I think we should build our first offworld backup on the Moon. We can start by storing seeds there, similar to the Svalbard seed vault in Norway. Within a few years we should have easy access to the Moon, and then it will be easy to do. The lunar caves are naturally at the right temperature. Add a vacuum sealed packet of dried seeds to a rover that explores a suitable lunar cave, and leave it there at the end of the mission, inside the rover, and that's it.That's the start of a future seed vault. From small beginnings ... 

Elon Musk says there are two futures, to stay on Earth and eventually go extinct, or to become a "multi-planetary species". He says Mars is our "plan B". But there is a third possibility. 

SpaceX have a striking video showing Mars spinning faster and faster, transforming from the current red Mars to a planet with a small ocean and with the deserts tinged with green in seven revolutions.

Of course that is poetic exaggeration - it wouldn't terraform in a week. So how long would it take? Science fiction enthusiasts who have read Kim Stanley Robinson's "Mars Trilogy" may remember that in his book, it is terraformed in a couple of centuries. But that's science fiction, not a terraforming blue print.

We have been sending missions to Mars since the Mariner 4 flyby in 1964, and our first successful landing was Viking 1 in 1976, So, why can't astrobiologists answer the question definitively, when you ask them if there is life on Mars? 

 Well, perhaps it's because we haven’t looked.

You might think, 

So Elon Musk's Tesla roadster is now in an orbit that takes it right out to the asteroid belt not far from Ceres. And what a thrilling launch it was with the two boosters landing so perfectly choreographed. It was nearly flawless. Only one minor hiccup, that the core booster missed the barge and crashed into the water, probably at around 300 mph, scattering the barge with shrapnel. They will surely fix that too with future launches.

If any of you haven't seen it yet, here is the launch video archived by SpaceX.

This has been running in numerous sensationalist press stories and other outlets with less careful journalists. It’s all based on a story in Undark by a journalist promoting their new book. And it is full of nonsense, utter codswallop. Here is the original story:

We get a regular announcment by the bulletin of Atomic Scientists at this time of year every year. It doesn't mean anything is going to happen soon. Indeed their focus is on the long term, not the short term. For instance the Cuban missile crisis didn’t lead to a shift in the clock. It is nothing to do with any short term politics about Norht Korea or Iran. Nowadays they also include global warming as an issue and the worst effects of that will be towards the end of the century. So when it says “2 minutes” - those minutes are not an actual time period. It’s a metaphor, indeed hyperbole (exaggerated analogy for emotional effect). The Doomsday Clock is neither about Doomsday and nor is it a clock.