China planning $1.5bn theme park that will take visitors to space in weather balloons

A large Chinese entrepreneurial investor is keen to get the jump on Virgin Galactic and launch trips to the edge of space using weather balloons from China. KuangChi Science has announced plans to invest ¥10m (yuan - $1.5m, £1.12m) into developing a futuristic theme park in Hangzhou province called Future Valley, which comes with a series of rides aiming to let people experience what it would feel like to be an astronaut in space. Sep 7, 2016

Astronomers make rare discovery that could help explain Milky Way formation

The Terzan 5 cluster could shed light on how the Milky Way was formed after an Italian-led team of astronomers found it contained two very different types of stars; some very young and some very old. The 7 billion year age gap between the two different types of stars suggests that star formation in Terzan 5 was not continuous but happened in two very distinct bursts. Sep 7, 2016