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On February 6, 2018, SpaceX successfully launched a heavy-lift rocket called Falcon Heavy, making it " the world's most powerful booster since NASA's Saturn V." For dummy payload, a Tesla Roadster belonging to SpaceX founder and Tesla co-founder Elon Musk was launched into space, too. In the driver's seat sat a mannequin dressed in a SpaceX spacesuit.

The historic test flight has been captured in a video montage created by Westworld creator Jonathan Nolan and set to David Bowie's song Life on Mars? You can also catch a glimpse of the third booster as it crashes near the drone ship on which it was aiming to land.

When Falcon Heavy lifted off, it became the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two. With the ability to lift into orbit nearly 64 metric tons (141,000 lb)-a mass greater than a 737 jetliner loaded with passengers, crew, luggage and fuel-Falcon Heavy can lift more than twice the payload of the next closest operational vehicle, the Delta IV Heavy, at one-third the cost.

Following liftoff, the two side boosters separated from the center core and returned to landing site for future reuse.

Falcon Heavy put a Tesla Roadster and its passenger, Starman, into orbit around the sun. At max velocity Starman and the Roadster will travel 11 km/s (7mi/s) and travel 400 million km (250 million mi) from Earth.

The roadster was live streamed in space after launch:

Next: SpaceX's Falcon 9 crashes & landings, SpaceX's Grasshopper hover and landing, and Falcon 9 falls back to Earth to The Blue Danube.

Bonus: The Chemistry of Rockets: How do rockets work?

via Petapixel.

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Falcon Heavy & Starman, a montage of SpaceX's historic test flight | The Kid Should See This

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On February 6, 2018, SpaceX successfully launched a heavy-lift rocket called Falcon Heavy, making it " the world's most powerful booster since NASA's Saturn V." For dummy payload, a Tesla Roadster belonging to SpaceX founder and Tesla co-founder Elon Musk was launched into space, too.

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10...9...8...7...6...5...4...3...2...1...blast off! Today Wonderopolis is leaving Earth and heading for space.

Growing up in today's world, it can be hard to imagine a time when outer space was a true mystery. You already know men have walked on the Moon. The International Space Station orbits Earth and sends back all sorts of information.

The Hubble telescope travels throughout the solar system, sending amazing pictures back to Earth. The Mars Rover is exploring the surface of Mars and helping scientists learn new things every day.

Way back in the day, though, outer space was an unexplored . The people of Earth could only look up at the sky and WONDER about what was up there.

All that changed on April 12, 1961. That day, Russian Yuri Gagarin became the first human being in space. In the Russian Vostok 1 spacecraft, he made his historic 108-minute around Earth - a place no man had gone before.

Gagarin's accomplishment set off a competition between the United States and the Soviet Union known as the "space race." The countries sought to outdo each other to accomplish newer and more daring in space. For example, Alan Shepard became the first American in space less than a month after Gagarin.

An even greater was reached a few years later. On July 21, 1969, American Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the Moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission. Upon stepping onto the surface of the Moon, Armstrong spoke these famous words: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

Gagarin and Armstrong's groundbreaking space travels paved the way for what was to come. From space shuttle flights to manned space stations orbiting the Earth, we now know much more about the world beyond Earth's atmosphere than would've ever been possible without these pioneers!

Today, scientists tend to use modern technology in the form of unmanned space rovers and larger and larger telescopes to explore the outer reaches of space. Manned missions are becoming more and more scarce. Would you like to be on the cutting edge of future astronomical discoveries? If so, you might want to pursue a career in a field such as science, technology, engineering or mathematics. You never know when your name might be attached to the next spacecraft that explores beyond Mars into the outer reaches of our solar system!

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10...9...8...7...6...5...4...3...2...1...blast off! Today Wonderopolis is leaving Earth and heading for space. Growing up in today's world, it can be hard to imagine a time when outer space was a true mystery. You already know men have walked on the Moon. The International Space Station orbits Earth and sends back all sorts of information.

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Astronomers say a major announcement is on the way based on findings from the international Event Horizon Telescope project, which experts believe could be the first-ever photographs to show the surroundings of a black hole. On Wednesday, April 10, the Event Horizon Telescope team will be holding multiple press conferences around the world to announce a "groundbreaking result" in their study of black hole environments.

The Event Horizon Telescope is an international collaboration that aims to capture images of black hole areas by linking up various radio dishes from around the world that together create a virtual telescope roughly the size of planet Earth. The project began capturing data in 2006.

Scientists from the U.S., France, and the Netherlands will be making their announcement Wednesday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C, while related press conferences will occur simultaneously in Brussels, Santiago, Shanghai, Taipei, and Tokyo.

By creating a massive virtual telescope, the Event Horizon Telescope project aims to generate enough magnifying power to bring black hole environments into focus, allowing for the study of their characteristics. Because black holes do not emit light, they cannot be seen and are technically invisible. Instead, the Event Horizon Telescope looks to study areas surrounding a black hole, namely the gas which radiates around it due to its intensely strong gravity pull, in an attempt to capture images of its general dynamics.

Black holes are regions within the fabric of outer space that have such strong gravitational pulls that nothing, whether it be mass particles or light waves, can escape from it. The point within the black hole which nothing can escape from is called its event horizon. Scientists believe black holes form out of the remains of recently collapsed stars, which pull in all mass and light from its surrounding areas to grow bigger, and that supermassive black holes form the center of most galaxies, creating gravitational forces that link the various stars together.

The size of any black hole is always proportionate to its mass, so some may only be a few times the mass of our sun, which are called stellar black holes, while others are millions or billions of times the mass of the sun - supermassive black holes believed to anchor the constellations of galaxies.

The Event Horizon Telescope project has pinpointed two supermassive black holes to study: Sgr A*, which lays at the heart of our Milky Way galaxy, and M87, a giant elliptical galaxy located in the constellation Virgo.

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Scientists to announce "groundbreaking result" in black hole telescope project

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Astronomers say a major announcement is on the way based on findings from the international Event Horizon Telescope project, which experts believe could be the first-ever photographs to show the surroundings of a black hole. On Wednesday, April 10, the Event Horizon Telescope team will be holding multiple press conferences around the world to announce a "groundbreaking result" in their study of black hole environments.

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A first-ever image of the black hole at the heart of our galaxy is expected to be released Wednesday - giving astrophysicists hope that visual evidence of Albert Einstein's Theory of General Relativity might be at hand.

The Event Horizon Telescope project - an international array of telescopes aligned with the specific purpose of capturing an image of the "supermassive" Sagittarius A* black hole - is expected to make the announcement and release the image April 10 in Brussels. A press release is touting "a groundbreaking result from the EHT." The science press is interpreting that to mean the long-awaited image of a black hole.

"I never thought I'd see this in my lifetime," said Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge. "We're seeing the most extreme conditions in nature. A place where space and time are torn apart. It's almost a mythical region."

McDowell said the expectation is that there will be evidence that light bends the closer it gets to a black hole.

"If you see those features, it is proof that Einstein is right again in a very slam dunk kind of way," McDowell said. "It's a mic drop for Einstein's Theory of General Relativity."

"It's a huge deal," McDowell said. "We'll be seeing where the action is happening."

Black holes are the theorized - but never seen - objects at the center of galaxies, so dense that not even light can escape, which makes them invisible.

The "event horizon" is the last point at which light, dust and other debris can be observed before it is sucked into the black hole, and that is what the EHT telescope array has been aimed at - possibly showing the theorized bending of light that would provide visual proof of relativity.

Sciencealert.com wrote: "For years, the Event Horizon Telescope has been staring into the heart of the Milky Way, trying to obtain a photo of the location of Sagittarius A*, our galaxy's central supermassive black hole ... Telescopes around the world turned their combined might to the task, generating so much data that the only way to transport it all was on hard disks sent on planes. And then researchers had to sort through and analyse those data."

An Astronomy.com article noted: "Images of black holes have been circulating for years ... All of those pictures are artistic representations based, sometimes loosely, on theories about what physics tells us a black hole should look like. So, we have a pretty good idea of what a black hole might look like. The reality, however, is that we don't actually have any confirmation."

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Scientists await first black hole image, expected Wednesday

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A first-ever image of the black hole at the heart of our galaxy is expected to be released Wednesday - giving astrophysicists hope that visual evidence of Albert Einstein's Theory of General Relativity might be at hand. The Event Horizon Telescope project - an international array of telescopes aligned with the specific purpose of capturing [...]

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After the Moon in 2024, NASA wants to reach Mars by 2033

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NASA has made it clear they want astronauts back on the Moon in 2024, and now, they are zeroing in on the Red Planet-the US space agency confirmed that it wants humans to reach Mars by 2033.

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Where is the picture taking place? How long did it take to get there?

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is it on space?
why is there a camera?

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Does mars have 0 gravity, if not how does it stay? Mars is cold, why doesn't the metal crack?

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1. Is there a giant camera on the robot?
2. What planet are they on?
3. Is it a remote control robot?
4. What is it? Is it a robot?

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1. was it made of a engine or a battery that has programs or a remote control?

2. what planet is it on?

3. is the image fake?

4. how did they take a picture?

5. how big was this rover?

6. what is the name of the rover?

7. why is the rover there?

8. is there more rovers?

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Is the rover on Mars?
Is this 3D or 4D?
it is not a photo so is this what people think it would look like?

# data[].attributes.body
why does it have six wheels?
Is that a real image or CGI?
why is their nothing covering all the pipes and screws?
How do sunsets work on mars, how do they lok

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what planet is the rover on?
how did it get there?
why is the rover not protected?
If it is a real picture how did they get 2 rovers on that planet?

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Is this a real picture from space?

What is that robot thing doing there?

What planet is it on?

Is the picture animated?

# data[].attributes.body
What type of  camera is it ?
How big is the camera?
How long did it take to get the camera where it is?
How long did it take to make the camera?

# data[].attributes.body
Where is the picture taking place?

Is  it a space rover?

How did they make  the machine?

Is the picture on Mars?

How is it taking these pictures and where on the machine?

What is the level gravity on this plant?

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Is that rover something, something?

Was there some kind of liquid to make the rocks roundish?

What planet is this?

Is this a photo or animation?

Is this a photoshop  photo?

Does this photo take place on mars?

Who created this photo?

What is the volume or area of this space??

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Why is the ground full of rocks?How come it is not a flat surface

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josh-what are those little things on the top of the rover?

# data[].attributes.body
Is that on mars ?
Is that a robot that takes pictures?
How did they get it up there?
When did it get there?

# data[].attributes.body
what planet is it on?

# data[].attributes.body
Is it on mars?

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this is the first photo of a black hole - cnn

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In April 2017, scientists used a global network of telescopes to see and capture the first-ever picture of a black hole, according to an announcement by researchers at the National Science Foundation Wednesday morning. This is the first direct visual evidence that black holes exist.

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Scientists on Wednesday unveiled the first-ever photograph of a black hole, giving humanity a glimpse of a bizarre celestial object that has captivated our imagination for more than a century.

The long-anticipated photo - in which a black hole's silhouette is visible as a dark patch surrounded by a bright ring - was shown in a series of press briefings held simultaneously in Washington and five other cities around the world.

The photo is the product of observations made in April 2017 by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), an international consortium that linked eight radio observatories around the world to create a single, Earth-size telescope with enough magnifying might to see what until now has been unseeable.

"Here it is," Sheperd Doeleman, a Harvard astronomer and project director of the EHT, said as he revealed the image at the Washington briefing. "This is the strongest evidence that we have to date for the existence of black holes."

"For 25 years this was always a dream, a fiction, an expectation," Heino Falcke, an astronomer at Radboud University in the Netherlands and one of the EHT scientists, told NBC News MACH in an email. "I have seen many beautiful, detailed images of black holes - but all were just simulations," he added. "This one is so precious, so beautiful, because it is real."

The photo shows the supermassive black hole at the center of a neighboring galaxy known as Messier 87. The black hole lies about 55 million light-years from Earth and is billions of times more massive than the sun.

Falcke said he was surprised by how large the black hole appears in the photo, adding that it hadn't been clear that the black hole was big enough to produce a shadow that would be visible to us. "Well, we saw the shadow at the first attempt," he said. "It really is that large - that blew me away."

Black holes are super-dense remnants of collapsed stars whose gravitational forces are so strong that no matter or even light can escape once it gets too close. Scientists envisioned "invisible stars" at least as far back as the 18th Century, and Einstein's theory of general relativity predicted the existence of such objects in 1915 - though the term black hole wasn't coined until 1967.

Countless black holes are now thought to exist in the universe, including an estimated 100 million in our galaxy alone. Lucky for us, astronomers say none is near enough to Earth to pose a threat.

As the name suggests, black holes themselves are completely black and invisible. But scientists had long believed that radio waves given off by the gas and dust swirling around a distant black hole's so-called event horizon - the theoretical boundary marking the point beyond which all light and matter pass inexorably into the black hole - would be visible through a sufficiently powerful telescope.

Dramatic as it is, the photo unveiled Wednesday may be just a prelude to what's to come from the EHT.

"As with all great discoveries, this is just the beginning," Doeleman said.

Falcke said the group wanted to make sharper images as well as movies of gas orbiting black holes, adding, "This is just the first step and we are only scratching the surface."

Want more stories about space?

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First-ever black hole photo gives humanity a long-anticipated glimpse of bizarre celestial object

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Scientists on Wednesday unveiled the first-ever photograph of a black hole, giving humanity a glimpse of a bizarre celestial object that has captivated our imagination for more than a century.

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so mind blowing  I am speechless  that it sucks up light!

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This is what a black hole looks like.

A black hole isn't really a hole. It's an object in space with incredible mass packed into a very small area. All that mass creates such a huge gravitational tug that nothing can escape a black hole, including light.

The newly imaged supermassive monster lies in a galaxy called M87. A world-spanning network of observatories called the Event Horizon Telescope, or EHT, zoomed in on M87 to create this first-ever picture of a black hole.

"We have seen what we thought was unseeable," Sheperd Doeleman said April 10 in Washington, D.C. "We have seen and taken a picture of a black hole," he reported at one of seven concurrent news conferences. Doeleman is EHT's director. He also is an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. Results from his team's work appear in six papers in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The concept of a black hole was first hinted at back in the 1780s. The mathematics behind them came from Albert Einstein's 1915 general theory of relativity. And the phenomenon got its name "black hole" in the 1960s. But until now, all "pictures" of black holes have been illustrations or simulations.

"We've been studying black holes so long, sometimes it's easy to forget that none of us have actually seen one."

"We've been studying black holes so long, sometimes it's easy to forget that none of us have actually seen one," France Córdova said in the Washington, D.C., news conference. She is director of the National Science Foundation. Seeing a black hole "is a Herculean task," she said.

Chris Mihos/Case Western Reserve Univ., ESO

The galaxy M87 sits about 55 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo. Unlike the Milky Way's stunning spirals, M87 is a blobby giant elliptical galaxy. The Event Horizon Telescope just took the first image of the black hole at the center of M87.

That's because black holes are famously hard to see. Their gravity is so extreme that nothing, not even light, can escape across the boundary at a black hole's edge. That edge is known as the event horizon. But some black holes, especially supermassive ones dwelling in galaxies' centers, stand out. They gather bright disks of gas and other material that surrounds the black hole. The EHT image reveals the shadow of M87's black hole on its accretion disk. That disk looks like a fuzzy, asymmetrical ring. It unveils for the first time the dark abyss of one of the universe's most mysterious objects.

"It's been such a buildup," Doeleman said. "It was just astonishment and wonder... to know that you've uncovered a part of the universe that was off limits to us."

The much-anticipated big reveal of the image "lives up to the hype, that's for sure," says Priyamvada Natarajan. This astrophysicist at Yale University, in New Haven, Conn., is not on the EHT team. "It really brings home how fortunate we are as a species at this particular time, with the capacity of the human mind to comprehend the universe, to have built all the science and technology to make it happen."

Einstein was right

The new image aligns with what physicists expected a black hole to look like based on the theory of general relativity by Albert Einstein. That theory predicts how spacetime is warped by the extreme mass of a black hole. The picture is "one more strong piece of evidence supporting the existence of black holes. And that, of course, helps verify general relativity," says Clifford Will. He's a physicist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, who is not on the EHT team. "Being able to actually see this shadow and to detect it is a tremendous first step."

Studies in the past have tested general relativity by looking at the motions of stars or gas clouds near a black hole, but never at its edge. "It's as good as it gets," Will says. Tiptoe any closer and you'd be inside the black hole. And then you'd be unable to report back on the results of any experiments.

"Black hole environments are a likely place where general relativity would break down," says EHT team member Feryal Özel. She is an astrophysicist who works at the University of Arizona in Tucson. So testing general relativity in such extreme conditions could reveal things that don't seem to support Einstein's predictions.

However, she adds, just because this first image upholds general relativity "doesn't mean general relativity is completely fine." Many physicists think that general relativity won't be the last word on gravity. That's because it's incompatible with another essential physics theory, quantum mechanics. This theory describes physics on very small scales.

The new image provided a new measurement of the size and heft of M87's black hole. "Our mass determination by just directly looking at the shadow has helped resolve a longstanding controversy," Sera Markoff said in the Washington, D.C., news conference. She's a theoretical astrophysicist at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Estimates made using different techniques have ranged between 3.5 billion and 7.22 billion times the mass of the sun. New EHT measurements show that the mass of this black hole is about 6.5 billion solar masses.

The team also has figured out the behemoth's size. Its diameter stretches 38 billion kilometers (24 billion miles). And the black hole spins clockwise. "M87 is a monster even by supermassive black hole standards," Markoff said.

Looking ahead

EHT trained its sights on both M87's black hole and Sagittarius A*. That second supermassive black hole sits at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way. But, the scientists found it easier to image M87's monster, even though it's about 2,000 times as far away as Sgr A*.

M87's black hole sits about 55 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo. But it's also about 1,000 times as massive as the Milky Way's giant. Sgr A* only weighs the equivalent of roughly 4 million suns. M87's extra heft nearly compensates for its greater distance. The size it covers in our sky "is pretty darn similar," says EHT team member Özel.

Because M87's black hole is bigger and has more gravity, gases swirling around it move and vary in brightness more slowly than they do around Sgr A*. And here's why that's important. "During a single observation, Sgr A* doesn't sit still, whereas M87 does," says Özel. "Just based on this 'Does the black hole sit still and pose for me?' point of view, we knew M87 would cooperate more."

With more data analysis, the team hopes to solve some long-standing mysteries about black holes. These include how M87's black hole spews such a bright jet of charged particles many thousands of light-years into space.

Jordy Davelaar et al/Radboud University, Blackholecam

Some black holes launch jets of charged particles thousands of light-years into space, such as the one shown in this image from a simulation. Data collected to create the first image of a black hole, the one in galaxy M87, may help reveal how these jets are produced.

This first image is like the "shot heard round the world" that kicked off the American Revolutionary War, says Avi Loeb. He is an astrophysicist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. "It's very significant. It gives a glimpse of what the future might hold. But it doesn't give us all the information that we want."

The team does not yet have a picture of Sgr A*. But the researchers were able to collect some data on it. They are continuing to analyze those data in the hopes of adding to a new gallery of black hole portraits. Since the appearance of that black hole changes so quickly, the team is having to develop new techniques to analyze the data from it.

"The Milky Way is a very different galaxy from M87," Loeb notes. Studying such different environments could reveal more details of how black holes behave, he says.

The next look at the M87 and Milky Way behemoths will have to wait, though. Scientists got a lucky stretch of good weather at all eight sites that made up the Event Horizon Telescope in 2017. Then there was bad weather in 2018. (Water vapor in the atmosphere can interfere with the telescope's measurements.) Technical difficulties cancelled this year's observing run.

The good news is that by 2020, EHT will include 11 observatories. The Greenland Telescope joined the consortium in 2018. The Kitt Peak National Observatory outside Tucson, Ariz., and the NOrthern Extended Millimeter Array (NOEMA) in the French Alps will join EHT in 2020.

Adding more telescopes should allow the team to extend the image. That would let EHT better capture the jets that spew from the black hole. The researchers also plan to make observations using light having a slightly higher frequency. That can further sharpen the image. And even bigger plans are on the horizon - adding telescopes that orbit Earth. "World domination is not enough for us. We also want to go to space," Doeleman quipped.

These extra eyes may be just what's needed to bring black holes into even greater focus.
Staff writer Maria Temming contributed to this story.

Power Words
More About Power Words

align (noun: alignment) To place or organize things in a patterned order, following an apparent line.

astrophysics An area of astronomy that deals with understanding the physical nature of stars and other objects in space. People who work in this field are known as astrophysicists.

behemoth A term for anything that is amazingly big. The term comes from a monstrous animal described in the Bible's book of Job.

black hole A region of space having a gravitational field so intense that no matter or radiation (including light) can escape.

consortium A group or association of independent organizations.

constellation Patterns formed by prominent stars that lie close to each other in the night sky. Modern astronomers divide the sky into 88 constellations, 12 of which (known as the zodiac) lie along the sun's path through the sky over the course of a year. Cancri, the original Greek name for the constellation Cancer, is one of those 12 zodiac constellations.

diameter The length of a straight line that runs through the center of a circle or spherical object, starting at the edge on one side and ending at the edge on the far side.

event horizon An imaginary sphere that surrounds a black hole. The more massive the black hole, the bigger the sphere. Anything that happens inside the event horizon is invisible, because gravity is so strong that under normal circumstances even light can't escape. But according to some theories of physics, in certain situations small amounts of radiation can escape.

galaxy A massive group of stars bound together by gravity. Galaxies, which each typically include between 10 million and 100 trillion stars, also include clouds of gas, dust and the remnants of exploded stars.

gravity The force that attracts anything with mass, or bulk, toward any other thing with mass. The more mass that something has, the greater its gravity.

light-year The distance light travels in one year, about 9.48 trillion kilometers (almost 6 trillion miles). To get some idea of this length, imagine a rope long enough to wrap around the Earth. It would be a little over 40,000 kilometers (24,900 miles) long. Lay it out straight. Now lay another 236 million more that are the same length, end-to-end, right after the first. The total distance they now span would equal one light-year.

mass A number that shows how much an object resists speeding up and slowing down - basically a measure of how much matter that object is made from.

mechanics The study of how things move.

Milky Way The galaxy in which Earth's solar system resides.

National Science Foundation The U.S. Congress created this independent federal agency in 1950 to promote the advancement of science; national health, prosperity and welfare; and the nation's defense. This agency funds nearly one-fourth of all federally supported basic research in U.S. colleges and universities. In many fields such as mathematics, computer science and the social sciences, NSF is the major source of federal funding.

network A group of interconnected people or things. (v.) The act of connecting with other people who work in a given area or do similar thing (such as artists, business leaders or medical-support groups), often by going to gatherings where such people would be expected, and then chatting them up. (n. networking)

observatory (in astronomy) The building or structure (such as a satellite) that houses one or more telescopes.

particle A minute amount of something.

physics The scientific study of the nature and properties of matter and energy. Classical physics is an explanation of the nature and properties of matter and energy that relies on descriptions such as Newton's laws of motion. Quantum physics, a field of study that emerged later, is a more accurate way of explaining the motions and behavior of matter. A scientist who works in such areas is known as a physicist.

quantum (pl. quanta) A term that refers to the smallest amount of anything, especially of energy or subatomic mass.

quantum mechanics A branch of physics dealing with the behavior of matter on the scale of atoms or subatomic particles.

relativity (in physics) A theory developed by physicist Albert Einstein showing that neither space nor time are constant, but instead affected by one's velocity and the mass of things in your vicinity.

spacetime A term made essential by Einstein's theory of relativity, it describes a designation for some spot given in terms of its three-dimensional coordinates in space, along with a fourth coordinate corresponding to time.

standards (in research) The values or materials used as benchmarks against which other things can be compared.

star The basic building block from which galaxies are made. Stars develop when gravity compacts clouds of gas. When they become dense enough to sustain nuclear-fusion reactions, stars will emit light and sometimes other forms of electromagnetic radiation. The sun is our closest star.

sun The star at the center of Earth's solar system. It's an average size star about 26,000 light-years from the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Also a term for any sunlike star.

telescope Usually a light-collecting instrument that makes distant objects appear nearer through the use of lenses or a combination of curved mirrors and lenses. Some, however, collect radio emissions (energy from a different portion of the electromagnetic spectrum) through a network of antennas.

theoretical An adjective for an analysis or assessment of something that based on pre-existing knowledge of how things behave. It is not based on experimental trials. Theoretical research tends to use math - usually performed by computers - to predict how or what will occur for some specified series of conditions. Experimental testing or observations of natural systems will then be needed to confirm what had been predicted.

theory (in science) A description of some aspect of the natural world based on extensive observations, tests and reason. A theory can also be a way of organizing a broad body of knowledge that applies in a broad range of circumstances to explain what will happen. Unlike the common definition of theory, a theory in science is not just a hunch. Ideas or conclusions that are based on a theory - and not yet on firm data or observations - are referred to as theoretical. Scientists who use mathematics and/or existing data to project what might happen in new situations are known as theorists.

universe The entire cosmos: All things that exist throughout space and time. It has been expanding since its formation during an event known as the Big Bang, some 13.8 billion years ago (give or take a few hundred million years).

verify (n. verification) To demonstrate or confirm in some way that a particular claim or suspicion is true.

weather Conditions in the atmosphere at a localized place and a particular time. It is usually described in terms of particular features, such as air pressure, humidity, moisture, any precipitation (rain, snow or ice), temperature and wind speed. Weather constitutes the actual conditions that occur at any time and place. It's different from climate, which is a description of the conditions that tend to occur in some general region during a particular month or season.

Lisa Grossman is the astronomy writer. She has a degree in astronomy from Cornell University and a graduate certificate in science writing from University of California, Santa Cruz. She lives near Boston.

Physics writer Emily Conover studied physics at the University of Chicago. She loves physics for its ability to reveal the secret rules about how stuff works, from tiny atoms to the vast cosmos.

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Here's the first picture of a black hole

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This is what a black hole looks like. A black hole isn't really a hole. It's an object in space with incredible mass packed into a very small area. All that mass creates such a huge gravitational tug that nothing can escape a black hole, including light.