In the video published on March 24, 2020, by the Vanity Fair magazine below, Canadian retired astronaut and former commander of the International Space Station (ISS), Chris Hadfield reviews space movies, including “Gravity” and “Interstellar”.
Category Archives: Science Fiction
“Impossible Engine” – it is impossible
A good rule of thumb: if you see a headline saying something “breaks the laws of physics” (i.e. the “Impossible Engine”) the headline is flat-out wrong.
Wandering Earth: rocket scientist explains how we could move our planet
Matteo Ceriotti, University of Glasgow In the Chinese science fiction film The Wandering Earth, recently released on Netflix, humanity attempts to change the Earth’s orbit using enormous thrusters in order to escape the expanding sun – and prevent a collision with Jupiter. The scenario may one day come true. In five billion years, the sun […]
Saturn on steroids: J1407b
The exoplanet J1407b is simply “Saturn on steroids”. If you read Isaac Asimov’s 1986 novel “Foundation and Earth”, you’ll remember how the main characters of the book (Councilman Golan Trevize, historian Janov Pelorat, and Gaian Bliss) were amazed by Saturn’s rings. They were thinking the gas giant with preeminent rings in old stories was just […]
5 Surprising Facts about Mars
For eons, skywatchers have been fascinated by the pale red dot that not only unpredictably moves backward in the night sky but also shines a compelling blood-red. Its color, indeed, is one of the first features we notice about Mars. It seizes our attention, and its compelling ambiguity has evoked a deep visceral reaction from […]
Exoplanet Travel Bureau by NASA – Interactive 3D Images
Will we ever visit other stars? Maybe, in the distant future, if humans won’t become extinct, our grand grand grand … (insert a hundred or a thousand “grand” here) children can stand on an exoplanet’s surface someday. But, we don’t have to wait. NASA has opened a new web page, an “Exoplanet Travel Bureau”, and we can, […]
Others Will Follow (Short Sci-Fi Film)
A great short science fiction film, “Others Will Follow”, created and directed by Andrew Finch and published on Vimeo, tells the story of a crewed Mars mission. An accident occurs and the spacecraft breaks apart, the last survivor (we don’t see what happens to the rest of the crew, but presumably they have died) manages […]
“Making Life Multiplanetary”: Musk reveals a new plan to colonize Mars
The billionaire founder of SpaceX, Elon Musk has revealed a new plan to colonize Moon and Mars with giant reusable spaceships. He provided an update on their Mars colonization plan at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) Notes 1 in Adelaide, Australia this week. Musk plans to send 1 million people to Mars using BFR Notes 2, and “making […]
Proxima Centauri b May Have Oceans
Proxima Centauri b, the Earth-like planet orbiting the red dwarf Proxima Centauri may have oceans, scientists say. The planet was discovered in August 2016 and caused excitement because it’s in the habitable zone of its star, and it’s rocky. And it’s in the Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to us! Researches of France’s National […]
Planet with Three Suns
On March 17, 1941, John W. Campbell, editor of Astounding Science Fiction, asked Isaac Asimov that: “What, if people see the stars once in a thousand of years?” Campbell has had read Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1836 essay “Nature” and Emerson was saying in the first chapter that “If the stars should appear one night in […]
