Mars

Santa Claus vs. Neo in the Martian Matrix

The 1964 holiday film Santa Claus Conquers The Martians has the distinction of constantly being named one of the worst films ever made. It also contains the acting debut of Pia Zadora, although that may be unrelated to its critical status. Instead this film was all about bringing “freedom” to poor Martian children who have…

io9 Kevin Kelly

Mars, Up Close And Glowing

Mars came its closest to Earth in years last night. The Hubble Space Telescope snapped this image using a series of exposures over 36 hours, when Mars was just 55 million miles away. If this image gets you all fired up, you can discuss Mars with Ray Bradbury and (maybe) Arthur C. Clarke at a…

io9 Charliejane

Martian Spiders Launch Dark Jets

New images give clues to the reasons for the “spiders” and “dark fans” that appear on Mars’ south pole every spring. Sunlight filters through the layer of dry ice covering the pole and turns the bottom layer to gas. The gas forms spider-shaped channels trying to escape the ice, and then erupts in fan-shaped jets…

io9 Charliejane

More Evidence for Water on Mars

Spirit, one of the Mars rovers, accidentally kicked up some dust with its unsteady wheel the other day, and revealed a possible history of water-saturated land on Mars. The wheel-kick laid bare some white sand deposits whose mineral composition is nearly pure silica — the kind of thing normally left behind by hot springs. Image…

io9 Annalee Newitz

Class War Between Mars And Venus

A new web TV show could pick up where Firefly left off, telling gritty stories of class warfare on human colonies. Venus Rises is filming now in New Jersey. Four episodes will be available next year on national video-on-demand cable channel Illusion TV as well the show’s own site. One glance at the first episode’s…

Television Charliejane

Building An Ice Castle On Mars

Martian architecture will have to be different from any existing styles on Earth, say 53 percent of respondents in this poll at NewMars. But weirdly, 15 percent believe that we’ll build in “a mixture of Greek and Roman style” on Mars. And another 9 percent each believe we’ll build in an “Egyptian” or “Celtic” style.…

io9 Charliejane

Witness The Evidence For Life On Mars

This Martian meteorite, which goes on display today at the Natural History Museum in London, crashed in Egypt nearly a hundred years ago. It was part of the great Martian rockfall of 1911, which started with the appearance of a cloud and some detonations. Local residents were terrified when they were hit with a rain…

io9 Charliejane

Wind Power Sucks But Brain Damage Is Okay

I’ve got some good science news for you, and some bad. Wind power may not be a clean energy source of the future after all. Though Sweden has just built a massive wind farm at sea, most countries have found wind an inefficient and unreliable energy source. [New York Times] Why brain damage is okay…

io9 Annalee Newitz

MARS Programme Simulates Living on the Red Planet Here on Earth

We might not be all that close to sending a manned mission to Mars, but that isn’t stopping people from preparing for the journey. The Mars Analogue Research Station (MARS) Programme sets up simulations of the Martian atmosphere here on Earth, allowing people to “test out protocols and procedures that will be required for human…

Gadgets Adam Frucci

Mars Astronauts Will Have Smooth Moves

The first astronauts on Mars will most likely wear smoking fetish gear that draws on the designs of MIT professor Dava Newman. Time magazine just named her ultralight BioSuit one of the top 100 inventions of the year. The current generation of spacesuits weighs up to 300 pounds, thanks to gas pressurization, life support and…

io9 Charliejane

Humans To Reach The Moon – Of Mars – In Ten Years?

Proving that the space race isn’t entirely dead, scientists have announced that while manned missions to Mars may still be some time away, manned missions to Mars’ moons could happen within the next decade According to Pascal Lee of the Mars Institute: They are the most accessible planetary bodies in our solar system. It’s counterintuitive,…

io9 Grae

New Images Show An Ancient Lake Bed On Mars

It’s easy to believe there was water on Mars when you can see the evidence so vividly. The high-resolution camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (known as HiRISE) has finally started sending color images, and the results are startling. In the image to the left, you can see the dark basaltic sand, and patterns…

io9 Charliejane

Space Is More Fun Without Space Travel

The end of the Space Age was the best thing that ever happened to science fiction, claims author Gerard J. DeGroot: When the space age ended, the alien age began. In the early 1990s, the Disney Corporation decided to close down its Mission to Mars ride, itself a direct descendant of the Rocket to the…

Books & Comics Charliejane

Me Being Run Over by a Mars Rover Prototype

Motorcycle crashes aside, here’s another case of Man/Machine collision: The JPL designed NASA Mars Rover climbing over a viscous, blubbery, greasy surface known as My Back. The JPL lady said this thing only weighs 10-pounds, but it kind of felt heavier. The final Mars rover has six wheels, but the first prototype had eight as…

Tech News Brian Lam

More Predictions of a 14-Year-Old (1901)

A few months ago we looked at the first part of fourteen-year-old Arthur Palm’s predictions for the year 2001. Arthur was writing for his school newspaper, the Milwaukee Excelsior, in the year 1901. According to the book Yesterday’s Future little Arthur was probably influenced by this image from the January 12, 1901 Collier’s Weekly. Today…

Tech News Matt Novak

Future NASA Rover Will Scare Aliens with Rock-crushing Lasers

Good old NASA is giving their Mars Rover a hardcore makeover. The next-gen Rover (the Mars Science Laboratory) is gonna weigh in at 1,800 pounds and pack rock-crushing lasers. As a matter of fact, it’s gonna pack so much tech it’ll have to run on nuclear power rather than solar arrays (like previous Rovers). So…

Gadgets Louis Ramirez

Hubert H. Humphrey’s Year 2000 (1967)

Yesterday we looked at Hubert H. Humphrey’s vision of 1967-1987. Today we have the second part to the Vice President’s piece in the February, 1967 issue of The Futurist. Far-Out Developments by A.D. 2000 For the year 2000, however, we can foresee some really far-out developments: The virtual elimination of bacterial and viral diseases. The…

Tech News Matt Novak

Mars Rovers: Three Years Running and Smarter, Too

Those two Mars rovers, named Spirit and Opportunity, landed on the red planet in January 2004 and are still going strong, twelve times longer than their originally-planned mission of 90 Martian days. Together they’ve sent more than 160,000 images back to Earth and have driven a combined 10.4 miles. The two rovers were pretty much…

Gadgets Charlie White

Humans to Leave Earth Behind?

World-renowned smart guy scientist Stephen Hawking, who’s no doubt an avid Gizmodo reader, yesterday gave a speech where he detailed what humanity needs to do in order to survive as a species: leave Earth. That’s right, provided we don’t blow ourselves up or succumb to a superbug—genetically engineered or otherwise—Hawking believes that humanity’s only chance…

Tech News Nicholas Deleon

Santa Claus vs. Neo in the Martian Matrix

Mars, Up Close And Glowing

Martian Spiders Launch Dark Jets

More Evidence for Water on Mars

Class War Between Mars And Venus

Building An Ice Castle On Mars

Witness The Evidence For Life On Mars

Wind Power Sucks But Brain Damage Is Okay

MARS Programme Simulates Living on the Red Planet Here on Earth

Mars Astronauts Will Have Smooth Moves

Humans To Reach The Moon – Of Mars – In Ten Years?

New Images Show An Ancient Lake Bed On Mars

Space Is More Fun Without Space Travel

Me Being Run Over by a Mars Rover Prototype

More Predictions of a 14-Year-Old (1901)

Future NASA Rover Will Scare Aliens with Rock-crushing Lasers

Hubert H. Humphrey’s Year 2000 (1967)

Mars Rovers: Three Years Running and Smarter, Too

Humans to Leave Earth Behind?

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