Discoveries of new planets have revealed countless worlds much stranger than Earth. Some of these worlds don't have stars, others are made out of diamonds. Will we ever find a planet like Earth, or are these distant worlds stranger than fiction?

In a fictional scenario set in 2029, an asteroid hurtling towards Earth at 40,000 mph will reduce New York to ashes; examining the hypothetical, experts weigh in to determine what could happen, and how it might be stopped.

Are we alone in the Universe? What makes Earth so different? Part of the answer is our volcanoes. without them we would not be here either. Today we are discovering volcanoes on alien worlds. Are these worlds where, tomorrow, we might find life?

Destructive weather forces are symptoms of Earth's creative energy. In our quest to discover if we are alone in the universe, we shouldn't just look for worlds, we should look for weather; find that megastorm, and maybe we will find alien life.

The Universe is a magnetic minefield. Spinning star systems crackle and explode, magnetic monsters rip worlds apart, star-quakes shoot beams of devastating energy, and galactic flamethrowers fire gamma-rays half way across the Universe. Will we find Earth in the firing line?

New discoveries reveal the power of microscopic alien organisms.

Is our solar system unique? Since the first discovery of a planet orbiting another star, some 280 alien solar systems have been identified. It's only by looking at solar systems far beyond our own, that we can understand how remarkable our universe is.

We once thought that the only planets were in our solar system. We have found many other planets but they are nothing like we expected, from deep-frozen, toxic snowballs, to scorched and boiling nightmares. Is every planet out there a planet fom Hell?

The collision of two supermassive black holes is the most violent event that can occur in the universe; experts explore where a black hole's energy originates and what really happens when the two most powerful objects in the cosmos clash.

The programme investigates how the Universe came into existence out of nothing, and how it grew from a minuscule point, smaller than an atomic particle, to the vast cosmos we see today.

We owe our existence to the stability of earth's orbit. But we are the freaks: everywhere else we look we find orbits are chaotic, unstable, and violent. Yet on the very largest scale, orbits are also a creative force, even constructing the fabric of the universe itself.

Beneath the hood of your car lies the history of the Universe. The iron in your chassis, the gold in your stereo and the copper in your electronics all owe their existence to violent cosmic events that took place billions of years ago.

An examination of Venus; and what it may indicate about Earth's future.

Life once existed on Mars, but a series of devastating mass extinctions have made present-day life nearly impossible. The latest science shows how Martian life keeps bouncing back as it transforms from a watery world like Earth into a desert planet.

If a massive asteroid collides with earth, it could end life on our planet as we know it; new discoveries and cutting-edge tech reveal just how close we are to apocalypse and what it would take for the world's leading space agencies to stop it.

NASA is on a mission to send humans to Mars within just 15 years, but to reach this next frontier of space exploration, experts must discover new technology and cutting-edge science that protects astronauts from the Red Planet's deadliest killers.

The discovery of extraterrestrial life might face an impossible challenge: the physics of the universe itself; but using cutting-edge tech, experts might be on the verge of a groundbreaking find -- and the evidence could already be in hand.

New discoveries reveal an astonishing supermassive black hole that was born during the earliest days of the cosmos, and finding out how this giant grew so large so quickly may help to explain the very formation of the universe itself.

Stars are not eternal; they are dying in unimaginably large explosions called supernovas. Second only to the Big Bang, these explosions are where creation and destruction meet. Only now have we begun to understand how these wonders in our sky work.

There are just eight planets in our solar system, but there could be a hundred billion planets in our Milky Way galaxy alone. This show follows the journey of planets as they grow from grains of dust to the magnificently diverse worlds we see today.

Moons come in every possible shape and size. Home to incredible natural phenomena like gigantic geysers and colossal volcanoes, moons also offer perhaps the best chance of finding alien life in the Universe - and they probably exist in the billions.

As time machines from the early universe, comets could hold the key to unlock the secrets of the cosmos, and may even be the origin of life itself. In this episode, we learn that comets are even more mysterious and fascinating than we had ever imagined.

Asteroids wiped out the dinosaurs and may be back for us but they also built the Earth and may have brought life to its barren surface. Asteroids will shape our future as much as our past and scientists are striving to unlock their secrets.

How does light escape from the sun? We take a journey from the centre of the sun, following the path of light. We witness its fiery birth from in the core, its 430,000 mile battle against gravity and magnetism, and its escape from the solar surface.

The universe is a dangerous place, and we explore the deadliest spots in the cosmos. Between earth and the edge of the universe, there are a million ways to die, and our crash test dummy is on a mission to reveal the worst.