"Think binary. When matter meets antimatter, both vanish, into pure energy. But both existed; I mean, there was a condition we'll call 'existence.' Think of one and minus one. Together they add up to zero, nothing, nada, niente, right? Picture them together, then picture them separating peeling apart. . Now you have something, you have two somethings, where once you had nothing." -John Updike
Looking out at our Universe, at the myriad of stars, galaxies, and, well, "stuff" in our Universe, it's hard not to ask yourself where it all came from.
Complementing archived observations over two decades with new observations of the sky, astronomers have found a clutch of free-floating rogue planets planets not orbiting stars, just out there in space on their own in a nearby star-forming region. And it's not just a few: They tagged from 70–170 of them!
"Not even light can escape such hollowing, this huge mass in a small space. Even the Milky Way with its open arms is said to have a black hole at its heart." -Susan B.A. Somers-Willett
Our Milky Way is home to us all. With its hundreds of billions of stars, massive spiral arms, dust lanes, and orbiting globular clusters, it's no wonder that nearly everything we see in the night sky is contained within it.