Maybe it's because Jurassic Park is in theaters again, but we at Universe Today sometimes worry about how one person can mess up an otherwise technologically amazing system. It took just one nefarious employee to shut down the dinosaur park's security fences in the movie and cause havoc. How do we ensure science can fight against that, especially when everyday citizens are getting more and more involved in the scientific process?

Think the Milky Way is big? It's puny compared to M87, an elliptical galaxy 980,000 light years in diameter. The Milky Way is only 100,000 light years in diameter. Let's not even get into Hercules A, which is 1.5 million light years across.

Last April, a minivan-sized chunk of leftover primordial planet punched through Earth's atmosphere at 64,000 miles per hour. The minivan-sized meteor weighed just under 100,000 pounds before it exploded high above northern California, disintegrating into rock dust and smaller meteoroids that fell onto suburban driveways in El Dorado County.

As updates roll in from Russia and the meteorite-related injury toll rises, you may be scrambling to remember what a meteorite really is. If you're a little rusty on your astronomy, here's some basic info about space rocks and why this one was unusual.

In the search for stars that can support Earth-like planets, red dwarfs in our galactic neighborhood may lead the way to discovery. Recent research reveals red dwarf stars might host more habitable planets in close orbits than previously thought - just as long as its exoplanets huddle in close enough for light (but not so close that molten lava blankets the surface).

A few hardworking filmmakers from indie film company Sunchaser Pictures trekked out to Death Valley's remote Eureka Dunes during the Geminid Meteor Shower peak in mid-December, and the result is some truly wonderous starporn...