Compiled by David Kaplan and Michael Wright

China Telescope to Displace 9,000 Villagers in Hunt for Extraterrestrials
Thousands of villagers in Guizhou Province are being relocated to make room for a $184 million telescope to detect signs of alien life.

Exotic Cosmic Locales Available as Space Tourism Posters
Fourteen space travel posters of colorful, exotic cosmic settings are now available free for downloading and printing.

Stephen Hawking: ‘Things can get out of a black hole’
An illustrated version of Prof Stephen Hawking’s second Reith lecture, Black holes ain’t as black as they are painted. Prof Hawking examines scientific thinking about black holes and challenges the idea that all matter and information is destroyed irretrievably within them.

Madness and Genius
Cosmologist Janna Levin on the Vitalizing Power of Obsessiveness, from Newton to Einstein

Saturn’s Rings: Less than Meets the Eye?
A recent study from NASA’s Cassini mission proves that, in the mysterious and beautiful rings of Saturn, appearances can be deceiving.

Event Horizon Snapshot Due in 2017
A global network of nine radio telescopes is set to take the first ever picture of a black hole’s event horizon in 2017.

Why Can’t You Remember Your Future?
Physicist Paul Davies on The Puzzlement of Why We Experience Time as Linear

Wrapping Armchairs in Wire, and Other Childhood Attempts to Travel in Time
Whether we were influenced by C.S. Lewis or Doctor Who, many of us have distinct memories of fantasizing about time travel as kids.

Where NASA’s Rocket Countdown Came From
On December 1, 2014, NASA retired a historic piece of equipment at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It wasn’t a rocket, or even a deep space nine-iron—it was the original countdown clock, an analog display the size of a titan’s wristwatch that stood across the river from the rocket launch site and stoically ticked off the seconds until blastoff.

Cosmic Solitude
Polish Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska on How the Prospect of Being Alone in the Universe Can Make Us Better Stewards of Our Humanity

New Animation Takes a Colorful Flight Over Ceres
A colorful new animation shows a simulated flight over the surface of dwarf planet Ceres, based on images from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft.

Ceres: Keeping Well-Guarded Secrets for 215 Years
In 1801, when an astronomer pointed his telescope at a seemingly star-like point of light, he probably had no idea a robotic emissary from Earth would one day be sent there.

James Webb: Hubble Successor Maintains Course
James Webb, the space telescope that will take over from Hubble, is reaching some key milestones in its preparation for launch in 2018.