It is true that I had lunch with the head of NASA (as in, sitting next to him in a small room with just 4 of us), and that he told me that the entire budget of NASA was one slice of pizza per US citizen in 2011. In fact the only untruth in that Looking Up is that my idea to have premier league footballers forego their salaries for a year is actually going to happen (and that Richard Branson is behind it - I'll deal with Sir Richard if he comes baying for FMR's blood)!

Dr Elias Aydi is a research associate at Michigan State University, and has been involved in research under Cape Town's Professor Shazrene Mohammed. Their research has simulated what happens when our star dies. It's quite wild. Thankfully this isn't going to happen for a long long time

Astronomy Picture of the Day https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ has been at it again, inspiring us with extraordinary images from nature. A recent image shows us what we can see in what is known as 'the observable universe'. What are the limits of this universe, and what lies beyond?

Measuring gravity: it's heavy science.

Super-massive black holes merging in a distant galaxy! Good thing we're nowhere near.

Imagine if there were two Suns. This is the case for Kepler-16b which is an exoplanet detected using a relatively modest ground based telescope. There is a lot to learn about how planets were formed and looking at systems with more than one star may teach us something.

Where does all the water come from? Recent research suggests that the Earth was born with it.

Comets causing damage! There is historical evidence for a comet having wreaked havoc on an ancient North American culture. Also the International Astronomical Union has set up a group to look at the problems being caused by, predominantly the Starlink satellites.

9,200 years ago a massive solar storm hit Earth, as detected in ice cores. This happened during a period of solar quiescence, which is thought to be unusual. Why is this important? Because a solar storm of the magnitude of that ancient storm would knock out satellites, which means no Internet and no mobile phones, and chaos on a global scale.

Where are the aliens? With the help of Fermi's Paradox Kechil lists the reasons.