Audio Podcasts

During the infancy of our solar system, when our planets had not yet settled down into their orbits, this was a dangerous place to live. The planets wobbled and jostled around left over asteroids, comets and other debris floating in between their orbits, causing frequent collisions throughout our solar system.

Something appears to be pushing around a large clump of material that is in orbit of this star, and it's moving fast enough to make a difference in observations along a five month period.

From recent discoveries made by two of NASA's Great Observatories comes new insight into how stars are created. Large nebula's scattered all around our galaxy, act as incubators for newborn stars to ignite and grow.

At the center of our Milky Way galaxy is an area previously unseen by astronomers. Shrouded by clouds of swirling dusts and gases, before now our astronomers could only guess at what might lie behind this thick veil.

It's life, Jim, but not as we know it! Well, at least the building blocks of life. A new study from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope hints that planets around stars cooler than our sun might possess a different mix of potentially life-forming chemicals.

Talk about hot flashes! A planet that heats up to extreme temperatures in a matter of hours before quickly cooling back down.

The new record-holder for dimmest known star-like object in the universe goes to twin brown dwarfs, each of which shines feebly with only one millionth the light of our sun.

The star Epsilon Eridani is even stranger than fiction. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has shown it has two asteroid belts.

Water is being blasted to pieces by a young star's laser-like jets, according to new observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The discovery provides a better understanding of how water -- an essential ingredient for life as we know it -- is processed in emerging solar systems.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope continues to surprise astronomers. On its fifth anniversary, we recap some of this Great Observatory's biggest discoveries.

A contender for the title of brightest star in our Milky Way galaxy has been unearthed in the dusty metropolis of the galaxy's center.

As a result of a new Spitzer Space Telescope study, two of our own Milky Way Galaxy's spiral arms have gone away.

Spitzer isn't the only infrared mission. Infrared images from another of NASA's robotic missions help us understand mysterious features on the surface of Mars.

Diamonds may be rare on Earth, but surprisingly common in space -- and new research shows that the infrared eyes of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope are perfect for finding them.

Terrestrial planets might form around many, if not most, of the nearby sun-like stars in our galaxy. These new results suggest that worlds with potential for life might be more common than we thought.

Young city dwellers on Earth aren't the only ones rushing to suburbia to start families. New observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope suggest that galaxies also prefer to breed stars in the cosmic suburbs.

New observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope suggest that moons like Earth's -- that formed out of tremendous collisions -- are uncommon in the universe, arising at most in only 5 to 10 percent of planetary systems.

A big galaxy, spotted stealing gas from a passing galaxy about half its size, was caught red-handed by the Spitzer Space Telescope.

The dust that makes everything around us -- and even ourselves -- may have come from black holes.