The Universe as we know it is condemned to death. Space, matter and even time will one day cease to exist and there's nothing we can do about it. Harsh realities are revealed about the future of our Universe; it may collapse and burn or it might be gripped by a galactic ice age. Either of these scenarios might be a long way off. However, our Universe could suddenly be destroyed by a "random quantum fluctuation", a bubble of destruction that can obliterate the entire cosmos in the blink of an eye. No matter how it ends, life in our Universe is doomed.

In space travel there is a saying that the first 50 miles and the last 50 miles are the most dangerous. Explore the controlled explosion of launch, the fiery crucible of re-entry and everything in between. See how a single spark inside a spacecraft or a micrometeoroid less than an inch wide hitting a space station can turn a routine mission into a lethal nightmare. As the missions become longer, venturing to Mars and beyond, the potential disasters will only become bigger. What would happen if a spacecraft ventured too close to a black hole or was hit by a gamma ray burst?

Some of the world's leading physicists believe they have found startling new evidence showing the existence of universes other than our own. One possibility is that the universe is so vast that an exact replica of our solar system, our planet and ourselves exists many times over. These Doppelganger Universes exist within our own Universe; in what scientist now call "The Multiverse." If proof is found it will change our lives, our minds, our planet, our science and our universe.

According to the laws of physics we can never travel faster than the speed of light...or can we? Learn all about light speed, the ultimate constant in the universe.

The great apes which include chimps, orangutans, gorillas and bonobos, seem to have rich emotional lives similar to our own. But just how smart are these animals? A new generation of investigators are converging on an explanation for why the non-human great apes never made the breakthrough into an accelerating human-style culture that builds on the achievements of previous generations.

While scientists have previously theorised about a “Big Crunch” where the universe retracts back to its original size, the discovery of Dark Matter and Dark Energy has placed that hypothesis on the backburner. Some astronomers now believe that if Dark Matter offsets Dark Energy then as the universe slowly expands, stars will gradually fade, running out of fuel and leading to a dark, cold and lifeless universe. Others hypothesise a much more violent end where Dark Energy continues to expand the universe at a greater and greater speed. Stronger than gravity, Dark Energy would pull apart everything down to the fundamental particles – the universe’s very fibres. While the universe’s end may be 50 billion years away, great leaps in science will continue to alter how we believe the universe was formed – and how it will end.