Category Archives: Mars Colonization

The Expanse is a science fiction television show based on the novels by James S. A. Corey. It ran on SyFy for three seasons starting in 2015 but was canceled. Luckily, it was picked up by Amazon, and the fourth season came out on Prime in December.

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It features our solar system hundreds of years in the future. Humanity has colonized Mars, several moons, and the Asteroid belt, eventually developing different governments and cultures for each. The show follows characters from each of the three big powers as they navigate intra-system politics on levels both grand and small. Here's why you need to start watching it immediately.

Over its four seasons, The Expanse follows seven main protagonists. Each of them has an important role in the plot, but each of them has their personal demons to battle as well. James Holden (Steven Strait) is the main protagonist. He's inadvertently thrust into a leadership position both in the solar system and of the three-person crew of his ship, the Rocinante. He struggles with the belief that he's not good enough. One of his crewmen, Amos (Wes Chatham) is borderline sociopathic, but somehow is also one of the most loyal, protective, and kind characters.

Bobby (Frankie Adams) is a Martian Marine who struggles with her anger. Naomi (Dominique Tipper) is a Belter whose political opinions are always evolving. Chrisjen Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo) is the leader of Earth who struggles with her love of power. Alex (Cas Anvar) is the Martian pilot of the Rocinante whose guilt over leaving his family to travel the stars can be overwhelming. We could go on, but the point is that each of the protagonists has their flaws that make them interesting and nuanced characters.

Race doesn't seem to be a factor in the future that The Expanse depicts. The crew of the Rocinante includes a man of South Asian heritage (with a Southern accent!), a Black British woman, and two white men. Additionally, Bobby is played by a New Zealand-Samoan woman, and Chrisjen Avasarala is meant to be South Asian but is played by an Iranian woman. There is also a First Nations woman with a supporting role (Cara Gee)!

The crew behind the camera has its moments too. The Expanse features a few female directors and writers. Most notably, both the show's co-creator (Hawk Otsby) and its showrunner (Naren Shankar) are men of Indian descent. These men and women are doing their jobs, but their presence means a lot to other people, to the stories they tell, and the future of television.

The Expanse has a different storyline for each season that ties beautifully into the show as a whole. Some of these are grand, sweeping political issues while others are simple, like a missings person case, or personal, like a man searching for his daughter. But they're always tied back into the main storyline somehow.

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Take, for example, Naomi's first trip to a planet in season four. She's a Belter who has lived her entire life in space. She had to physically prepare for planet landing through exercise and medical intervention. This is a personal storyline that ties into the larger narrative of both Belter physiology and season four's new planet.

Chrisjen Avasarala is one heck of a character. She's a tough, f-word-loving politician on Earth, and she has the voice of a goddess. Chrisjen works with Holden and his crew to protect Earth from the protomolecule as best as she can. However, sometimes that means going against the rules.

Chrisjen's outfits are the unofficial star of the show. She wears ornate, detailed saris and other South Asian-inspired suits and dresses. She pairs them with lavish jewelry and perfectly matched lipstick. Chrisjen is stunning in every scene.

Science fiction falls into two general categories: "hard" and "soft." Soft sci-fi leans more towards fantasy and is more interested in digging into the "soft" sciences like anthropology and psychology. Hard sci-fi bases itself in the "hard" sciences like biology, physics, and chemistry.

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The Expanse works hard to depict the science of our universe. Ships move at scientifically plausible speeds and in realistic directions. The characters receive an infusion of medicine during takeoff that keeps them conscious despite the extreme G-forces. There's a communication delay based on the distance between the parties, so the characters use video messages to talk. There are many more examples of the ways The Expanse respects the laws of our known solar system than just these.

The Expanse also accurately depicts gravity, for the most part. They try their best, at least. There are no artificial gravity machines onboard ships (unless they're spinning to created their own gravity). The crews are weightless unless using their gravity boots, which use magnets to adhere to the floors of the ship.

The ships- and, importantly, asteroids- that spin to create gravity are shown as having different levels of gravity depending on one's relative location to the core. This has affected the Belters' physiology, which is also depicted in the show.

The three main powers in the show are Earth, run by the United Nations, Mars, which has a military-based culture, and the Asteroid Belt, run by a loose network of leaders called the Outer Planets Alliance (OPA). Earth and Mars are at each other's necks, and both consider the OPA to be a terrorist organization.

It would be overly simplistic to assign specific countries to each player. However, the two centralized powers' reaction to the Belt can be likened to many stories of statewide oppression in history. The Earth and Mars mine the Belt for important minerals, using the Belters as labor. Meanwhile, the Belters get no political representation and suffer many health consequences living in low gravity. Sound familiar?

Not only does the Expanse closely adhere to the principles of hard science, but it also does extra work depicting other details. Its interest in anthropology becomes clear when one looks at the Belters. They have their own culture, developed over years of living in the Belt.

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One of the most unique details the show presents about the Belters is their language. They speak a Belter creole, that has elements of all the different languages that were spoken by the first inhabitants of the Belt. While the actors' interpretations of this accent vary, the fact that there is a noticeable difference at all is astounding in a TV show.

If you're tired of seeing alien species differentiated from humans by nothing more than a wrinkle on the bridge of their noses, then this is the show for you. The alien presence in The Expanse takes the form of the proto-molecule, a substance that defies the laws of physics but is not exactly alive.

As of season four, there is no humanoid life to be found. There are some poisonous slugs, some toxic microorganisms, and a hint of larger fauna. It's refreshing to see life evolving at a commensurate rate to the science we know at the present.

Season four was released in its entirety on December 13th of last year. It was the first seasondistributedby Amazon Studios and it was just as good, perhaps better, than the three seasons that came before.

With each new season, the Expanse has added beloved new characters and exciting new storylines. At the end of each season, there's been a heart-wrenching cliffhanger that indicates where the next season will start and leaves the audience hungering for more.

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Katarina writes and lives at the intersection of mental health, media, and hope. She has written for National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and Women Write About Comics in the past. Currently she serves as editor for The Future of the Force and writes lists for CBR & ScreenRant. Film, writing, people, and nature are Katarinas four favorite things. Her passion lies in using writing to help people understand and experience the world and its media more vividly. A new resident of LA, Katarina is probably crying about something nerdy at this very moment.

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The Expanse: 10 Reasons It's The Best Sci-Fi On TV Right Now - Screen Rant

Hailed by some fans asthebest science fiction series ever,The Expanse(based on a series of books by James S.A. Corey) focuses on humankind several hundred years in the future, when Mars has been colonized and miners extract precious ore from a region of asteroids known as The Belt. As Mars becomes a bigger military power than Earth, the two fight over resources, while a renegade ship's captain and a police investigator are brought together over a missing girl that may be the link to civilization's collapse.

RELATED:The Expanse: 10 Reasons It's The Best Sci-Fi On TV Right Now

Due to its recent accolades and growing fanbase,The Expansehas been brought up against the heaviest hitter of science fiction television,Star Trek.Is it the best sci-fi show of the 2000s? The two most recent series in the franchise,Star Trek: DiscoveryandStar Trek: Picardhave taken a Utopian vision of the future and applied some of the gritty, hard science practicalityThe Expanseis known for, so the decision isn't easy. Here are 5 reasons why The Expanse is the sci-fi show of the 2000s (& 5 why it's still Star Trek).

The Expanseputs the "science" in science fiction, and the genre is all the better for its accurate showcasing of many of its practical concepts rooted in real physics. You won't find any ray-guns or warp cores in it, because it depends on extrapolations from real-world scientific things.

For instance, characters that exist on a planet with gravity versus one without have physiological differences. High G-burns actually affect the human body.The Expanseoffers a realistic reflection of interstellar society 250 years in the future that seems plausible.

When Gene Roddenberry first created theStar Trek: The Original Series,it was meant to showcase a better future with a Utopian society, where war, famine, and disease had been eradicated and humankind worked together with alien cultures in the pursuit of noble concepts like education and exploration.

The franchise continues into the 2000's with series likeStar Trek: DiscoveryandStar Trek: Picard,where the moral lessons of the original series are influenced by the new era in which they're made. Viewers watch Star Trek for the better tomorrow it promises, even in the most difficult of times.

When you first start viewingThe Expanse,you're thrown into a world you may not altogether understand. There'sgeographic factions at war, politicking on an interstellar scale, and a missing persons mystery all woven together to create an intricate and complex plot.

It's unapologetic in its denseness, and provides very little in the way of hand holding. The audience is expected to follow along and expend lots of brain cells in the watching, without a lot of exposition to guide them. They learn things in the same way and at the same time that the characters do in many cases.

The Star Trek franchise has long been celebrated for its diversity. Not only did the original series have things like interracial couples and Russians working alongside Americans before the Cold War was over, it also had a wide variety of alien beings to analyze the human condition through the lens of different civilizations.

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Star Trek: Discoveryhas continued that tradition with a serialized story starring a woman of color, a balanced cast of male and female actors, and normalized same-sex relationships.Star Trek: Picardhas also given us in its preliminary episodes a focus on political refugees.

The Expansehas introduced a myriad of complicated characters who are given a wide range of motivations and personal history. Its characters make difficult decisions with morally ambiguous consciences, and it asks that audiences understand, if not fully empathize with them.

Because it doesn't take place solely on a starship, or in a space station, but on different planets and in different atmospheres, it shows you a wide range of characters not all hard-wired to simply serve one captain or one crew. And their characters develop and progress over the series with their own agendas.

Every single series in the Star Trek franchise has given sci-fi a plethora of memorable characters that individually have come to be considered iconic in their own right. The original series had Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Scotty, and the rest of the crew, whileStar Trek: The Next Generationhad Captain Picard, Data, Riker, and others.

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It'sbecauseof the iconic status of a character like Jean-Luc Picard that over twenty years afterTNGhas gone off the air, Patrick Stewart has returned to reprise his famous role. Even people that never watched him in his debut performance demonstrate curiosity about seeing him inStar Trek: Picard.

The tension that exists between Earth, Mars, and the Belt is palpable from the first episode of the series. It only continues to grow, and as viewers bounce from environment to environment, and every character that lives there, they begin to feel the sense of a very lived-in world.

The Expansereally doesexpand with every episode and every season. New technology is introduced along with new characters and new environments, and each time it's done in a way that doesn't feel too smooth, too perfect, or too sterile.

As a soft science franchise, Star Trek series are good plainfun.Harrowing situations are saved by particle accelerators, enemies are vanquished with proton torpedoes, and the solution to a perplexing problem is provided by the rapid-fire delivery of a line of technobabble.

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Like good space operas,Star Trek: DiscoveryandStar Trek: Picard,the most recent series in the franchise, provide majestic over-arching plots that focus on larger-than-life concepts without the need to be grounded in reality. There is often mysticism, wonder, and whimsy attached to them to balance out the practicality.

There's no denying that the visuals inThe Expanseare nothing short of stunning. Not every scene is beautifulbecauseit's aesthetically pleasing in a traditional sense, but because nothing is sterile and smooth, rather everything is tangible and visceral.

The budget forThe Expansehas only increased with each season, and from beginning as a Sy-Fy channel program to becoming an Amazon produced series, it has taken advantage of the upgrade to its visual effects. It has it's own dynamic look that doesn't imitate any other sci-fi show.

SinceStar Trek: The Original Series,sci-fi fans have fondly recalled episodes of their favorite Star Trek show, able to remember exact lines of dialogue, singular scenarios, andparticular circumstances that coalescedinto one timeless hour of television.

Though bothStar Trek: DiscoveryandStar Trek: Picardare serial television, and depart from the traditional episodic programming all other Star Trek series were known for, they still have episodes that contain timeless qualities that areintrinsicallyStar Trekin nature, and give viewers a certain benevolent, nostalgic feeling every time they watch them, like the introduction of Captain Pike or an exchange between Picard and Data.

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Kayleena has been raised on Star Wars and Indiana Jones from the crib. A film buff, she has a Western collection of 250+ titles and counting that she's particularly proud of. When she isn't writing for ScreenRant, CBR, or The Gamer, she's working on her fiction novel, lifting weights, going to synthwave concerts, or cosplaying. With degrees in anthropology and archaeology, she plans to continue pretending to be Lara Croft as long as she can.

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5 Reasons Why The Expanse Is The Sci-Fi Show Of The 2000s (& 5 Why It's Still Star Trek) - Screen Rant

Two years ago, documentarian Matt Wolf was poking around the internet when he came across a striking image of eight people in red jumpsuits in front of a glass pyramid. I thought it was a still from a science fiction film, he said. Then I realized it was real.

Wolf and I were in the back of an ice cream parlor in Park City, Utaha plastic cow in a cowboy hat just inches awaydiscussing his new film, Spaceship Earth. Finished just in time for Sundance, its a fascinating portrait of a late-60s counterculture theater group that somehow ended up in the Arizona desert, leading the $200 million scientific research facility Biosphere 2.

The Biosphere 2 experiment documented in Spaceship Earth lasted from 1991 to 1993. Eight individuals across different scientific practices entered an enormous, closed ecosystem intended to replicate all of the diversity of eartha.k.a. Biosphere 1then sealed the doors behind them. The idea was that they would both lead experiments and be the experiment, in a medical as well as sociological manner. The goals were simultaneously altruistic (we may one day need to colonize Mars if we truly screw up our environment) and also profit-driven (we can sell any proprietary technologies we stumble upon).

Biosphere 2 became a tourist attraction and fixture on the nightly news; as a result, there were, to put it mildly, unforeseen complications. Then came a twist ending involving bad faith business practices and a young banker who went on to become one of the 21st centurys most notorious villains. (No spoilers, but you can Google it!)

Spaceship Earth is the fourth feature for Wolf, a sharp-witted, San Jose-bred, New York-based 30-something and Guggenheim Fellow. In 2019, he released Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, the remarkable story of a woman who obsessively taped television for decadesamassing a one-of-a-kind library while simultaneously ruining her own life. Prior to that came Teenage, based on Jon Savages book about the origin of the 20th century concept of adolescence, and Wild Combination, a heartbreaking portrait of musician Arthur Russell, whose work was rediscovered long after his death from AIDS in 1992. In between came a number of shorts, including Its Me, Hilary: The Man Who Drew Eloise, starring Lena Dunham and everyones favorite Plaza Hotel-dwelling little girl, plus a stint as cocurator of film for the 2019 Whitney Biennial.

His subjects seem at first to have little in common with one another. Im interested in outsider visionary figures who beg for reappraisal, he said when pressed for a recurring theme. He called them hidden histories. Each time he uses a similar method: culling material from an enormous, oftentimes never-before-touched archive. His ideas are frequently born from discovering something weird online.

Wolf was just a kid when the first Biosphere 2 experiment was launchedthough, like the rest of us, he does remember the Pauly Shore film Bio-Dome. The second he learned its story, though, he was absolutely determined to make the film. When the living Biospherians welcomed him and opened their enormous archive of 16mm film and Hi8 video, he recognized an urgency to get this story, with its environmentalist and late capitalist implications, out now.

Despite being initially dazzled by the theatricality of Biosphere 2s look, Wolf does not consider himself a sci-fi guy. He was a shy kid, he told me, and up until his mid-20s, his friends were always older. At the age of 16, he responded to an ad in a queer youth center in San Francisco and ended up the novelty young intern, working on a documentary about Harry Haythe gay activist who cofounded the Mattachine Society and, very in tune with Wolfs later work, the countercultural, anarchic, and spiritual group called the Radical Faeries.

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The Strange Tale of Biosphere 2 Gets a Fitting Showcase in Spaceship Earth - Vanity Fair

Tesla Inc. (TSLA) designs, develops, manufactures, and sells electric vehicles and energy generation and storage systems in the United States, China, the Netherlands, Norway, and around the globe. The company has two segments, automotive and energy generation and storage.

Elon Musk, the founder of the company and guiding force behind its innovation, has been a controversial character. While he has more than a handful of detractors, he has developed a cult-like following. Since late 2019, Mr. Musk has been delivering for his shareholders in a big way. Last week, in Davos, Switzerland, US President Donald Trump, in an interview on CNBC, compared Elon Musk with Thomas Edison and the inventor of the wheel. The innovator has other interests outside of Tesla. His Boring Company is developing new modes of high-speed public transportation. SpaceX is working to reduce the cost of space transportation to enable the colonization of Mars. Mr. Musk is not the typical billionaire; he is a man who will go down in history as one of the most significant innovators of his time.

Meanwhile, those who believed in Mr. Musk have been reaping the rewards. The price of Tesla (TSLA) shares have exploded to the upside.

A bumpy ride for Tesla (TSLA) shares in 2019

There were times in 2019, where more than a few analysts believed that the cash burn at Tesla (TSLA) would force the company into bankruptcy.

(Source: Barchart)

As the chart shows, TSLA shares dropped to a low of $176.99 in June 2019, just seven months ago. The stock had more than halved in value from the late 2018 peak of $379.49. Only a handful of believers of Elon Musk remained bullish, and those who bought shares at below the $200 level were rewarded handsomely. Some analysts went as far as calling Mr. Musk a huckster with projections the shares were going to zero when the stock was on its low.

The stock explodes to the upside starting in late 2019 on Q3 earnings

The 2018 high in Tesla (TSLA) shares was $387.48. Just six months after the company was staring into the abyss last June, the stock surpassed the 2018 peak price and rose to a new all-time high in mid-December. The third quarter 2019 earnings blew the cover off the ball for Tesla as the profits beat consensus estimates decisively.

(Source: Yahoo Finance)

The chart shows that after missing consensus estimates for three consecutive quarters, Tesla (TSLA) earned $1.86 per share in Q3 when the market expected a loss of 42 cents.

(Source: Yahoo Finance)

The chart shows that Tesla (TSLA) shares exploded to the upside, to a high of $594.50, over three times the price in the low in June 2019. The stock closed at $564.82 on Friday, January 24.

In a sign that Mr. Musk has not made believers of all members of the analyst community, a survey of 30 analysts on Yahoo Finance has an average price target of only $368.35 on the stocks with a range between $61.57 and $810.51.

TSLA has a larger market cap than General Motors (GM) and Ford (F) combined

Tesla has come a long way since last June, and a correction in the stock would not be a surprise given its current lofty level. At the close of business last Friday, the company had a market cap of $101.806 billion. In a world where the top companies have valuations of over $1 trillion, the number may not be all that eye-popping. Meanwhile, the combined valuations of Ford Motor Company (F) and General Motors Company (GM) was at $84.705 billion at their respective share prices at the end of last week. Considering that Tesla (TSLA) has a higher valuation than a combination of the two companies that are institutions in the automobile manufacturing business, Mr. Musk has left his detractors with more than a little egg on their faces.

TSLA shares were trading at $545.25 per share on Monday morning, down $19.57 (-3.46%). Year-to-date, TSLA has gained 30.34%, versus a 0.57% rise in the benchmark S&P 500 index during the same period.

Andy spent nearly 35 years on Wall Street and is a sought-after commodity and futures trader, an options expert and analyst. In addition to working with ETFDailyNews, he is a top ranked author on Seeking Alpha. Learn more about Andys background, along with links to his most recent articles. More...

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TSLA: Shares of Tesla Leave GM and Ford In The Dust - StockNews.com

A pair of Harvard astrophysicists have proposed a wild theory of how life might have spread through the universe.

Imagine this:

Millions or billions of years ago, back when the solar system was more crowded, a giant comet grazed the outer reaches of our atmosphere. It was moving fast, several tens of miles above the Earth's surface too high to burn up as a fireball, but low enough that the atmosphere slowed it down a little bit. Extremely hardy microbes were floating up there in its path, and some of those bugs survived the collision with the ball of ice. These microbes ended up embedded deep within the comet's porous surface, protected from the radiation of deep space as the comet rocketed away from Earth and eventually out of the solar system entirely. Tens of thousands, maybe millions, of years passed before the comet ended up in another solar system with habitable planets. Eventually, the object crashed into one of those planets, deposited the microbes a few of them still living and set up a new outpost for earthly life in the universe.

Related: 5 Reasons to Care About Asteroids

You could call it "interstellar panspermia," the seeding of distant star systems with exported life.

We have no idea whether this ever actually happened .and there's a mountain of reasons to be skeptical. But in a new paper, Amir Siraj and Avi Loeb, both astrophysicists at Harvard University, argue that at least the first part of this story the depositing of the microbes into a comet that gets ejected from the solar system should have happened between one and a few dozen times in Earth's history. Siraj told Live Science that although a lot more work needs to be done to back up the finding, it should be taken seriously and that the paper may have been, if anything, too conservative in its estimate of the number of life-exporting events.

While the study's concept may seem far-fetched, humanity is constantly confronted with seeming impossibilities, like Earth going around the sun, or quantum physics, or bacteria hitching a ride into the galaxy aboard a comet that turn out to be true, Siraj said

And there's been reason to suspect that it might be possible. A series of experiments using small rockets in the 1970s found colonies of bacteria in the upper atmosphere. Comets really do enter and leave our solar system from time to time, and Siraj and Loeb's calculations show that it's plausible, maybe even likely, this has happened to large comets that graze Earth. Comets are porous, and might actually shield microbes from deadly radiation some microbes can survive a remarkably long time in space.

That alone is reason for scientists to take the idea seriously, Siraj said, and for researchers from fields like biology to jump in and figure out some of the details.

"It's a brand new field of science," he told Live Science

However, Stephen Kane, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Riverside, told Live Science that he was deeply skeptical of the suggestion that microbes from Earth might have actually turned up alive on alien planets through some version of this process.

The first problem would occur when the comet slammed into the atmosphere, he said. Siraj and Loeb point out that some bacteria can survive extraordinary accelerations. But the precise mechanism by which the microbes would adhere to the comet is unclear, Kane said, since the aerodynamic forces around the comet might make it impossible for any microbes to reach the surface and work their way deep enough below the surface to be protected from radiation.

It's also not clear, he said, whether any microbes would really have been up high in our atmosphere in the first place Those rocket experiments from the 1970s are old and questionable, he said, and we still don't have a good picture of what the biology of the upper atmosphere really looks like today let alone hundreds of millions of years ago, when comet encounters were much more common.

The biggest question, though, Kane said, is what would happen to the microbes after they landed aboard the comet. It's plausible, he said, that some bacteria might survive decades in space long enough to reach, say, Mars. But there's little direct evidence that any bacteria might survive the thousands or millions of years necessary to travel to another habitable star system. And that's really the key idea of this paper: Researchers have long suggested that debris from major collisions might blast life around between our solar system's planets and moons. But exporting life to an alien star system likely requires a more specialized scenario.

Still, Kane said, the calculations in this study of how precisely a comet might skim through the atmosphere were new to him, and "very interesting."

Siraj didn't strongly challenge any of Kane's concerns, but reframed them one by one as opportunities for further study. He wants to know, he said, precisely what the biology of the upper atmosphere looks like, and how comets might react to it. There's reason to think that at least some bacteria might survive super-long trips through deep space, he said, based on how robust they are under extreme conditions on Earth and in orbit. But for now, it's time for scientists across fields to jump in and start filling in the gaps, Saraj said.

Originally published on Live Science.

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Physicists: Ancient life might have escaped Earth and journeyed to alien stars - Livescience.com

The American science- fiction series, The Expanse, is confirmed to have a fifth season. Developed by Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, it is based on the novel series of the same name, written by James S. A. Corey and the first three seasons aired initially on Syfy. The fourth season is an Amazon exclusive. The first three seasons are available on Amazon as well.

Release Date of Season 5

Season 5 of The Expense was confirmed before even the release of the fourth season. As per the official Twitter page of the series, the production of the fifth season has already begun in October 2019.

Season 1, of ten episodes, aired from 14th December 2015 to 2nd February 2016. The second season of thirteen was back in 2017 and broadcast from 1st February to April 19th. Season 3 of thirteen episodes, aired from April 11th, 2018 to June 26th, 2018. Season 4 of ten episodes released on the 13th of December, 2019, on Amazon Prime Video.

The Expanse Season 5 is expected to release in December 2020.

The Plot

The series is set in the future. In a time when humans have colonized the solar system, Mars has become an independent militant power. The backdrop being, the rising tensions between Earth and Mars have brought them on the brink of war.

The investigation of a case about a missing woman leads to unveiling the biggest conspiracy in the history of humanity.

Season 4 was based on Cibola Burn. The fifth season is likely to the adaptation of Nemesis Games. In the new season, the introduction to some new characters is expected. Expanse crew will be shown trying to go back home amidst the inter- planetary rush.

Cast

Dominique Tipper, Steven Strait, Cas Anvar, Frankie Adams, Thomas Jane, Florence Faivre, Cara Gee, and Shawn Doyle will be seen in the leading roles. Other than them, Wes Chatham and Burn Gorman will be seen in central characters with Steven Strait.

The Expanse is very ahead- of- its- time, which piques the interest if viewers. Along with the love of the audience, the series has also received massive critical acclaim. Season 5 is something to look forward to.

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The Expanse Season 5: Filming confirmed; will release later this year. - Union Journalism

Chimpanzees, human beings closest animal relatives, share up to 98 percent of our genes. Their human-like hands and facial expressions can send uncanny shivers of self-recognition down the backs of zoo patrons.

Yet people and chimpanzees lead very different lives. Fewer than 300,000 wild chimpanzees live in a few forested corners of Africa today, while humans have colonized every corner of the globe, from the Arctic tundra to the Kalahari Desert. At more than 7 billion, humans population dwarfs that of nearly all other mammalsdespite our physical weaknesses.

What could account for our species incredible evolutionary successes?

One obvious answer is our big brains. It could be that our raw intelligence gave us an unprecedented ability to think outside the box, innovating solutions to gnarly problems as people migrated across the globe. Think of The Martian, where Matt Damon, trapped alone in a research station on Mars, heroically sciences his way out of certain death.

But a growing number of cognitive scientists and anthropologists are rejecting that explanation. These researchers think that, rather than making our living as innovators, human beings survive and thrive precisely because we dont think for ourselves. Instead, people cope with challenging climates and ecological contexts by carefully copying othersespecially those we respect. Instead of Homo sapiens, or man the knower, were really Homo imitans: man the imitator.

In a famous study, psychologists Victoria Horner and Andrew Whiten showed two groups of test subjectschildren and chimpanzeesa mechanical box with a treat inside. In one condition, the box was opaque, while in the other it was transparent. The experimenters demonstrated how to open the box to retrieve a treat, but they also included the irrelevant step of tapping on the box with a stick.

Oddly, human children carefully copied all the steps to open the box, even when they could see that the stick had no practical effect. That is, they copied irrationally: Instead of doing only what was necessary to get their reward, children slavishly imitated every action theyd witnessed.

Of course, that study only included three and four year olds. But additional research has showed that older children and adults are even more likely to mindlessly copy others actions, and young infants are less likely to over-imitatethat is, to precisely copy even impractical actions.

By contrast, chimpanzees in Horner and Whitens study only over-imitated in the opaque condition. In the transparent conditionwhere they saw that the stick was mechanically uselessthey ignored that step entirely, merely opening the box with their hands. Other research has since supported these findings.

When it comes to copying, chimpanzees are more rational than human children or adults.

Where does the seemingly irrational human preference for over-imitation come from? In his book The Secret of Our Success, anthropologist Joseph Henrich points out that people around the world rely on technologies that are often so complex that no one can learn them rationally. Instead, people must learn them step by step, trusting in the wisdom of more experienced elders and peers.

For example, the best way to master making a bow is by observing successful hunters doing it, with the assumption that everything they do is important. As an inexperienced learner, you cant yet judge which steps are actually relevant. So when your bands best hunter waxes his bowstring with two fingers or touches his ear before drawing the string, you copy him.

The human propensity for over-imitation thus makes possible what anthropologists call cumulative culture: the long-term development of skills and technologies over generations. No single person might understand all the practical reasons behind each step to making a bow or carving a canoe, much less transforming rare earth minerals into iPhones. But as long as people copy with high fidelity, the technology gets transmitted.

Ritual and religion are also domains in which people carry out actions that arent connected in a tangible way with practical outcomes. For example, a Catholic priest blesses wafers and wine for Communion by uttering a series of repetitive words and doing odd motions with his hands. One could be forgiven for wondering what on Earth these ritualistic acts have to do with eating bread, just as a chimpanzee cant see any connection between tapping a stick and opening a box.

But rituals have a hidden effect: They bond people to one another and demonstrate cultural affiliation. For an enlightening negative example, consider a student who refuses to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Her action clearly telegraphs her rejection of authorities right to tell her how to behave. And as anthropologist Roy Rappaport pointed out, ritual participation is binary: Either you say the pledge or you dont. This clarity makes it easily apparent who is or isnt committed to the group.

In a broader sense, then, over-imitation helps enable much of what comprises distinctively human culture, which turns out to be much more complicated than mechanical cause and effect.

At heart, human beings are not brave, self-reliant innovators, but careful if savvy conformists. We perform and imitate apparently impractical actions because doing so is the key to learning complex cultural skills, and because rituals create and sustain the cultural identities and solidarity we depend on for survival. Indeed, copying others is a powerful way to establish social rapport. For example, mimicking anothers body language can induce them to like and trust you more.

So the next time you hear someone arguing passionately that everyone should embrace nonconformity and avoid imitating others, you might chuckle a bit. Were not chimpanzees, after all.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Why Imitation Is at the Heart of Being Human - Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley

NASA's MRO tracked this crater, which has been through some changes between 2008 and 2019.

You might think Mars is a pretty static place since it's lacking the oceans and atmospheric drama we have on Earth. But the dry Red Planet is surprisingly dynamic, as a new NASA GIF of a north-pole crater shows.

The animation comes from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRise (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera team at the University of Arizona.

"These inter-crater ice deposits shrink and expand or change shape or surface texture from year to year," wrote University of Arizona planetary geologist Alfred McEwen, principal investigator for HiRise.

The GIF is compiled from MRO images taken over the span of nearly a dozen years in early 2008, 2010, 2012, 2016, 2018 and late 2019. That spans six Mars Years. Each Mars Year covers 687 Earth days.

MRO entered Martian orbit in 2006. Its longevity gives scientists the ability to track landscape changes over time. Like with Earth, Mars experiences seasons. Those seasons just last longer.

The north pole is a particularly fun place to watch. HiRise even caught sight of an avalanche there in 2019. Don't worry, though. Humanity is eyeing some quieter spots on the Red Planet for future colonization.

Now playing: Watch this: Meet the Mars 2020 rover launching this year

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NASA watched the ice in this Mars crater dance over a dozen years - CNET

After weather-related delays yesterday, SpaceX has successfully tested the abort feature of its Crew Dragon spacecraft, clearing the way for the first manned flights later on in the year.

The test occurred this morning around 10:30 AM eastern time and consisted of an unmanned launch followed by a demonstration of the Dragons abort procedure less than two minutes into the ascent. The crew module successfully detached from the rocket stages just after a point called Max Q, where the forces acting on the capsule peak. The capsule then successfully parachuted down to Earth, splashing down in the Atlantic safely.

After the Dragon separated from the rest of the rocket, the remaining stages were destabilized and eventually exploded (as expected), but the crew module had already fallen safely out of the way and was unharmed.

According to Ars Technica, the landing conditions for the crew module were rougher than expected. The success of the test despite those conditions may allow for a relaxation of some of the weather condition requirements currently in place which could offer greater flexibility for subsequent launches.

All of this is good news for SpaceX and NASA, who plan to launch the first manned mission using the Dragon later this year. If successful, the Dragon will provide NASA with the ability to once again launch astronauts to the International Space Station without the help of Russia, a capability lost when the Space Shuttle was retired. Musk has claimed that the first mission will be possible by second quarter of this year, but crew scheduling for the International Space Station could push it back farther.

Though SpaceXs Dragon has provided new hope for NASAs ability to expand manned space exploration in the wake of the retirement of the Space Shuttle nearly ten years ago, Elon Musks stated goals for SpaceX include the eventual colonization of Mars and his recent tweets on the subject have rankled some. Admitting that interplanetary travel, whenever it might become feasible, will be prohibitively expensive for most, Musk recently suggested that costs for travel to Mars could be offset by working off debts upon arrival, a curiously similar model to the indentured servitude that many immigrants to colonial Virginia suffered under back in the 17th and 18th Centuries.

Still, the prospect of introducing a new way to get to space remains exciting, and any eventual effort to get to Mars is far off, long enough away that Musk will hopefully see the drawbacks to his proposed Martian labor policybefore his Starship ever leaves the ground. Until then, I think we should be cautiously optimistic about SpaceX and what it can do for the International Space Station and space exploration in general.

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SpaceX's Abort Test Is A Success, Crewed Flights To Follow - Jalopnik

No one can claim that US president Donald Trump lacks empathy for at least some of the downtrodden. Interviewed by CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump responded to a question about Elon Musk. Given all that Musk has been through in recent times, Trump acknowledges that the poor fellow deserves the pity his fellow billionaires. After all, Musk has been denigrated by multiple critics in the past 18 months, even, on occasion, excoriated in the Daily Devils Dictionary. As Teslas CEO, he has been under regulatory scrutiny after the Security Exchange Commission accused him of fraud for attempting to manipulate share prices.

Conscience of the injustice done to Musk due simply to his sometimes unorthodox business practices, Trump praised the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, the Boring Company and Neuralink because he likes rockets and he does good at rockets too. Trump then added this pertinent comment: I was worried about him, because hes one of our great geniuses, and we have to protect our genius. You know, we have to protect Thomas Edison, and we have to protect all of these people that came up with, originally, the lightbulb, and the wheel and all of these things.

Here is todays3D definition:

Protect:

Enshrine the already successful and extremely wealthy, granting them the status of unassailable icons to ensure their limitless prosperity and deflect any criticism of their methods or actions.

Describing Trumps CNBC interview, The New York Times dryly and indulgently explains that President Trump reflected the enthusiasm that many investors have for Mr. Musk, comparing him to Thomas Edison and describing him as one of our great geniuses. In the same article, The Times provides an evaluation of Musks fortune. We learn that Forbes and Bloomberg estimate Mr. Musks current net worth at about $32 billion before being reminded that, according to the exceptional compensation deal recently voted by the Tesla board of directions, Mr. Musk could receive up to $55 billion in compensation.

As Trumpinsists, Musk is in dire need of the governments and societys protection. Hefears that people like Musk are may be left by the wayside. We want to cherishthose people, he told his CNBC interviewer. Musk and others like him need tobe encouraged in their noble quest to add to the billions they already possess.Otherwise, unloved and insufficiently pampered, they might choose to crawl backinto their shells and deprive humanity of the searing light of their genius.

From Trumps Davos interview, most commentators have highlighted the presidents apparent belief that the wheel is an American invention. Some, like the Huffington Post, have taken the trouble to point out that the wheel was invented some 5,500 years ago in Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq. Two hypotheses may account for Trumps attribution. The first is that, as the US continues to occupy Iraq against the Iraqi governments own wishes, Trump may consider it licit to claim the industrial property rights on Iraqs inventions as repayment for the burdensome cost of sending an army in to massacre its people and spread chaos throughout the region.

The second seems more credible. Trump, like any 10-year-old schoolboy, knows that the invention of the wheel was a prehistoric accomplishment and couldnt have been invented in America. But the wheel Trump was referencing isnt the one you find on vehicles. Its the Wheel of Fortune, the popular TV show often simply called Wheel. It has been running since 1975 and is now a fixture of US consumer culture. It was invented by another billionaire, TV game show creator and host, Merv Griffin.

This reference to television should have been obvious since in the same interview Trump revealed his understanding of what he sees essentially as a two-class system in the US. At the top, we find the billionaires, like Trump and Musk, stable geniuses who are abused not only by villainous critics jealous of their success but also the media. They are crying out for protection. At the bottom subsists a vast class called consumers, represented, in Trumps mind, by an individual he refers to as the consumer. In the interview Trump made this clear when he announced this basic truth: The consumer has never been so rich We have a consumer that has never done so well.

This vision ofsociety is extremely coherent. Listening to the full 19-minute interview makesTrumps vision extremely clear. On one side, you have the billionaires whoserve three essential purposes in society, besides earning excessive fortunesfor themselves. They create jobs for the hapless but rich consumers; throughthe products they invent and control, they secure valuable industrial propertyrights that should not be stolen by other nations; and they create a vast arrayof goods the consumer class will buy to affirm its status as citizen consumersof the capitalist republic.

As Trump tells it, the consumer is now basking in the glory afforded by the wealth shared by the entire consumer class. Consumers are so well-off these days that an impressive proportion of them can now afford to consume luxury products such as the opioids they are increasingly addicted to. Diabetics find it a bit more difficult to procure insulin, but Trump intends to address that problem in his second term.

In themeantime, billionaires add billions to their already impressive fortunes,protected by the government and its bloated military, whose essentially purposeis to guarantee their unfettered access to the worlds resources. And thanks totheir fortunes, they also provide jobs and a growing catalogue of shiny,well-packaged products to consume in an increasingly deregulated economy thatTrump promises will be even more prosperous as soon asthe Fed gets aroundto implementing negative interest rates.

Such is Trumpsvision of the US economy and society three years after taking office. On thesame day as the interview, Trumps Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin grappledwith 17-year-old Greta Thunberg at Davos, informing her that he will listen toher musings only after she goes and studies economics in college. He mighthave said, more fittingly, the same thing to Trump after listening to TrumpsDavos interview. But of course Trump did study economics at Wharton.

Some think that when Thunberg graduates high school, she might be better off studying a subject less prone to pure hyperreal fantasy than economics.

Half ofhumanity or rather half of the human oligarchy that runs the economy believes in the hyperreal success story of Elon Musk. Apparently, another halfsees it in a different light, as a manifestation of hyperreality, a bit ofinflated fiction that seduces the media who, in turn, use it to trigger theadulation of broad swathes of the public.

A recent article in Forbes sums up the dispute about believing in Musk and cherishing his contribution. Its author, Amiyatosh Purnanandam, writes: Elon Musk thinks Tesla will change the world. Short-seller Jim Chanos believes it is a worthless enterprise. One of them has to be wrong, and the wrong one will lose a fortune. On the subject of Musks eventual astronomic payout of $50 billion, The New York Times quotes Bob Sloan, the founder of financial services firm S3 Partners: The amount is just telling you that the soap opera continues.

The story ofMusks rise to the level of cultural icon over the past 10 years bringstogether all the ingredients required for the production of unadulteratedhyperreality: his flogging of futuristic technology, the mountains of venturecapital, Musks provocative personality, his unbounded appetite for practicallyany wild idea derived from science fiction that he can convince other people tofund and, concerning Tesla alone, the entire myth built around a largelyunsubstantial promise by which the company claims to be about improving theworld and saving humanity from the recognized threat of global warming.

This is what weare asked to believe: Rich people driving expensive cars will usher in a new utopiathanks to electric vehicles destined to solve the climate crisis bydemonstrating that humanity (starting at a certain level of income or networth) no longer depend on fossil fuel.

And if all those future self-driving electric cars dont end up solving the climate crisis, Musk will provide the rockets that will enable humanity to move to Mars. He is already blanketing the Earths atmosphere with tens of thousands of satellites astronomers on earth are complaining will hamper their ability to observe the universe. But, as Trump says, Musk is good at rockets and wants to use the satellites to position himself as the worlds number one internet access provider. This may incite the astronomers to be the first to book passage on a SpaceX rocket, if only to set up business on Mars, where they will be able to observe the universe unencumbered.

All this illustrates a deeper problem in society as a whole. As with climate change, human civilization finds itself at a historical turning point, in which the stakes have become survival or extinction. In this context, the success or failure of Tesla and SpaceX will serve as a metaphor for the fate of the planet and its inhabitants. Some think the planet and its economy will thrive, others see it coursing toward extinction. Both of Musks favorite solutions the electric car and rockets that will permit the colonization of Mars skirt the real questions humanity is dealing with.

Tesla and SpaceX are modern enterprises focused not on achieving some generous goal, but on establishing a monopolistic position through the uniqueness of their offer with the goal of gaining a captive market that will translate into maximum profit. In other words, the future of humanity when things are left in the hands of people like Trump and Musk turns out to be an exaggeration of the worst trends of the recent past. Its about a small group of people controlling simultaneously the worlds resources and the principle levers of the human economy or whats left of that economy before those who can afford it will need to book their SpaceX rocket ticket to Mars.

[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devils Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observers editorial policy.

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Donald Trump and Elon Musk Invent the Wheel - Fair Observer