  We prove that every continuum of weight aleph_1 is a continuous image of the
Cech-Stone-remainder R^* of the real line. It follows that under CH the
remainder of the half line [0,infty) is universal among the continua of weight
c --- universal in the `mapping onto' sense.
  We complement this result by showing that
  1) under MA every continuum of weight less than c is a continuous image of
R^*
  2) in the Cohen model the long segment of length omega_2+1 is not a
continuous image of R^*, and
  3) PFA implies that I_u is not a continuous image of R^*, whenever u is a
c-saturated ultrafilter. We also show that a universal continuum can be gotten
from a c-saturated ultrafilter on omega and that it is consistent that there is
no universal continuum of weight c.
