One important role of science fiction is to provide an arena for thought-experiments, letting writers explore physics that cannot be placed in a real-world setting.

Anecdotal evidence of individual scientists inspired in their career choices by fiction has also been around since science fiction first emerged as a genre, however substantial studies into this phenomenon amongst professional astronomers have been limited.

Time travel is a wide-reaching topic in science fiction, but one recurring area of fascination is the predestination paradox - the idea that an event may only occur because of efforts to prevent it, or as a result of its own consequences.

Human settlement of space has been a given since the earliest science fiction stories were written. The High Frontier was an influential popular science book published in 1976 by an American physicist Gerard K O’Neill. The High Frontier had an enormous impact, and cylindrical space habitats have since acquired the name O’Neill Cylinders, both in fact and in fiction.

Supernovae, the explosions that end the lives of certain stars, are amongst the brightest and most dramatic events in the Universe. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they’ve attracted their fair degree of attention from the writers of science fiction.

One of the most evocative of human senses is our sense of smell. It is closely connected with memory recall, with the taste of food, and with the more “primitive” and instinctual regions of our hindbrains. Science fiction has explored odour - and in particular an oversensitivity to odours - in a number of ways.

Dan Dare: Pilot of the Future, in his journeys through the Solar System, has given us a fascinating snapshot of how our understanding of solar system habitability has changed. Here I take a look at Saturn's moon system and its very different representations in 1953 and 2017.

A running theme in science fiction is the idea that alien races are willing and eager to talk to us, but this is not an assumption that has gone unchallenged in science fiction, or indeed in our wider culture.

The vision of space portrayed in near-future science fiction often speaks to the hopes and fears of contemporary society. Children’s SF in particular can influence the scientific and technical innovators who might bring such visions to fruition. This week we take a look at the coherent vision of human space utilisation presented in the recent animated television series Thunderbirds are Go.

Fermi’s Paradox - the lack of alien contact despite the a Universe that should be teeming with life - has excited the interest of scientists as well as philosophers, and some of the many possible solutions have been explored both by popular science writers and the writers of science fiction.

Most science fiction tells fundamentally human stories, on human timescales. However sometimes science fiction authors venture into the longer timescales on which cosmic evolution itself unfolds.

Interstellar comets are rare and unusual visitors - but while they're alien, are they result of intelligences beyond our Solar System? It is a premise that has formed part of the science fiction repertoire for many years.

Given the essential role of the Sun in life on our world, perhaps its natural that a large body of solar system explores the concept of how life might survive on worlds without their own sun - rogue planets.

Tales of people under the sea are likely as old as humanity. In more recent times, fantasy has been succeeded by science fiction which explores what it would mean for humanity to live as natives in water, and how that might be achieved.

A bonus blog to celebrate a year of Cosmic Stories, detouring from science exploration to a brief survey of our host town in science fiction.

The concept of a scanner - a remote sensing device that can identify evidence of life at a distance - is a common staple of science fiction. While some science fiction takes this to an extreme, it’s neither a new idea nor one that is entirely divorced from science fact.

A lot of science fiction assumes we will adapt and use alien technologies, despite dramatic differences in their development and background physics. But how realistic is this?

In the mid twentieth century, young children were wowed by tales of heroism by a succession of space pilots with unlikely or alliterative names. But what was their attraction and impact?

Today we look at three stories, each of which imagines a single Earth astronaut stranded alone on the Martian surface, and considers what they tell us about changing conceptions of Martian habitability.

For the many young people who thrilled to the adventures of characters such as Dan Dare or Doctor Who, the factual information presented in Annual gift books may well have provided their first insights into the genuine science and sweeping discoveries which lay behind their idols.

In a universe in which faster-than-light travel is, to the best of our current underssanding, impossible, journeys to other stars are likely to be measured in decades or centuries rather than days or weeks.

If the laws of mathematics and science are the same everywhere in the Universe, then these might provide a key common ground for communication - as science fiction has explored.

The visual imagery of humans struggling with everyday objects many times their own size, or encountering usually benign animals as terrifying monsters, captures the imagination. Hence the popularity of the SF of miniaturisation.

Is it possible for individuals to own entire planets? Science fiction has explored this question more than once, in a range of different contexts.