New research reaches the bleak conclusion that while the universe will expand indefinitely, life will not and "civilization and culture are destined to be forgotten ... there's no long-term future".
Thanks to the development of more sensitive electronic cameras, and high-speed computers, the roster of the known solar system grows by the thousands every month, faster than they can be agreed upon.
Astronomy's next great discovery may be found not by telescope, but instead with little more than a laptop computer, an Internet connection and a learned and persistent amateur. In fact, astronomers are already pulling new findings from old data, the start of what some say is a looming change in how science gets done.
Increasing computing power and advances in the development of algorithms, or computer codes representing subtle physics, have deepened scientists' understanding of the cosmic web and revealed its links to recent observational discoveries in the cosmos.
UK cosmologists now have the entire Universe at their fingertips. A massive supercomputing facility has been switched on, giving researchers unprecedented freedom to model the cosmos.
Microsoft researchers are working on an ambitious database project, dubbed 'SkyServer', that would make the data from a massive survey of the cosmos available to everyone. The concept is known as a 'virtual telescope' and could have democratizing effects on the field of astronomy.