The first images of a nebula from the James Webb Telescope gave astronomers remarkable insights into the death of the star that created these beautiful haloes of gas and dust.
Even if life existed on every planet that could support it, living matter in the universe would amount to only a few grains of sand in the Gobi Desert.
Exoplanets, worlds beyond our own Solar System, are a wild bunch: some are gas giants like Jupiter, but are scorching hot due to orbiting closer to their star than Mercury does the Sun, some are frozen hulks, while others may be water worlds covered entirely by ocean, and still others may sport clouds and rain of liquid gemstones.