Robert Inventor

We've had prophecies of the world ending for centuries. But now we face countless fake and exaggerated end of world stories based on science and pseudoscience, which are spread, together with out and out hoaxes through fake news sites and youtube. These stories distract us from the real issues that we face and can actually do something about. Also they cause most people to switch off and ignore the issues rather than get more engaged, while a few people become terrified by these stories, and even suicidal, especially young teenagers. You'd be amazed how many people find these stories scary. There is a lot we can do to help with this situation. I will look at what scientists can do first, then look at what journalists can do, then a few other ideas.

This is something you hear said so often - that we risk being hit by an asteroid that could make humans extinct. But do we really? This is the article I’m commenting on, a recently breaking news story: Earth woefully unprepared for surprise comet or asteroid, Nasa scientist warns. Some are already worrying that it means that we are all due to die in the near future from an asteroid impact. Well, no, it doesn't mean that. So, what is the truth behind it? The source of all this is a comment by Dr Joseph Nuth who warns:

How can we predict the climate so far ahead when we can't do an accurate weather forecast even ten days ahead? Well it is remarkable that we can forecast our weather even one day ahead, and by looking at how the forecasters do that we can begin to understand how the models can work over longer timescales. When I was a child in the UK in the 1960s, with our unpredictable weather, a cautious person would take rain gear with them almost no matter what the forecasters said. Even as late as 1987 we had Michael Fish's famous weather blooper. This broadcast is so famous here that it starred in the Olympics 2012 opening ceremony.

How can we predict the climate so far ahead when we can't do an accurate weather forecast even ten days ahead? Well it is remarkable that we can forecast our weather even one day ahead, and by looking at how the forecasters do that we can begin to understand how the models can work over longer timescales. When I was a child in the UK in the 1960s, with our unpredictable weather, a cautious person would take rain gear with them almost no matter what the forecasters said. Even as late as 1987 we had Michael Fish's famous weather blooper. This broadcast is so famous here that it starred in the Olympics 2012 opening ceremony.

Donald Trump has just been elected as US president, as a Republican climate skeptic. So if you are from the US you may get the impression that this is a political debate between “lefties” who think climate change is real and “righties” who think it isn’t. But it’s only in the US that there still is a political debate at all. Here in the UK for instance it has cross party support, and we have a right wing government who have just ratified the treaty. For us, it was a matter for debate a decade or two ago, but the debate was already over some years back. We've decided action is needed, and there were many things we could have done, but the main thing was to do something, and the Paris agreement was what they came up with.

"What area on Mars is the most interesting for us?". My answer to this question isn’t an impressive geological feature like Olympus Mons or Valles Marineres. For me, it’s a rather unremarkable seeming crater, Richardson crater near the south pole. Let me explain why.First this shows where it is. It is close to the south pole - this is an elevation map and I’ve trimmed it down to the southern hemisphere. You can see Olympus Mons as the obvious large mountain just right of middle, and Hellas Basin as the big depression middle left. Richardson crater is about half way between them and much further south.

If Elon Musk and Robert Zubrin have their way, we may get migrations of hopefuls setting off from Earth to Mars to colonize what they believe to be a "New World". If so, what they find there will be far more like the nineteenth century Antarctica than the seventeenth century "New World". Indeed, even the climbers who tackled Mount Everest in the twentieth century explored a far more hospitable place than Mars. You could breathe the air on the summit with only the need for an oxygen mask. It's also bitterly cold on Mars - a night in the Martian tropics is colder than the coldest night on Everest in the middle of winter. It's so cold that the air often starts to freeze out as dry ice at night.

The recent crash of the ExoMars Schiaperelli lander on Mars highlights how difficult it is to land there. So why is that? Why are landings on Mars so complex? And why do they fail so often? ESA is getting somewhat bad press for this. In my view it validates the foresight of their approach, to send a test lander first. It also highlights the risk for manned missions to Mars and the planetary protection issues with humans to the Mars surface, which I've written about many times.

Since President Kennedy, the Pesident by tradition sets long term objectives for human spaceflight for NASA. President Bush's vision was a return to the Moon. President Obama's vision treats the Moon as of so little interest, that the next step on the way to their long term goal of Mars is to pluck a boulder from an asteroid to create a new moonlet orbiting the Moon for astronauts to visit. With a new President, there is often a change of human space flight policy. The Moon is far more scientifically interesting than we realized at the time of Apollo, not only more interesting than a boulder from an asteroid, as we will see, you could go as far as to say that the level of science interest for the Moon is not dissimilar from that of Mars.

Summary: Legally the president makes the decision and everyone else then scurries around and follows his or her orders; in practice it's not going to be that simple in peace time especially. He or she doesn’t just have a button to press and the weapons fire; it’s a figurative expression. A president who gave that order in peacetime would surely be treated as temporarily deranged and ignored. They would need broad support, from their defense secretary especially.

Do you have a ten year old daughter who asked you "can we build a bomb shelter?" and who has nightmares about the world ending? Have you watched a timer on the online version of a major broadsheet newspaper count down the hours and minutes to what they say is the end of the world, and believed it? Have you stared at the sun, knowing that it could damage your eyes, to try to see a second sun which you believe is going to end all life on Earth? Have you watched a lunar eclipse in fear that when the Moon turns red, everyone on Earth will die?There are many news stories every week that promote such anxiety. There are almost none that debunk these BS scenarios that many have come to believe to be true.

President Obama, if you love science, Please protect Mars life from contamination from EarthFor Future of Exobiology - MOON FIRST