SCIENCE
Planet-eating stars hint at Earth’s ultimate fate
This article was originally published at Eos. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
Our sun is about halfway through its life, which means Earth is as well. After a star exhausts its hydrogen nuclear fuel, its diameter expands more than a hundredfold, engulfing any unlucky planets in close orbits. That day is at least 5 billion years off for our solar system, but scientists have spotted a possible preview of our world’s fate.
Using data from the TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) observatory, astronomers Edward Bryant of the University of Warwick and Vincent Van Eylen of University College London compared systems with stars in the main sequence of their lifetimes—fusing hydrogen, like the sun—with post–main sequence stars closer to the end of their lifetimes, both with and without planets.
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“We saw that these planets are getting rarer [as stars age],” Bryant said. In other words, planets are disappearing as their host stars grow old. The comparison between planetary systems with younger and older stars makes it clear that the discrepancy does not stem from the fact that the planets weren’t there in the first place: Elderly stars just get hungry.
“We’re fairly confident that it’s not due to a formation effect,” Bryant explained, “because we don’t see large differences in the mass and [chemical composition] of these stars versus the main sequence star populations.”
Complete engulfment isn’t the only way giant stars can obliterate planets. As they grow, giant stars also exert increasingly larger tidal forces on their satellites that make their orbits decay, strip them of their atmospheres, and can even tear them apart completely. The orbital decay aspect is potentially measurable, and this is the effect Bryant and Van Eylen considered in their model for how planets die.
“We’re looking at how common planets are around different types of stars, with number of planets per star,” Bryant said. Bryant and Van Eylen identified 456,941 post–main sequence stars in TESS data and, from those, found 130 planets and planet candidates with close-in orbits. “The fraction [of stars with planets] gets significantly lower for all stars and shorter-period planets, which is very much in line with the predictions from the theory that tidal decay becomes very strong as these stars evolved.”
Astronomers use TESS to find exoplanets by looking for the diminishment in light as they pass in front of their host stars, a miniature eclipse known as a transit. As with any exoplanet detection method, transits are best suited to large, Jupiter-sized planets in relatively small orbits lasting less than half of an Earth year, sometimes much less. So these solar systems aren’t much like ours in that respect. Studying planets orbiting post–main sequence stars poses additional challenges.
“If you have the same size planet but a larger star, you have a smaller transit,” Bryant said. “That makes it harder to find these systems because the signals are much shallower.”
However, though the stars in the sample data have a much greater surface area, they are comparable in mass to the sun, and that’s what matters most, the researchers said. A star with the same mass as the sun will go through the same life stages and die the same way, and that similarity is what helps reveal our solar system’s future.
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“The processes that take place once the star evolves [past main sequence] can tell us about the interaction between planets and host star,” said Sabine Reffert, an astronomer at Universität Heidelberg who was not involved in the study. “We had never seen this kind of difference in planet occurrence rates between [main sequence] and giants before because we did not have enough planets to statistically see this difference before. It’s a very promising approach.”
Planets: Part of a balanced stellar breakfast
Exoplanet science is one of astronomy’s biggest successes in the modern era: Since the first exoplanet discovery 30 years ago, astronomers have confirmed more than 6,000 planets and identified many more candidates for follow-up observations. At the same time, the work can be challenging when it comes to planets orbiting post–main sequence stars.
One tricky aspect of this work is related to the age of the stars, which formed billions of years before our sun. Older stars have a lower abundance of chemical elements heavier than helium, a measure astronomers call “metallicity.” Observations have found a correlation between high metallicity and exoplanet abundance.
“A small difference in metallicity…could potentially double the occurrence rate,” Reffert said, stressing that the general conclusions from the article would hold but the details would need to be refined with better metallicity data.
Future observations to measure metallicity using spectra, along with star and planet mass, would improve the model. In addition, the European Space Agency’s Plato Mission, slated to launch in December 2026, will add more sensitive data to the TESS observations.
Earth’s fiery fate is a long way in the future, but researchers have made a big step toward understanding how dying stars might eat their planets. With more TESS and Plato data, we might even glimpse the minute orbital changes that indicate a planet spiraling to its doom—a grim end for that world but a wonderful discovery for our understanding of the coevolution of planets and their host stars.
Scientists have identified a previously unknown natural compound produced by heat-loving cyanobacteria that helps protect against ultraviolet radiation. Natural sunscreen ingredients can protect the skin from damaging radiation while reducing the risk of allergic reactions. In a recent study, scientists identified a previously unknown compound called β-glucose-bound hydroxy mycosporine-sarcosine that is produced by heat-loving cyanobacteria […]
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Here at Live Science, we have created a guide to 22 gifts for nature lovers to give you some ideas of what to buy other people, but what about you?
Items like cameras, binoculars, and telescopes aren’t impulse buys, and certainly not stocking fillers. They are also very personal purchases, and often expensive. Trusting someone else to make the right choice on your behalf is a gamble, and frankly, we wouldn’t always recommend it.
We do, of course, have individual guides to the best cameras, best binoculars, and best telescopes, but this guide has been curated based on what our editors would buy for themselves — and have, in some cases — in each of the categories below.
Binoculars
We don’t expect there are many people with friends who would buy them the premium Noctivid 10×42 binoculars. (Image credit: Jase Parnell-Brookes)
This first section is for skywatchers who don’t want a telescope, as well as wildlife watchers and birders. Other people might think they know what you want, but it really pays to do the research for yourself. Binoculars aren’t just about how powerful they are.
Binoculars vary depending on their purpose. Stargazing, birding, wildlife spotting and sports viewing will all require different objective lens sizes, have more suitable fields of view, and require different quality glass and coatings. For example, a pair that is ideal for astronomy might be too heavy and impractical for long walks, while compact travel binoculars might fall short under dark skies.
Comfort is also a crucial consideration. Weight, balance, eyecup design, interpupillary distance (will you use them whilst wearing spectacles?) and grip all affect how long you can comfortably use a pair of binoculars for. These are things only you can judge.
Comfort aside, optical preferences are personal, too. Some people might prioritize brightness, whereas others prefer edge-to-edge sharpness or excellent colour accuracy.
Binoculars are typically a long-term investment. A well-chosen pair can last decades. It’s worth making sure they suit your needs now and into the future. Here is a list of binoculars that we believe strike the perfect balance between performance, versatility, and ease of use. Each one is a standout choice in its category.
Telescopes
Award-winning astrophotographer Josh Dury recommends the Celestron Inspire 100AZ for beginner astronomers. (Image credit: Josh Dury)
Next up, we have telescopes — and as previously touched on, which is the right telescope for you depends on exactly what you want to observe.
Do you want to see local planets and the moon, or deep-sky objects? Do you want to use it for astrophotography? Do you need to move it from A to B often? Do you have space to store it in your house, assembled or not? There are lots of things to consider. Things which others might not think of.
Telescopes also have different experience requirements. Some are usable right out of the box, whereas others are reserved for advanced users. A well-meaning gift can be too complex, causing the recipient frustration, or too basic, making it difficult for a budding astronomer to advance. Only you know your experience and/or patience level.
When so much money is being spent on telescopes, whether it is your own or not, there should be no compromises. You want something that will provide enjoyment on every clear night you can be outside. Here are some of our recommendations.
Cameras
Treat yourself to your dream camera this Christmas. (Image credit: Kimberley Lane)
A camera is another (and probably the most important) purchase in this guide that is best made by you, rather than guessed at by someone else. You want something that matches your skill level and ambition. Plus, photography is intensely personal, and it is difficult to buy a camera for someone else.
Each style of camera, and even each manufacturer, will have its own particular strengths. Ergonomics also matter. Button layouts and menu styles are a matter of personal preference. Specs like autofocus systems, number of megapixels and ISO handling will depend on the style of shooting. Even questions like how your computer handles image files are things only you will know the answer to (and the frustration of your computer not being able to cope!). If you’re already a photographer with an ecosystem of lenses and accessories, you don’t want to have to change that because someone thought they were doing the right thing by getting you an “upgrade”.
Finally, it goes without saying that cameras are expensive. Buying your own camera gives you the exact tool to suit your vision as a photographer. Here are some of our recommendations for self-gifting.
If there is one thing we can rely on in this world, it is human hubris, and space and astronomy are no exception.
The ancients believed that everything revolved around Earth. In the 16th century, Copernicus and his peers overturned that view with the heliocentric model. Since then, telescopes and spacecraft have revealed just how insignificant we are. There are hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way, each star a sun like ours, many with planets orbiting them. In 1995, the Hubble space telescope captured its first deep-field image: this showed us that there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in our known universe, huge wheeling collections of stars dispersed through space.
Let’s take the International Astronomical Union’s definition of space as everything in the universe apart from our planet and atmosphere. Asking the question “who owns space?” seems laughable. Hubris at a whole new level. The idea that we could lay claim to the rest of the universe is beyond conceit. It’s like a group of atoms in my little toe becoming sentient and declaring that they now own my whole body.
A few years ago, I postulated that space exploration could be divided into three distinct eras. The first was confrontation. It was the second world war that fuelled our first forays into the abyss, as this proved to be an effective way of lobbing munitions further. The space race was born from military competition – in a bid to establish superiority. The second era brought collaboration. The formation of the European Space Agency in 1975 and that symbolic docking between Soviet and American space vehicles symbolised what humanity could achieve collectively. But now we’re on the verge of a third era: commercialisation. Space exploration is no longer just the domain of nations, but of billionaires, private companies and start-ups promising holidays in orbit.
Space should be regarded as a shared domain, similar to the high seas or Antarctica
Of course, the space industry has been commercial for decades – many communications satellites, Earth-observation systems and some launch vehicles are privately funded and operated. But what’s changing is that humans themselves are now part of the business plan, as we move from exploration to possible exploitation. Private space stations, space tourism, lunar and asteroid mining – this is the new frontier. So the question of ownership suddenly has legal, ethical and economic urgency.
Legally speaking, the groundwork for managing space was laid long ago. In the late 1950s and early 60s, as rockets first breached Earth’s atmosphere, the United Nations drafted agreements to govern activities beyond our planet. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 set out some remarkably idealistic principles: “The exploration and use of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development, and shall be the province of all mankind.” I would reword it to humankind, but I do like the sentiment.
It’s a beautiful vision, but potentially an increasingly fragile one. As technology advances, these noble principles will come face to face with economic reality. When a commercial company finds a valuable mineral deposit on the moon or an asteroid, who gets to profit?
I would argue that commercialisation is necessary – space needs to pay for itself, because without profit, humanity will stay “terra-bound” for centuries. Exploration is expensive, and governments alone can’t afford to foot the bill. If mining helium-3 or capturing asteroids helps fund missions that expand our knowledge, capabilities and improve our husbandry of our planet, that could be a good thing. But commercialisation must come with equity and transparency. Otherwise, we risk repeating the mistakes of our past, but on a truly cosmic scale.
The comparison I often like to make is with the East India Company: a private British enterprise that became so powerful it could shape the politics of nations and at times had an army twice the size of Britain’s. It began as trade; it ended in domination. Could a similar dynamic unfold locally in our solar system, where a handful of today’s tech giants and billionaires control access to orbit, communications, and eventually, extraterrestrial resources? A monopoly in space would be dangerous for humanity. The challenge is to encourage innovation and investment without ceding ownership of the cosmos to a few individuals or organisations.
The moon is a fascinating case study. For scientists, it serves as a natural laboratory – a place to study planetary history and test new technologies. But it’s also an appealing commercial target. There’s water ice at its poles, which can be split into hydrogen and oxygen to make rocket fuel. Its gravity is only one-sixth of Earth’s, making it a sound launch base for deeper space exploration. And some have suggested mining the lunar surface for helium-3, a potential fuel for future fusion reactors. The possibilities are tantalising. But who decides how the moon’s resources should be used, and by whom?
The Outer Space Treaty forbids national appropriation, but it doesn’t explicitly prohibit private companies from extracting resources. That ambiguity has prompted countries such as the United States and Luxembourg to pass their own space-mining laws, granting rights to their domestic firms. Yet if each nation makes its own rules, could the result be chaos like the early wild west – or even conflict? Space, by its nature, demands global regulation.
That’s why I believe we need to revive the spirit of the early treaties, not just in words but through action. Space should be regarded as a shared domain, similar to the high seas or, perhaps more fittingly, Antarctica. No one owns Antarctica. It is protected for peaceful research under an international agreement. That hasn’t stopped some countries from eyeing its minerals, but the principle remains: collective stewardship. Space warrants the same approach. The way we behave in the third era of space will define not just the future of exploration, but the kind of species we are. Do we carry our old rivalries and greed into the stars, or do we finally learn to act as one planet, united by curiosity and care?
As always, I’m hopeful. I trust the new generation to do a better job, and space has a way of putting things into perspective. When astronauts look down at Earth from orbit, they describe a sense of awe, known as the “overview effect”. They see our planet as it really is, fragile and shared. Perhaps if we can hold on to that view, even as we venture further out, we might be able to reach for the stars in a way that benefits everyone.
Dame Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock will deliver the 2025 Christmas Lectures from the Royal Institution.
Further reading
Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape, £9.99)
Who Owns the Moon? by AC Grayling (Oneworld, £10.99)
A City on Mars by Dr Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith (Penguin, £11.69)
The winter solstice is here today (Dec. 21), marking the shortest day and longest night of the year for the Northern Hemisphere.
As the astronomical start of winter, today is the moment the sun reaches its lowest point in the sky as seen from Earth. At noon, it appears directly over the Tropic of Capricorn, a latitude of 23.5 degrees south, creating the least daylight of the year for the Northern Hemisphere, which is tilted as far from the sun as it gets.
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With the sun tracking low across the horizon, its rays arrive at a shallow angle, spreading light over a larger area and reducing heating. It’s this lower solar angle, not our distance from the sun, that drives the coldest months of the year. But from this point forward, daylight will slowly begin to increase as we begin the slow march toward spring.
Earth’s seasons exist because our planet is tilted by 23.5 degrees on its axis. As Earth orbits the sun, different hemispheres lean toward or away from it, changing the intensity and duration of sunlight. When the Northern Hemisphere tilts toward the sun, we get summer; when it tilts away — as it does now — we have winter.
Meanwhile, the Southern Hemisphere is experiencing its summer solstice today, enjoying the longest day of the year.
Although many assume winter corresponds to Earth being farther from the sun, the opposite is true. Earth actually reaches perihelion, its closest point to the sun, early next month on Jan. 3, 2026. At that moment, our planet will sit about 91.4 million miles (147.1 million kilometers) from the sun, slightly closer than its average distance of 93 million miles (149.6 million km).
Many cultures mark the winter solstice as a moment of renewal and the symbolic return of light. Starting tomorrow, daylight begins to grow again, a reminder that brighter, warmer days are on the way.
SCIENCE
Glittering new James Webb telescope image shows an ‘intricate web of chaos’ — Space photo of the week
Webb and Chandra spot a cosmic car crash (Image credit: Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Infrared: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Webb; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare)
QUICK FACTS
What it is: The spiral galaxies NGC 2207 and IC 2163
Where it is: 120 million light-years away, in the constellation Canis Major
When it was shared: Dec. 1, 2025
One of JWST’s core tasks, according to NASA, is to provide scientists with a clear view of the centers of merging galaxies and thereby inform a new generation of models that will describe how galaxies interact and merge. NGC 2207 and IC 2163 are the perfect targets.
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In the image, JWST’s midinfrared data appear in white, gray and red, primarily showing the dust and cooler material within the galaxies’ cores and spiral arms. Chandra’s X-ray data are shown in blue, highlighting high-energy regions of the two galaxies — binary stars, the remnants of dead stars, and regions where supernovas have occurred.
The spectacular layered image of NGC 2207 and IC 2163 is one of four Chandra-based composites that were published at the same time. The other three include NGC 6334, a star-forming region known for its arcs of glowing gas and dust; supernova remnant G272.2-0.3, where hot X-ray-emitting gas fills an expanding shell; and a star system called R Aquarii, where a white dwarf star sucks material from a red giant star.
Each image merges Chandra’s view of the high-energy universe with data from JWST (launched in 2021), the Hubble Space Telescope (launched in 1990) and the Spitzer Space Telescope (active between 2003 and 2020), as well as from ground-based telescopes.
For more sublime space images, check out our Space Photo of the Week archives.
Netflix is one of the best streaming services available and Stranger Things is one of its flagship shows. So, to celebrate the final season coming to the small screen, and the holiday season too, we’ve rounded up the best Stranger Things gifts on the market.
Here, you’ll find a range of gifts from clothes to collectibles to trinkets, replicas and more. The holiday season is here and the final episodes of Stranger Things will air on Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve, so there’s never been a better time to search for the best Stranger Things gifts out there. While we haven’t reviewed any of the items we’ve highlighted, we wouldn’t include them if we didn’t recommend having them.
Best Stranger Things Gifts We Recommend
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A paraplegic engineer from Germany blasted off on a dream-come-true rocket ride with five other passengers on Saturday, leaving her wheelchair behind to float in space while beholding Earth from on high.
Severely injured in a mountain bike accident seven years ago, Michaela Benthaus became the first wheelchair user in space, launching from west Texas with Jeff Bezos’s company Blue Origin. She was accompanied by a retired SpaceX executive also born in Germany, Hans Koenigsmann, who helped organize and, along with Blue Origin, sponsored her trip. Their ticket prices were not divulged.
An ecstatic Benthaus said she laughed all the way up – the capsule soared more than 65 miles (105km) – and tried to turn upside down once in space.
“It was the coolest experience,” she said shortly after landing.
The 10-minute space-skimming flight required only minor adjustments to accommodate Benthaus, according to the company. That’s because the autonomous New Shepard capsule was designed with accessibility in mind, “making it more accessible to a wider range of people than traditional spaceflight”, said Blue Origin’s Jake Mills, an engineer who trained the crew and assisted them on launch day.
Among Blue Origin’s previous space tourists: those with limited mobility and impaired sight or hearing, and a pair of 90-year-olds.
For Benthaus, Blue Origin added a patient transfer board so she could scoot between the capsule’s hatch and her seat. The recovery team also unrolled a carpet on the desert floor after touchdown, providing immediate access to her wheelchair, which she left behind at liftoff. She practiced in advance, with Koenigsmann taking part with the design and testing. An elevator was already in place at the launch pad to ascend the seven stories to the capsule perched atop the rocket.
Benthaus, 33, part of the European Space Agency’s graduate trainee program in the Netherlands, experienced snippets of weightlessness during a parabolic airplane flight out of Houston in 2022. Less than two years later, she took part in a two-week simulated space mission in Poland.
“I never really thought that going on a spaceflight would be a real option for me because even as like a super healthy person, it’s like so competitive, right?” she told the Associated Press ahead of the flight.
Her accident dashed whatever hope she had. “There is like no history of people with disabilities flying to space,” she said.
When Koenigsmann approached her last year about the possibility of flying on Blue Origin and experiencing more than three minutes of weightlessness on a space hop, Benthaus thought there might be a misunderstanding. But there wasn’t, and she immediately signed on.
It’s a private mission for Benthaus with no involvement by the European Space Agency (ESA), which this year cleared reserve astronaut John McFall, an amputee, for a future flight to the International Space Station. The former British Paralympian lost his right leg in a motorcycle accident when he was a teenager.
An injured spinal cord means Benthaus can’t walk at all, unlike McFall, who uses a prosthetic leg and could evacuate a space capsule in an emergency at touchdown by himself. Koenigsmann was designated before flight as her emergency helper; he and Mills lifted her out of the capsule and down the short flight of steps at flight’s end.
“You should never give up on your dreams, right?” Benthaus urged after touchdown.
Benthaus was adamant about doing as much as she could by herself. Her goal is to make not only space accessible to disabled people, but to improve accessibility on Earth too.
While getting lots of positive feedback within “my space bubble”, she said outsiders aren’t always as inclusive.
“I really hope it’s opening up for people like me, like I hope I’m only the start,” she said.
Besides Koenigsmann, Benthaus shared the ride with business executives and investors, and a computer scientist. They raised Blue Origin’s list of space travelers to 86.
Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon, created Blue Origin in 2000 and launched its first passenger spaceflight in 2021. The company has since delivered spacecraft to orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida, using the bigger and more powerful New Glenn rocket, and is working to send landers to the moon.
A rare dinosaur discovery sheds new light on the evolution of flight. Fossils of dinosaurs found with well-preserved feathers suggest that some of these animals were no longer capable of flight. The researchers explain that even a detail as subtle as how feathers are replaced can dramatically reshape our understanding of how flight evolved, revealing […]
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As Avatar: Fire and Ash hits cinemas worldwide, we figured now is the perfect time to step back and take a look at director James Cameron’s entire sci-fi slate, ranking them from worst to best.
The Canadian filmmaker has carved out an iconic status in the movie industry for his visual effects artistry, incredible research, and extraordinary storytelling – and while The Terminator might be the first sci-fi title that comes to mind, it actually wasn’t his debut.
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We’re not adding Avatar: Fire & Ash to the list just yet — we need to stew on it before we can firmly slot it into the rankings — but otherwise, here’s every James Cameron sci-fi movie ranked, worst to best.
6. The Abyss
The Abyss | Remastered 4K In Theaters | Official Trailer – YouTube
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Release date: August 9, 1989 | Cast: Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Michael Biehn | Rotten Tomatoes: 76% on the Tomatometer
The deep sea is scary enough, but you know what makes it even scarier? Finding aliens down there. Unfortunately for Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, — starring as estranged husband and wife, Bud and Lindsey — their passion for diving takes them on a horrifyingly claustrophobic adventure to the depths of the ocean.
When a nuclear submarine disappears, the crew of a civilian oil rig goes on a search and rescue mission with jaw-dropping consequences. For James Cameron, who’d already risen to fame with The Terminator and Aliens, it was a watery shift that no one saw coming. And, unfortunately, it wasn’t a massive hit at the time (though it still won an Oscar for best visual effects).
More recently, though, it’s become a well-loved sci-fi pick, with a revised (and extended to a hefty 171 minutes) version that viewers are even more eager to dive right into and experience the unexpected.
Cameron tells a fantastically tense sci-fi tale, gripping audiences with the heart-wrenching relationship of Bud and Lindsey, and the romantic tension that builds throughout is a welcome reprieve from the intense water-dwelling extraterrestrials. Nothing like a fear for human life to put your love into perspective, right?
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5. Avatar: The Way of Water
Avatar: The Way of Water | Official Trailer – YouTube
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Release date: December 16, 2022 | Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang | Rotten Tomatoes: 76% on the Tomatometer
13 years after Avatar stormed onto the big screen, the sequel arrived. And it says a lot about Cameron’s abilities as a director that it felt like no time had passed at all. Jake Sully has fully integrated himself into his life as a Na’vi, still with Neytiri, and now with a family to look after. Unfortunately, they don’t get their ‘happily ever after’ as humanity returns to Pandora. So instead, they get to star in another exhilarating action movie.
Once again, Cameron intertwines the pillars of his directorial work: outstanding visuals, epic storytelling, and an unwavering ability to create tension. VFX is the cornerstone of a movie like Avatar, transforming actors into their Na’vi form and formulating their lives in a whole new world. Cameron’s always had bigger plans for Avatar, though, telling Variety: “We were working on three scripts and then it turned into four.”
In fact, Avatar: Fire and Ash is the second half of the original The Way of Water script. With plans for another sequel, that kind of freedom and ability to plan ahead is something most directors can only dream of. For Cameron, it’s a well-deserved reality.
4. The Terminator
THE TERMINATOR (1984) | Official Trailer | MGM – YouTube
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Release date: October 26, 1984 | Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Biehn, Linda Hamilton | Rotten Tomatoes: 90% on the Tomatometer
We’ve been talking about The Terminator for years. I even ranked The Terminator movies back in 2022 – and it’s still an absolute pleasure to discuss. And yet, it’s in fourth place on this list, a testament to just how strong Cameron’s sci-fi chops are.
Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as The Terminator, a time-travelling cyborg on a mission to take out one Sarah Connor. Why? Well, because one day she’s destined to become the mother of humankind’s salvation, and as far as The Terminator is concerned, that can’t happen.
Not only is The Terminator a bona fide sci-fi classic, but it’s the first major work of Cameron’s career, and its success was the spark to sent him on the path to directorial superstardom. Up until this point, Cameron had been mainly working in visual effects, and he poured everything he’d learned up to this point into The Terminator, bringing the entire story to life in a way that’s still incredible to watch to this day.
3. Avatar
Avatar | Official Trailer (HD) | 20th Century FOX – YouTube
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Release date: December 18, 2009 | Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez | Rotten Tomatoes: 81% on the Tomatometer
Cinematically breathtaking, deeply immersive, and the highest-grossing movie of all time, Avatar is a piece of cinematic history. It feels almost criminal to place it third, but perhaps Cameron shouldn’t be so good at directing sci-fi movies. Avatar is the first movie I saw in 3D in the cinema, and I distinctly remember feeling like if I just reached out, I could touch the falling leaves of Pandora.
Avatar sees Jake Sully, a paraplegic veteran, on a mission to the moon Pandora, in an entirely new form, adopting that of the Na’vi people. But while he’s there to gather a rare resource, he falls in love and vows to protect Pandora and the Na’vi as his own.
The groundbreaking use of 3D technology was one of the main reasons Avatar was such and is still such a huge success, but beyond that, it just tells such a compelling and relatable tale.
2. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers – YouTube
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Release date: July 3, 1991 | Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick | Rotten Tomatoes: 91% on the Tomatometer
Terminator 2: Judgment Day holds the top spot amongst the best Terminator movies, and it’s also arguably one of the best sequels to any movie, ever. Acting as Cameron’s own conclusion to the Terminator franchise (disputes over rights saw his directorial ties severed after this), it’s a sequel that took everything about the first movie and made it even better.
In Terminator 2, Arnie returns as the T-800, but this time as a reprogrammed good cyborg protecting a young John Connor. That leaves a gap for a bad cyborg to take his place, and that’s where Robert Patrick’s T-1000 comes into play.
Action-packed and full of robotic terror, Terminator 2 is the T-800’s redemption arc perfectly translated onto the big screen with Cameron’s dedication to telling a perfectly paced story. And, by this point, Cameron has sci-fi thrills down to a tee, building on his work from the first Terminator movie. It’s not quite the best sci-fi movie he’s ever made, though; that title goes to…
1. Aliens
Aliens (1986) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers – YouTube
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Release date: July 18, 1986 | Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Carrie Henn, Bill Paxton | Rotten Tomatoes: 94% on the tomatometer
Stop your grinnin’ and drop your linen! You knew it was going to be Aliens.
Picking up a sequel when you didn’t direct the previous title is a hard task, but Cameron’s bold decision gave us a bigger and (arguably) better Alien movie than the original. In fact, between this and T2, Cameron might be the best sequel director out there.
For Aliens, the xenomorphs are back. We all knew it would happen, but none more so than Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), who returns after a deep freeze to find that big corporation Weyland-Yutani is very close to rattling their nest again.
And here comes Cameron’s absolute genius in the director’s chair, building on the sci-fi horror of the first with visually terrifying xenomorphs, suffocating tension, and world-building prowess that truly takes you away from reality. Ellen Ripley may have started as a character that Cameron didn’t have a say in, but he transformed her role into an Oscar nomination-worthy performance, cemented in a sci-fi world that you’d be primed to visit again and again.
Holiday Special 2025 – A Look Back at 2025 in Space! – YouTube
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On Episode 190 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik look back at the past year in space — its ups, its downs, its all-arounds.
But there are a lot of other stories and we’ve done our best to stuff as many as we can into this virtual Christmas space stocking! Please join us for this year-end roundup!
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Space news of the week
Model Falcon 9!
Finally, did you know you can launch your own SpaceX rocket? Model rocket maker Estes’ stunning scale model of a Falcon 9 rocket that you can pick up now. The launchable model is a detailed recreation of the Falcon 9 and retails for $149.99. You can save 10% by using the code IN-COLLECTSPACE at checkout, courtesy of our partners collectSPACE.com.
About This Week In Space
Join Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik from Space.com as they tackle those questions and more each week on Friday afternoons. You can subscribe today on your favorite podcatcher.
Host of This Week In Space on TWiT
Host of This Week In Space on TWiTRod Pyle
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Rod Pyle is an author, journalist, television producer and Editor-in-Chief of Ad Astra magazine. He has written 18 books on space history, exploration, and development, including Space 2.0, Innovation the NASA Way, Interplanetary Robots, Blueprint for a Battlestar, Amazing Stories of the Space Age, First On the Moon, and Destination Mars
In a previous life, Rod produced numerous documentaries and short films for The History Channel, Discovery Communications, and Disney. He also worked in visual effects on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and the Battlestar Galactica reboot, as well as various sci-fi TV pilots. His most recent TV credit was with the NatGeo documentary on Tom Wolfe’s iconic book The Right Stuff.
This Week In Space co-host
This Week In Space co-hostTariq Malik
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Responsible for Space.com’s editorial vision, Tariq Malik has been the Editor-in-Chief of Space.com since 2019 and has covered space news and science for 18 years. He joined the Space.com team in 2001, first as an intern and soon after as a full-time spaceflight reporter covering human spaceflight, exploration, astronomy and the night sky. He became Space.com’s managing editor in 2009. As on-air talent has presented space stories on CNN, Fox News, NPR and others.
Tariq is an Eagle Scout (yes, he earned the Space Exploration merit badge), a Space Camp veteran (4 times as a kid, once as an adult), and has taken the ultimate “vomit comet” ride while reporting on zero-gravity fires. Before joining Space.com, he served as a staff reporter for The Los Angeles Times covering city and education beats. He has journalism degrees from the University of Southern California and New York University.