Vincent Plant lists six exoplanets that humanity could populate in the near future.
mars
Mars-ter of Worlds
Launched: May 5th, 2018. Estimated Landing: Nov. 26, 2018. Landing site: Elysium Planitia, Mars. A grand sum of $814 million has been pumped into the InSight project for over 2 years. The insight programme is a Mars lander, sent out to give the red planet its first ever physical. It carries three instruments to […]
Watch this Space
Have you ever felt the need for speed? Want to run away from your exams? Tired of carrying your friends in Fortnite? Have no fear, for soon you’ll be hurtling towards lower earth orbit at around 2,000mph with Texas in your rear view mirror. For many, the idea of travelling into space seems like a […]
Life on Mars
Fancy a trip to Mars? Perhaps you’ve had quite enough of the housing situation in Exeter? Would you mind the 141 million mile commute to uni? Or maybe a change of scenery is in order? Not to worry, NASA has the answer. Since they sent up their first rover, the famous Pathfinder in 1997, NASA […]
To Boldly Go … or not
Picture the scene, populations rising, destruction of ecosystems and rampant global warming have made the world barren and uninhabitable. It’s the stuff of classic dystopian fiction but, given the state of the world, not outside the realms of possibility. Once this world is used up what happens next, perhaps we might look to the stars, […]
BEST OF TED: Your kids might live on Mars. Here’s how they’ll survive.
Stephen Petranek’s TED talk ‘Your kids might live on Mars. Here’s how they’ll survive’ details how humankind will one day become a spacefaring species. Petranek is a writer and technologist who focuses on how emerging technologies could benefit our future lives. Petranek’s talk can be found on ted.com under the ‘science’ section. Journalist Stephen Petranek […]
Second thoughts: immortality
In José Saramago’s book ‘Death at Intervals’, everyone in one country stops dying. This leads to thousands of living dead, a mafia forming to sneak people over the border to die and general chaos ensues. Saramago addresses the issue with immortality that no one thinks about; even if people stop dying, they do not stop […]
Review: The Martian
Ridley Scott delivers a thrilling film and a faithful adaptation of the bestselling 2011 novel. The Martian is fallible, but with Matt Damon delivering a strong and varied performance, you probably won’t care too much about the problems that blight many of the supporting characters. The Martian follows a crew of astronauts who have to […]
There’s water on Mars
The chances of anything coming from Mars are 1,000,000 to one, they said. Well, those chances have been slashed considerably after NASA‘s most recent announcement, which is the discovery of liquid water on the surface of the Red Planet. These streams and rivulets leave long, dark stains across the Martian surface, before they dry up […]
Investigating the Interstellar
2013 saw India launch a rocket to Mars. It also saw a third of its population living below the poverty line. Just why is India investing in a space program? What if the 16,000 skilled employees in space development worked on water sanitation? Why do we donate money to space-curious countries with a long way […]