Factory in space, dark matter stars.....

Prototype in-space factory built

A company called Magna Parva has produced a prototype of an in-space factory that should be able to produce gigantic structures in space  without the need to launch them off the Earth. This could open the door to building things in space too big or too fragile to be launched on a rocket. It's called COPMA, which stands for ‘Consolidated Off Planet Manufacturing and Assembly System for Large Space Structures’. Want to see huge-ass spaceships built? Then this is the technology to keep an eye on...

Above: I promise, that thing didn't get launched into space on a piddly little rocket like we use today.... Courtesy of Disney.

Dark matter stars

Dark matter-  that mysterious stuff that seems to interact with the rest of the universe only by gravity - may clump together in 1000 kilometre sized packets with strange properties. The 'dark stars' ( Which they aren't really since they wouldn't give off energy, but hey, it's a cool name and why be pedantic?) would be naturally forming Bose-Einstein condensates, where all the atoms inside acted as one. Here's the original paper, although it's pay per view.

Above: Ceres, a dwarf planet that would be about the same size as the dark matter 'stars'. Courtesy of JPL.

Fraser Cain takes a look at wormholes:

Fraser Cain is editor of Universe Today, and pretty much one of the biggest space buffs around. Here he's taking a look at wormholes: In science fiction, wormholes are a method often used to travel great distances across space. First proposed by Einstein (amongst others) there's always ben a question mark in the theories about whether they could be built in real life, and exactly what they'd really do....