a killer asteroid?

All eyes are on the images and data streaming in from the James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. This engineering marvel leads a new generation of observatories that are now probing the deepest regions of space for clues to an extraordinary chain of events at the brink of the Cosmic Dawn.