Universe

Since the first star lit up the universe, they have been engines of creation. Professor Brian Cox reveals how, ultimately, stars brought life and meaning to the universe.

With over 2,800 exoplanets confirmed by Kepler and discoveries still rolling in, Brian lays out his own answer to the age-old question with thrilling new science: are we alone?

Professor Brian Cox continues his epic exploration of the cosmos by exploring the faint band of light that sweeps across the night sky - our own galaxy, the Milky Way. The Sun is just one of almost 400 billion stars that form this vast, majestic disk of light, our own home in the universe. We've longed to understand our galaxy's secrets since the time of the ancient Greeks, yet it's only very recently, thanks to a cutting edge space telescope, that we're finally able to reveal the Milky Way's dramatic history and predict its cataclysmic future.

Black holes are the most destructive forces in the universe, and can swallow whole stars. We know they exist because of the effect they have on the surrounding space.

Professor Brian Cox continues his epic exploration of the universe with a journey into darkness. The centre of our galaxy is home to an invisible monster of unimaginable power - a supermassive black hole named Sagittarius A*. Weighing 4 million times the mass of the Sun, it's an object with such an immense gravitational field that nothing can escape - not even light.