Since we all certainly have Star Wars on the brain today (The Force Awakens opens tonight), let's take a look at a few recent space-related developments that hint of inspiration from the movies.

Igneous rocks are formed from rising magma, make up the vast majority of the Earth's crust, and tell us a great deal about the Earth's mantle.

What's the perfect holiday gift for any space fan? It's the 2016 version of the amazing Year in Space Wall Calendar, which is now available to order. Universe Today also has 5 copies to give away!

Thanks to centuries of ongoing research, modern scientists have a very good understanding of how atoms work and what their individual parts are.

The first British astronaut to blast off on a journey to the International Space Station (ISS) soared gloriously skyward early today, Dec 15, following the flawless launch of a Russian Soyuz capsule with his Russian/American crewmates from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

We've featured the videos from Kurzgesagt many times before here on Universe Today and they're always wonderful. Sometimes a terrific animation with adorable birds is worth a million words. In their latest video, they cover black holes, from birth to death, giving you an overview of these bizarre objects.

Now is the time to catch binocular Comet C/2014 S2 PanSTARRS, as it tops +8 magnitude ahead of predictions this month and crosses circumpolar northern skies. Will this Christmas comet stay bright post-perihelion, rivaling other comets into early 2016?

After many months of painstaking driving, NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has reached the edge of a massive field of spectacular rippled sand dunes located at the base of Mount Sharp that range up to two stories tall. And she has now begun humanity's first up-close investigation of currently active sand dunes anywhere beyond Earth.

One of the biggest, most basic questions you can ask is: "why is there something and not nothing?" The reality is that we don't know the answer, we might never know the answer. Let's probe to the edge of what we can explain, and what ideas cosmologists have proposed to explain how we all got here.

Mars is different from Earth in many ways, being rather cold and inhospitable. But interestingly, a day on Mars is very close to a day on Earth.

Here are ten of the more interesting facts about the gas/ice giant known as Neptune. Some you may know, others may surprise you

With NASA's Dawn spacecraft set to enter its final and lowest orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres, spectral measurements are enabling researchers to gradually unravel the nature of the numerous mysterious and intriguing bright spots recently discovered and now conclude that briny mixtures of ice and salts apparently reside just beneath certain patches of the pockmarked surface and that "water is sublimating" from the surface of an "active crater".

Have you ever wondered how the Sun produces energy to keep us warm here on Earth?

This week's Carnival of Space is hosted by Gadi Eidelheit at his The Venus Transit blog.

In this week's episode of the Weekly Space Hangout, we're joined by Carolyn Collins Petersen, aka "The Space Writer". We talk about what it takes to write Planetarium Show, and Carolyn's impressive experience as a space journalist before and after the arrival of the internet.

Yes, it's that time of year again when everyone struggles with what gifts to buy their family and friends for their holiday-of-choice. Whether you are hoping to foster a love of space and science in a young child, or want to surprise that special adult "Super Space Nerd," we here at Universe Today are here to help our readers out with ideas and recommendations to fit virtually any budget, experience level, and area of interest, including telescopes, books, and other items that the "space/science geek" in your life would love to receive!

Plummeting to Earth during a fiery atmospheric reentry within the cramped confines of their Russian Soyuz capsule, an international trio of space flyers returned safely to the Home Planet today, Dec. 11

If seeing the Northern or Southern Lights hasn't been crossed off your bucket list yet, this video is the next best thing to seeing the aurora live. Astrophotographer extraordinaire Thierry Legault has captured spectacular views of the Aurora Borealis from Norway, filmed in real time.