This week, in Washington, DC, the Humans 2 Mars Summit was held, organized by Explore Mars, Inc., a non-profit organization that aims to promote sending humans to Mars within the next two decades. Inevitably, among the many speeches those of NASA’s heads such as Administrator Charles F. Bolden, Jr. were the highlight. He stated that if humanity is to survive until the distant future it must learn to survive on other worlds.
Graphene (Image ©AlexanderAlUS) is an extraordinary material that has such properties that it’s considered as potentially revolutionary in the world of electronics but also in other fields. So far, the problem was the complexity of graphene production but now a group of researchers led by Jonathan Coleman of Trinity College Dublin has published a research that illustrates a cheap method of industrial production of this material.
The Earth Day is an event dedicated to the support of the defense of the environment. Rightly so, that makes us think about issues such as pollution but on the occasion of Earth Day 2014 there was also the presentation of the data collected between 2000 and 2013 about 26 large explosions in Earth’s atmosphere caused by asteroid disintegration.
The novel “The Apocalypse Codex” by Charles Stross was published for the first time in 2012. It won the Locus Award for the fantasy category. It’s part of the Laundry series and follows “The Fuller Memorandum”.
Bob Howard survived a series of more or less apocalyptic events while he was in the service of the Laundry. For this reason, he’s sent to a course of managemente and leadership needed for the type of work he’ll have to perform after he gets promoted within the organization.
In his new role, Bob has to investigate Raymond Schiller. a tele-evangelist the Laundry consider too interested in the British Prime Minister. He must act as a liaison between the organization and Persephone Hazard and Johnny McTavish, two external “consultants” who sometimes do the dirty work for the Laundry. When the three of them get stuck in the USA isolated from any help, as usual Bob must improvise to avoid the apocalypse.
NASA has confirmed that the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) space probe concluded its mission, which began in September 2013, crashing on the dark side of the Moon. This is the normal end of this type of missions as the purpose is to avoid that a probe might become a space wreck with the risk of it being drawn back to the Earth’s orbit causing potential dangers.
