As long as humankind has looked up at the sky, we’ve questioned whether there are others out there like us. Mathematics enabled us to get into space, but statistics point to a…
The Solar System took billions of years to evolve into the stable arrangement of planets and other celestial bodies orbiting our Sun. And it has billions of years ahead of it.
The Space Race of the mid-20th century grew out of the ideological Cold War between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. The Soviets surprised the world with Sputnik, the first satellite…
Space between star systems and galaxies is immense and, in some places, nearly empty. But, does interstellar space meet the definition of a “perfect vacuum”? The quirks of quantum…
The James Webb Space Telescope has produced paradigm-shattering evidence about the universe from just 300 million years after the Big Bang. Though some are predicting the end of…
Perhaps sooner than many believe, human beings will begin colonizing the Moon, Mars, asteroids, and worlds beyond. We will take with us our human traits and needs – some geared…
One of the axioms for the search for life beyond the Earth has been “follow the water.” Perhaps scientists should broaden that to include frozen water, or ice, as recent…
In 2022, history was made when an image of the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy was released. Even more momentous, the discovery confirmed the…
The night’s sky has always twinkled with stars, planets, and the occasional comet. Since they came into view, Jupiter’s moons have changed our understanding of the Solar System…
Soon, astronauts will return to the Moon, and then on to Mars. In the future, humans may travel farther still to an exoplanet beyond our Solar System. The challenges are daunting,…
For decades, scientists have been searching systematically for worlds beyond our own where the essential building blocks of life are present. Now, they’ve found one: a frigid moon…
Gravitational time dilation is a mind-blowing phenomenon that occurs when the force of gravity influences the passage of time. The effect has been measured in experiments and has…
Cutting-edge technologies are providing scientists with a deepening understanding of the universe. A new MagellanTV original series brings these advances to light.
Can you imagine a world without GPS, handheld electronics, and services like online banking and online dating? Our current tech-heavy world is heavily dependent on these advances…
The James Webb Space Telescope launched at the end of 2021 and, since it reached its target destination, has graced observers on Earth with amazing images of objects from the…
NASA revolutionized the trajectory of space exploration through its Apollo program in the 1960s and 1970s. Over four and a half years they sent a dozen men to the Moon, and…
There are, unfortunately, numerous extinction-level threats to Earth, but one for which we’re conspicuously unprepared is impact by an asteroid. However, many scientists are…
Saturn was visible to our ancestors, but its rings weren’t seen until Galileo took a look. The rings are made from remnants of moons, asteroids, and comets. Now, we wonder why it…
Is Pluto a planet? Astronomers agreed in 2006 to rename it a “dwarf planet.” But planetary scientists disagree. They say its status as a planet should never have been changed.…
Are we alone in the Universe? Many people wonder if we’ll ever encounter an intelligence from beyond our planet. Space science organizations are searching our galaxy to uncover…
Theoretical physicist Jim Al-Khalili, host of dozens of fascinating and informative documentaries, sits down for an interview with MagellanTV to discuss his new series on…
As science learned more about Mars, it became an imagined realm of engineering feats made by a civilization perhaps advanced enough to attack and colonize Earth. Now humans are…
Things are going wrong in space and on Earth. The Arecibo radio telescope imploded on itself. The Hubble Space Telescope, in orbit, stopped functioning for a month. And we’re all…
Asteroids loom large in our imagination: An encounter with one could wipe out all life. They hold clues to the origins of our Solar System, yet space speculators seek to exploit…
Black holes were once thought of as an oddity arising out of Einstein’s relativity. Now they play major roles in movies like Interstellar. Among their magical properties is the…
Astrophysicists have laid out ages that define the duration of our universe, from the opening moments of the Big Bang through our current era to the endpoint of everything, when…
Amazing discoveries about the universe arrive almost daily. But it took centuries of astronomical observation, extensive data collection, and constant repair of faulty models of…
As we look ahead to NASA’s return to the Moon, it’s a good time to consider how far we’ve come. An earlier generation of rocket scientists made possible humankind's first giant…
For at least the first 200 million years of its existence, the planet Venus thrived, not unlike its nearest neighbor, Earth. But then factors combined to destroy Venus’s chances…
Are we in the midst of a new “Space Race”? It certainly seems so from all the international activity in areas such as exploration, proposed industrialization, even militarization.…
For some astronauts space flight has been just one planet in their orbit of accomplishments. Let’s learn about five women astronauts who set their sights on breaking boundaries…
More than three decades ago, the United States and the U.S.S.R. nearly came to blows over a disabled Soviet space station called Salyut-7. Or did they?
How did the Solar System form, and how did Earth become the only planet where life has developed? In a story perhaps best experienced through a documentary film, we see that a…
While space travel seems out of this world, it comes with a cost. Each mission has physical and psychological effects on astronauts. As we try to push further into space, it’s…
Who owns the Moon? Technically no one – but several private companies and individuals have had other ideas. As interest in the Moon’s profit potential grows, important questions…
NASA is planning a return to crewed missions and it’s starting out with a big bang – landing astronauts on the surface of the Moon by 2024. This effort is supported by an enhanced…
Apollo’s New Moon writer/director David Sky Brody discusses aspects of this MagellanTV original film, and the importance of the Apollo missions in revolutionizing knowledge about…
Working on the Moon was no walk in the park for the Apollo astronauts. From bulky space suits to toxic space dust, the challenges were many. But the astronauts overcame the…
Galileo is recognized as the first man to use a telescope to gaze at the stars and planets. But since then, his hand-constructed telescope and its advances have only made it more…
Humans appear to be on the verge of setting out in large numbers into space on commercial flights. Space visionaries are promoting these journeys as essential next steps for the…
Have you met Jim al-Khalili? (You’re about to.) He is a UK-based theoretical physicist and also a talented interpreter of technical science for people like us – sort of a…
Fifty years ago, Stanley Kubrick released his film 2001: A Space Odyssey, a classic tale of an epic journey to Jupiter. Let’s take a look back at Kubrick’s masterpiece. From…
Find out how Apollo 11 and the manned moon missions that followed shaped the ongoing debate over moon formation theories, and how the first man to step on the moon played a part…
No less a thinker than the late Stephen Hawking sought to warn us that our time is running out on planet Earth. Humankind’s continued existence requires us to prepare for mass…
A Caltech team is on the hunt for hidden planets. Building on research first published in 2016, they amassed enough unsexy but compelling evidence to book time at the Subaru…
The Juno probe has revealed Jupiter's majestic weather patterns in amazing detail. But are Jupiter's colors really that dynamic? It turns out, no. But just because these images…
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