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The Big Bang is the foremost explanation about the origin of the universe.

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The earliest known use of the term "pocket universe," which is an artificially-created universe that exists within another universe, was in 1946 in the book "Pocket Universes," by M. Leinster.

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Genetic engineering, which involves manipulating DNA, was coined in 1951 in "The Dragon's Island" by Jack Williamson.

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The Big Crunch is another theory about the end of the universe.

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Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis -- say that three times fast -- is a type of lung disease caused by inhaling very fine silicate or quartz dust.

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The Frivolous Theorem of Arithmetic says that almost all natural numbers are very, very, very large.

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Coined by James Blish in the story "Solar Plexus," a gas giant is a large gaseous planet with a solid core.

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The phrase faster-than-light, coined in 1947, comes from Murray Leinster's "Manless Worlds in Thrilling Wonder Stories."

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The term gravitics, the science of controlling or studying gravity or anti-gravity, was coined in "Tricky Tonnage" by Malcom Jameson.

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Buckminsterfullerene is the most common naturally-occurring fullerene molecule that happens to resemble a soccer ball.

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The six noble gases are elements found on the periodic table: helium (He), neon (Ne), argon (Ar), krypton (Kr), xenon (Xe) and radon (Rn).

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"Test tube babies," now an outdated term, are babies conceived via in vitro fertilization (IVF).

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Positronic means it's powered by positrons, and was first coined by Issac Asimov in the story, "Reason" in the Astounding Science Fiction collection of 1941.

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Also known as an O'Neill colony, the cylindrical design of this space settlement was conceived by American physicist Gerard K. O'Neill in his book "The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space."

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This iron-based alloy is virtually indestructible. It's also artificial and appears in Marvel Comics. For instance, Wolverine has adamantium-plated retractable claws.

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This radioactive element (Th) has an atomic number of 90, which means it's a heavyweight on the periodic table. Apt, for being named after the Norse god of thunder, Thor.

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Yet another theory about the end of the Universe. This one suggests continual rapid exansion of the cosmos could ultimately destroy everything.

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A Blue Shift describes changes that decrease a wavelength of light.

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Council of Giants is a ring of 12 large galaxies.

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The term can be traced back not to scientists, but to science fiction author H.G. Wells, in the 1923 novel "Men Like Gods."

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Terraforming is the transformation of another planet's environment into one that can support life as on Earth. This word was coined by Jack Williamson in 1942, in the science-fiction short story "Collision Orbit."

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Coined in the mid-20th century, collapsium refers to a variety of extremely high-density substances.

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Xanthopsia is a deficiency in your vision, which makes objects appear yellowed.

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The center of a galaxy that's made of mostly old stars is called a galactic bulge.

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Sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia is the scientific word for an ice cream headache.

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Growling stomach? Those gurgles are known as borborygmi.

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Horripilation is the scientific term for goose bumps.

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Need a device to view small time intervals, past or future? Try a chronoscope, an idea coined by Isaac Asimov in his short story "The Dead Past" in 1956.

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The word "neural" was first used in the 1955 story "Grandpa" by James H. Schmitz.

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It's hypothetical, but it's not science fiction. NASA estimates that nearly 70 percent of the universe is made of up dark energy.

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Zero gravity is a real thing, but the term didn't come from the science community. Jack Binder was the first to use the phrase, in his graphic novel "If Science Reached the Earth's Core."

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Introduced by mathematician Arthur Cayley (1852), "pfaffian" was named for the mathematician Johann Friedrich Pfaff who preceded him.

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In 1970 author Gregory Benford named a destructive computer program "VIRUS" in his story "The Scarred Man."

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An event horizon is the point near a black hole where the gravitational pull is too strong to escape it.

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Heat Death of the Universe is a theory explaining the end of the universe.