NASA has an undoubted ability to sell a story, and it has been making the most of the anthropomorphic appeal of this brave little $3 billion, 5 ton, plutonium-powered spacecraft on its two-decade mission. But the hype is not misplaced: Saturn has a key place in the evolving human understanding of the cosmos.
As you can guess from the title, The First Three Minutes tells the story of the moments following the Big Bang. The early universe sets the stage for the development of the cosmos we observe today, and the Cosmic Microwave Background is a key link between the distant past and the present day.
If you are trying to build a time machine, don't bother: even if we can design them, the universe makes it impossible for us (or anyone) to build them.
Just as earthquakes are the release of energy stored in subterranean faults, these gravitational waves were set in motion when two black holes – faults in space itself – became a single, stable object. Call it a spacequake.
Gravitational waves are already the science story of the week but if the rumours hold up they will one of the science stories of the century.
Every so often theoretical physics, gaming, and parenting overlap. Not that often, but it happens