If you thought space was a peaceful vacuum, think again: scientists have discovered the fastest winds ever observed on a stellar-mass black hole, and they reach an incredible 20 million mph.

It might be the stuff of science fiction dreams, but a Japanese construction company has announced that it will have built a working space elevator by 2050. Where can I join the queue?

That’s what the Defence Select Committee told ministers, asking them to wise up to the threat of a rogue state setting off a nuclear bomb in space, which would cripple the UK and is considered “quite likely”.

Zachory Berta says that "GJ1214b is like no planet we know of." Like Berta, part of a team at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics lead by David Charbonneau, his colleagues were surprised when they discovered that this planet is made mostly of water.

The idea of life on Mars never gets old, but while we know it would never involve little green men, we've never really known what we might find. When a Mars training mission recently unearthed a thriving world of microbes below the Atacama desert in Chile, however, we got a much better idea.

Imagine looking up to the sky every night just to see the Halloween orange and chimney red glow from dozens of volcanoes on the surface of the Moon. According to new research paper just published in Nature Geosciences, humans could be able to enjoy such a show in the future.

We've showed you the Paranal Observatory's laser-guided telescopes before, but never in gorgeous HD motion, replete with clear stars and deftly swiveling machinery. This is definitely one you're going to want to watch fullscreen.

Numbers, facts, figures, equations. These are all obviously critical components of the space program. But numbers don't speak to our emotions. It's hard to commit millions of pounds and thousand of hours to an equation. We need something visceral that we can connect to.

I've seen many sun flares, but I've never seen anything like this video showing several dark plasma tornadoes on the surface of the Sun, captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory. It's simply mesmerising and bloody amazing.

There's nothing like a good, firm handshake. Especially when it's with a robot, and you're in space. Yesterday, NASA's Robonaut completed its systems checks aboard the International Space Station — and celebrated with a handshake.

It’s been a long time coming, our intrepid android astronaut was first freed from his packing on the ISS back in March last year, we even glimpsed a look through his eyes in September, but now Robonaut 2’s finally been activated.

In 1995, the world was astonished by the image of a group of 4-light-year-tall columns located in the Eagle Nebula, 7,000 light years from here. So unimaginable it was that someone called them the Pillars of Creation.

Some would argue that the biggest obstacle robotics currently faces isn't the Uncanny Valley or suppressing the urge to destroy all humans — it's keeping their batteries charged. The newest version of the EcoBot may have the answer — it eats poop. Our poop.

You might think Armageddon was just a lot of Bruce Willis sobbing and Aerosmith-fueled sex, but there was actually some truth in there! If an enormous space rock ever heads our way, we're already planning on nuking it to hell. Here's how.

It’s spring on Mars and it’s avalanche season. NASA’s HiRISE satellite was on hand to capture the action as dirt, dust and fine-grained ice cascades like snow on Earth, flying down the side of a massive Martian mountain range.