When a particle of matter meets its corresponding antiparticle, they can annihilate each other, converting their combined mass into energy, typically in the form of photons, in accordance with Einstein’s equation E=mc²

The first satellite to orbit the Earth was launched by the Soviet Union in 1957. Today there are roughly 20,000 satellites orbiting our planet

Gamma-ray bursts, detected on average once a day, are brief flashes of high-energy radiation produced by some of the most violent events in the Universe, such as the collapse of a very massive star or the collision of two neutron stars

The better you know the position of a quantum particle, the less accurately you can determine its momentum. This is not related to the observational success of current technology. It is a fundamental property of nature

The Robin's Egg Nebula is a planetary nebula about 3 light-years across, displaying the final phase in the evolution of an aging binary star system consisting of two white dwarf stars, less massive but much hotter than our Sun

Except for gravity, the fundamental interactions of nature are described by the Standard Model of particle physics as being mediated by particles called bosons. These interactions are those that cannot be explained in terms of more fundamental interactions

Our Sun is the closest astronomical object to a perfect sphere ever observed. There is just a 10 km difference between the Sun’s polar and equatorial diameters of 1.4 million km

We don't know if space and time are fundamental. At the deepest level of reality, there may be no space and no time at all, only a more fundamental structure from which both emerge

The Local Group includes at least 40 galaxies strongly influenced by each other’s gravity, of which Andromeda and our Milky Way are the largest in the group

NASA’s space probe Voyager 1, launched in 1977, is now one light-day away from us, which is about 25.9 billion kilometres

In the nucleus of an atom, always positively charged, protons repel each other electromagnetically, but at the same time attract each other and the neutrons by the strong force, which is many times stronger than the electromagnetic force

Photons, the most abundant known fundamental particles in the Universe, are massless and therefore can only move at light speed

Distant galaxies are receding from our Milky Way in a linear distance/speed relationship: double the distance, double the speed, quadruple the distance, quadruple the speed, and so on

Because of cosmic expansion, the CMB is at ~46 billion light-years from us, even though the Universe is only 13.8 billion years old

Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to us at just over 4 light-years away, is a red dwarf, part of a 3-star system where the other 2 stars, Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, are roughly similar to our Sun

In a few billion years, when the Sun has used up all its hydrogen, it will expand to become a red giant, reaching out as far as Earth’s orbit, after which it will collapse to become a white dwarf. Life on Earth has an expiration date

Nobody has ever noticed a place except at a time, or a time except at a place. Space and time are deeply interconnected and are treated as different aspects of a single structure called spacetime

The Milky Way’s stars have approximately 50 billion solar masses. The Milky Way’s dark-matter halo is about 970 billion solar masses. So roughly 90% of the Milky Way's mass is dark matter

During the inflation period, the Universe expanded from the size of an electron to the size of a golf ball in 10ˉ³² seconds. Predictions linked to this exponential expansion of space in the early Universe have been confirmed experimentally

c is a fundamental constant that connects space and time. It allows us to express time in units of distance (m) and distance in units of time (s)