http://www.iflscience.com/space/plutos-close

pluto will always be a planet in my heart.

http://www.iflscience.com/magnified-image-faintest-galaxy-early-universe
 We were able to see the faintest galaxy in the early universe thanks to gravitational lensing.

http://www.iflscience.com/space/why-we-need-space-race-approach-saving-planet

This reminded me of our last lecture.

http://www.iflscience.com/space/twin-civilisations-how-life-exoplanet-could-spread-its-neighbour

This goes over how two civilizations could interact with one another.  For this to happen they would need to be nearby exoplanets.

http://www.iflscience.com/space/back-future-spacecraft-turns-orbital-junk-fuel

With an increasing amount of space junk scientists have found a way to use this space junk as fuel for a spaceship just as the DeLorean from "Back to the Future."  I wonder if these will create 1.21 gigawatts in power? They would do this by heating the debris to a high temperature into a plasma of positive ions and electrons. Using a net to catch the debris a rotating cylinder to grind into a powder then heated and passed through an electric field to create thrust.  This would allow for longer space missions and therefore much more research could be done.  

http://www.space.com/31030-cosmic-crashes-change-earth-composition.html

Earth formed by a collection of bits of matter in space that combined and with the help of heat formed an iron rich core.  A question posed is why earth has a different isotropic composition than it does a chemical composition.  This may be caused by primitive meteorites made of a mix of isotopes that collected.  The earth is low in silicon potassium and silicon and rich in magnesium, calcium and aluminum.  Expirements has modeled how a hot forming earth may have left the rocks of the earths crust rich in silicon and low in magnesiem but cosmic impacts may have taken off this crust leaving a low level of silicon with the escape of other elements.

http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/april-2015/natural-susys-last-stand) 

Supersymmetry is a possible extension to the Standard Model of Particle Physics that proposes particles in addition to the known, Standard Model particles. Supersymmetry is particularly interesting because it offers a potential WIMP candidate, meaning that it could explain the identity of dark matter. There are other justifications for supersymmetry, but its largest implication for astrophysics would be dark matter. 

According to the article, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN is about to investigate the remaining scenarios of ‘natural supersymmetry.’ There are many, many possible scenarios of supersymmetry, but it appears that these ‘natural’ versions are the nicest. They have the potential to answer questions like “Are all of the forces we know are just parts of a single unified force?” or “How is the Higgs boson so light?”, in addition to the question about dark matter’s identity. In these natural manifestations, he lightest supersymmetric particle (or sparticle) could be the dark matter particle. 

From 2010 to 2013, the LHC looked at some of the simplest versions of natural supersymmetry, but the article notes that millions of possible models exist that are still consistent with natural supersymmetry. While supersymmetry is very complicated, with over 100 free parameters, it looks like the Large Hadron Collider could bring us closer to finding the identity of dark matter within the next few years.