Astronomy

The Sun is a endless churning cauldron of nuclear reactions and our planet is at its mercy. Revealing its inner workings was once mission impossible, but not any more. We've recruited a fleet of spacecraft that monitor the Sun 24 hours a day, under close surveillance. We just might have what it takes to defend our planet.

They're the cooling corpses of stars like our sun, but new research proves white dwarfs are one of the driving forces of our universe. And they can tell us literally about the nature of the cosmos itself. Have scientists finally discovered how these small stars could be such massive galactic players?

Our universe is at war. The universe is a very violent and deadly place. Entire galaxies fight to the death. Only the strongest survive. If a galaxy wants to stay alive, it has to feed on other galaxies. Our own galaxy also fights for survival. These battles are how galaxies live, grow, and die. These collisions got us to where we are today, and they're going to determine the future of the universe.

There's a killer lurking in our galaxy, a star ready to explode into a supernova. Seen from Earth, a supernova in the Milky Wave would have a terrible beauty. But for us, it could be fatal. In a few seconds, it can release as much energy as the sun will over its entire lifetime. It could be anywhere. It is nearly impossible to predict where and when the next supernova will happen. The hunt is on to find the next supernova before it finds us.

Our world, our solar system, our universe, none of it would exist without a ghostly particle called the neutrino. They are our early warning system whenever there's trouble in the universe. Neutrinos trigger star-killing explosions, supernovas. Neutrinos can answer so many questions, from why do we exist to how was the universe created. Neutrinos can be the very reason that we exist at all. The more we understand these elusive particles, the more we can gain insight into how the universe works.

Supermassive black holes are the engines that power our universe and one of the major players in the evolution of galaxies. They're in fact the driving force at the heart of nearly every galaxy in the cosmos. Now, a new mystery has emerged about the oldest supermassive black holes. We see supermassive black holes in the very early universe. And we don't understand how they grew so large so quickly. We have clues about their formation but, can we solve the mystery of this supermassive growth spurt?