We're approaching solar maximum — here’s what that means.

Associate professor of physics at UNLV, Dr. Jason Steffen, joined us with more.

More than 115 million Americans are expected to travel over the Christmas and New Year holidays — more than a 2% increase from the same time last year and the second-highest end-of-year forecast since 2000, according to AAA.

Humans knew the Earth was round before the availability of satellite imagery, despite some online questioning how Hollywood could have depicted Earth as spherical before satellites existed.

Shaving mere minutes off flight times might seem trivial on paper, but it can result in huge savings for airlines.

More than 800 airport hospitality workers walked off the job this morning, demanding better wages. It’s all happening on one of the busiest and most stressful travel days of the year. Millions of people will pass through LAX this Thanksgiving weekend.

One of the major US airlines is changing its boarding process to make it faster. But it could be even faster

Nothing drives away the holiday spirit -- and drives up blood pressure -- quite like a crowd of people trying to board an airplane, stow their carry-ons, and slide past each other to their middle seats before their flight takes off. A new boarding method that United Airlines rolled out last month has people thinking about all that lost time in new, excruciating detail. And while United claims their new boarding method will ease frustrations, a physics professor in Las Vegas says he has an even more efficient way.

NASA published new research detailing a distant system of planets, and one of the authors is UNLV astrophysicist Jason Steffen. This work provides a deeper understanding of our solar system’s history and adds to the existing catalog of known planets with richer detail. It has enabled astrophysicists to gain a better understanding of a distant planetary system of seven planets.

Scientists have recently discovered scores of free-floating worlds that defy classification. The new observations have forced them to rethink their theories of star and planet formation.

WILMA is no longer just a cartoon character from “The Flintstones.” In aviation circles, it’s shorthand for Windows, Middle and Aisle, United Airlines’s newly released passenger boarding system for flights on its single-aisle aircraft, mainly Boeing 737s, 757s and Airbus A320-type twin-engine jets.

Never arrive at your seat on the plane annoyed again or argue about the storage space for your luggage? A dream idea! Jason Steffen actually spends his working life unraveling the deepest secrets of the universe. He is an astrophysicist and studies exoplanets orbiting distant stars. In his free time, the super brain also occupied himself with another impenetrable mystery of the galaxy. What is the best way to board a plane? You can read his formula here.