Based on the extent to which uranium-238 and uranium-235 isotopes had decayed into their daughter isotopes lead-207 and lead-206, they say the solar system is 4.5682 billion years old. That's between 0.3 and 1.9 million years older than previous estimates, which relied mainly on the Allende meteorite that fell in Chihuahua, Mexico, in 1969.

Astronomers have found the most distant galaxy cluster ever seen: the sexily-named SXDF-XCLJ0218-0510.

In the case of this newly found cluster, the light we see left it 9.6 billion years ago - making it 400 million light years farther away than the next-most distant cluster ever seen. The Universe itself is only 13.7 billion years old, so we're seeing this structure as it was not too long after it formed.

In a series for the Discovery Channel the renowned astrophysicist said it was "perfectly rational" to assume intelligent life exists elsewhere.

"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," he said.

He explained: "We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet."

The US space agency (Nasa) plans just four further shuttle missions after this one - and all of them are planned to launch in daylight hours.

Endeavour's mission is an important moment for the European Space Agency's (Esa) contribution to the station project. Both the new modules were manufactured in Italy by Thales Alenia Space.

NASA says it successfully launched a rocket in Virginia as part of an experiment, and the blast may have caused dozens of people to report seeing strange lights in the sky.

About the time of the launch, dozens of people in the Northeast started calling local television stations to report seeing strange lights.