A Guide to Mars, Terrible Exoplanets and The Idea of Photography
What I've been writing and reading this week
How Not to Die on Mars
Welcome to Mars! It’s cold, dusty and hasn’t had running water for four billion years. We’re just sure you’re going to love it. From the stunning highlands of Mons Olympus to the frigid depths of Hellas Planitia, Mars has everything an intrepid traveller could dream of, and more.
Make sure you come prepared for some serious adventure travel. Mars has a grand total of zero hotels and even fewer restaurants and bars. You’ll need a tent, preferably one hardened against harmful radiation, and decent supplies of food, enough to last a year or two until the next flight home.
Don’t even think about going out for some nightlife. There isn’t any — and even if there were, the serious chill that nightfall brings would put off even the most arduous party animals. Leave your party gear at home and pack a few more pairs of thermal underwear, you’re going to need them.
The Five Worst Planets in the Galaxy
Life on Earth has it good. Though our planet has gone through periods of ups and downs — it once spent millions of years buried in ice — for the most part things here are pretty stable. Summer might be hot, sure, but it’s not so hot the Earth itself melts into a fiery pool of lava.
Not every world is so fortunate. We don’t need to look far to find an example: Venus, our nearest neighbour, is a hellish planet, hot enough to melt lead. Mercury does little better, its slight atmosphere offering no protection from a searing Sun. Those planets far from the Sun may have it even worse, spending eternity in a frozen darkness.
These examples are nothing compared to what can happen when things get really bad. Over the last few decades astronomers have trained ever more powerful telescopes on nearby stars, hunting for glimpses of distant planets. They’ve found thousands, in almost every shape and size imaginable.
The Idea of Photography
How do you capture a moment, and record it for someone else to see? For most of human history there were two answers to this question. You could describe it, through speaking or writing. Or, if you knew how, you could draw or paint the scene.
Neither solution was particularly trustworthy. Words are easily distorted, and drawings take time and depend heavily on the skill of the artist. Details are inevitably missed, lost, or warped. What was needed — what was missing — was a way of drawing with light alone.
The quest to find such a technique lasted for centuries. The journey was long and winding, taking in philosophers, alchemists, businessmen, spies and fraudsters. But eventually, around 150 years ago, mankind succeeded, and learned how to draw with light.
Best of the Rest…
Some thinkers have suggested we are approaching a point in time they call the singularity - a moment when technology advances so rapidly we are no longer in control. The idea has always seemed somewhat unlikely to me. Though it is true that the rate of technological development is increasing, there are limits on what can be achieved. Ted Chiang’s article in the New Yorker presents some interesting arguments against the possibility.
Astronomers have spent decades hunting for alien radio signals, with no success. Now they are starting to take a new approach: looking for signs of alien megaengineering. Some speculate that aliens might build massive arrays of solar panels around stars to capture as much energy as possible. Mordechai Rorvig covers the ongoing search in the New Scientist.
Anti-science misinformation is rapidly spreading around the world, seen in conspiracy theories around 5G and vaccines. Facebook and other social media platforms have played a major part in amplifying this trend. In the MIT Technology Review, Karen Hao profiles Joaquin Quiñonero Candela, one of the key figures behind the algorithms responsible for spreading such misinformation.
So much reporting around health, science and space exploration is unrealistic, hyperbolic and misleading. These are complicated topics, and there are often no easy or straight forward answers. Instead what is needed is analysis, discussion and an exploration of the possible ways forward.
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