5th May 2008 : Scientists at the University of Konstanz in Germany and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated an ultrafast laser that offers a record combination of high speed, short pulses and high average power. The same NIST group also has shown that this type of laser, when used as a frequency comb—an ultraprecise technique for measuring different colors of light—could boost the sensitivity of astronomical tools searching for other Earthlike planets as much as 100 fold.

10th Apr 2008 : WHAT happened before our universe began? According to two theoretical physicists, if there was a universe before ours then it should have been remarkably similar to this one, with the same basic ingredients and properties. It may even be possible to see a faint picture of our parent universe imprinted on the sky.

6th Mar 2008 : PASADENA, California (AP) -- New observations by a spacecraft suggest Saturn's second-largest moon may be surrounded by rings.

28th Feb 2008 : "Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice," wrote the poet Robert Frost. Astronomers, it turns out, are in the former camp.

18th Feb 2008 : More than half of the sunlike stars in the galaxy could have terrestrial planets with the potential to harbor life, a new study suggests.

15th Feb 2008 : Astronomers said Wednesday that they had found a miniature version of our own solar system 5,000 light-years across the galaxy — the first planetary system that really looks like our own, with outer giant planets and room for smaller inner planets.

5th Feb 2008 : Cosmic flares shot from exploding black holes could provide long-sought proof of extra spatial dimensions, new calculations suggest.

4th Feb 2008 : Supposedly, there's no place like home. But a new study suggests that earthlike planets orbit or are forming around many, if not most, nearby sunlike stars, providing places where life might have gained a foothold.

11th Jan 2008 : Science and religion both make claims about the fundamental workings of the universe. Although these claims are not a priori incompatible (we could imagine being brought to religious belief through scientific investigation), I will argue that in practice they diverge. If we believe that the methods of science can be used to discriminate between fundamental pictures of reality, we are led to a strictly materialist conception of the universe. While the details of modern cosmology are not a necessary part of this argument, they provide interesting clues as to how an ultimate picture may be constructed.

12th Dec 2007 : The Voyager 2 spacecraft has crossed an important space frontier called the termination shock, and in a few years may become the first object made by humans to travel outside the solar system.

31th Oct 2007 : For years, astronomers speculated that a giant, mysterious force lay at the center of the Milky Way, but it wasn't until four years ago that UCLA astronomer Andrea Ghez definitively showed what it was.

13th Oct 2007 : Call it a small step for E.T., a leap for radio astronomy.

13th Sep 2007 : There is new hope that Earth, if not the life on it, might survive an apocalypse five billion years from now.

5th Sep 2007 : Thirty years ago today, the Voyager 1 space probe — a one-ton robotic craft whose long antennas make it look rather like a spider the size of a school bus — was launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on a mission to reconnoiter Jupiter and Saturn.

24th Aug 2007 : Astronomers have stumbled upon a tremendous hole in the universe. That's got them scratching their heads about what's just not there.

3rd Jun 2007 : The search for alien life is yielding weird new worlds at a remarkable rate

3rd Jun 2007 : A massive blast of radiation from space once almost sterilized the Earth

30th Apr 2007 : How soon till we can get to the Goldilocks planet? Don't cash in your frequent flier miles yet.

28th Apr 2007 : In celebration of the 17th anniversary of the launch and deployment of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, a team of astronomers is releasing one of the largest panoramic images ever taken with Hubble's cameras. It is a 50-light-year-wide view of the central region of the Carina Nebula where a maelstrom of star birth - and death - is taking place.

26th Apr 2007 : The most enticing property yet found outside our solar system is about 20 light-years away in the constellation Libra, a team of European astronomers said yesterday.

25th Apr 2007 : WASHINGTON - For the first time astronomers have discovered a planet outside our solar system that is potentially habitable, with Earth-like temperatures, a find researchers described Tuesday as a big step in the search for "life in the universe."

21st Jan 2007 : A great CG animation of the relative sizes of some stars and planets.

1st Jan 2007 : Using VIMOS on ESO's Very Large Telescope, a team of French and Italian astronomers have shown the strong influence the environment exerts on the way galaxies form and evolve.

30th Dec 2006 : Scientists using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have discovered that dark energy is not a new constituent of space, but rather has been present for most of the universe's history.

15th Dec 2006 :