Category Archives: Moon Colonization

It's a weird time for entertainment. At different stages of the pandemic, filming and production have been paused on numerous projects, release dates pushed back, and sales difficult to predict.

But that didn't stop 2021 from being a good year for science-fiction.In the TV realm, The Expanse's final season landed, Apple TV's big-budget series Foundation gave us a Game of Thrones style sci-fi project to immerse ourselves in, and Marvel Disney Plus shows including Loki made us laugh, cry and, well, marvel at the studio's cinematic juggernaut.

Books like The End of Men, Project Hail Mary, The Employees and Remote Control were widely-praised. And, in the movie sphere, Dune performed very well at the box office, Spider-Man: No Way Home threw open the doors of the Marvel multiverse, and The Matrix Resurrections gave us a helping of early 2000s nostalgia that we didn't know we needed.

So what does 2022 hold? It's already shaping up to be an incredibly exciting 12 months for sci-fi. Dormant, big-budget franchises, like the long-awaited Avatar 2, will return. There are also a bunch of new Marvel movies and TV shows coming, including Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Ms. Marvel and Moon Knight.

We can also expect new seasons from our favorite TV shows in Stranger Things season 4, The Mandalorian season 3 and Star Trek: Picard season 2. And there are plenty of brand new names and properties to watch out for, too, like the bonkers multiverse movie Everything Everywhere All At Once and Sequoia Nagamatsu's time, space and cosmos-spanning debut book How High We Go In The Dark.

Below, you'll find our top picks for 2022's upcoming sci-fi movies, TV shows and books. We could've included more, but we'd be here all day if we did.

Interestingly, some key themes emerge from our choices particularly the many worlds of the multiverse. It seems creators can't get enough of the storytelling potential that these different dimensions unlock, and audiences relish the chance to feed their imaginations with tales of alternate timelines, dimensions and realities.

You'll find the release date for every movie, TV series and book below, too. But, bear in mind that these release dates might still be in flux as we head into 2022 due to the pandemic.

Expected: March 25, 2022

While we were pulling together ideas for this list, it wasn't easy to pick the movie we weremostexcited about in 2022. Then the trailer for Everything Everywhere All At Once dropped, and, well, we've thought about nothing else since. It combines some of the most popular elements in the film industry right now, including multiversal storytelling and Kung fu oh, and Michelle Yeoh (Shang-Chi), too.

The trailer reveals the basic plot: a woman called Evelyn Wang (played by Yeoh) learns that numerous universes exist, and multiple versions of herself live in them. It's not clear how, but she then unlocks a way to move between them and use skills from her many selves across a plethora of worlds.

It looks funny, appears to be full of fantastic action sequences, and seems utterly bonkers. The Russo brothers (Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Endgame) are attached to this, so expect it to be a stellar movie when it arrives.

Expected: April 29, 2022

All we know about 65 is that the movie follows the story of an astronaut (played by Adam Driver) who crash lands on a mysterious planet and then finds out hes not alone. Is it a horrifying alien race? Another survivor?A derelict spaceship filled with thousands of "leathery objects like eggs"? Who knows.

Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (A Quiet Place) are the writers behind 65, so you can bet whatever exists on this planet will deliver tense sequences and a few jump scares. Were looking forward to seeing clues unfold in the run-up to release.

It was also recently revealed that Danny Elfman will be composing the score for 65. Hes worked on a whole bunch of your favourite movies over the years, like Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Men in Black, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy and more.

Expected: February 4, 2022

If youve ever looked up at the Moon and wondered: huh, I wonder what that's made of and if it could ever come crashing down one day?, then this movie is for you.

Directed by Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow), Moonfall is a sci-fi disaster movie starring Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson and Game of Thrones' John Bradley.

The basic premise is a mysterious force knocks the Moon from its orbit, which means theres a genuine chance everyone on Earth is doomed. Luckily, a former astronaut (played by Berry) thinks she knows what to do and enlists a small team (Wilson and Bradley) to help. But when they get closer to the Moon, they find out it has some hidden secrets.The first five minutes of the movie were recently released on YouTube so, if you want a better idea of what its plot might entail, check that out first.

Expected: May 6, 2022

Details are still relatively sparse about the MCU's 28th film. What we do know, though, is its set after Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Doctor Stephen Strange is playing around with the Time Stone when a friend-turned-enemy shows up, resulting in Strange unleashing something evil.

Considering the movies title, were guessing some multiversal horror awakens in another dimension. Remember what the Ancient One says to Strange in the first movie? This universe is only one of an infinite number. Worlds without end. Some benevolent and life-giving. Others filled with malice and hunger. Dark places where powers older than time lie ravenous... and waiting.

One of No Way Home's post-credits scenes gave us our first look at Doctor Strange 2's bamboozling and weird vibe and aesthetic. Expect a teaser trailer to drop very soon, then.

Expected: October 7, 2022

One of the most heart-warming things about the reception to Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse was how many people of all ages even those who dont normally rush to see Marvel movies sung its praises. Thats why were excited for the sequel, Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse (Part One), which we now know is a two-parter.

Its a given we can expect a lot of journeying through multiple universes again and possibly a new cast of Spidey-People from many different dimensions, too. Producer Amy Pascal has also already revealed one of the plot points of this movie will be the romance between Miles and Gwen, which is hinted at in the teaser trailer above.

A number of stars from the first movie have confirmed their involvement this time round, like Luna Lauren Vlez who plays Miles's mother Rio. We can also expect Oscar Isaacs Miguel O'Hara/Spider-Man 2099 to play a major role, an alternate version of Spider-Man from the future who appeared in the post-credits scene of the first movie.

In fact, judging from the first teaser, some fans may think that Spider-Man 2099 might be the Big Bad in this next movie. But, in our trailer breakdown, we suggest that he'll actually be a good guy who wants to help Miles. All we have to go on for now, though, is a super colorful, mind-melting, mid-air fight sequence through lots of wormhole tunnels, so maybe were jumping to conclusions quicker than these Spideys jump through dimensions.

Expected: Spring 2022

Upcoming Netflix movie The Adam Project is about Adam (played by Ryan Reynolds), who travels back in time to get help from his 13-year-old self.

Its directed by Shawn Levy, who has worked on comedy movies like Just Married and Date Night, and is also the executive producer on Stranger Things. Most recently, he teamed up with Reynolds to make Free Guy, which was a breath of fresh air and laugh-out-loud funny. Its not clear whether The Adam Project is a straight-up comedy or not. But, even if its more sci-fi than side-splittingly funny, you can expect plenty of Reynolds trademark humor throughout.

Expected: December 2022

It feels like weve been waiting for an Avatar sequel for ages, and that's certainly the case:Avatar 2has been in development for more than ten years, but it'll (hopefully) land in late 2022.

The core cast from the original movie, including Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver and Sam Worthington, all return. We also know Kate Winslet will be playing a starring role as she reunites with James Cameron following their Titanic days.

Early details about the movie, as well as some behind-the-scenes photos, show that itll focus on the underwater worlds beneath Pandoras oceans. And, with the third, fourth, and fifth movies are already in development, it's good news all around. Were pretty sure wed completely lose interest if we had to wait another decade for another one.

Expected: January 18, 2022

If you thought you'd already considered all of the horrors of climate change, think again. How High We Go In The Dark begins with the discovery of a girl's preserved remains in the Arctic Circle, which unleash an ancient virus that quickly spreads all over the world.

The book follows the tragic, transformational and interwoven stories of characters who attempt to rebuild humanity after the climate plague ravages it.

A scientist's test subject a pig no less develops human speech. A painter and his granddaughter try to find a new home plane. And two people fall in love at a theme park for terminally ill children.Yeah, it sounds surreal, alright.

This debut novel from Sequoia Nagamatsu spans continents and centuries, even extending out into the cosmos, and we can't wait to read it. And how beautiful is the novel's cover? Very, in our view.

Expected: January 11, 2022

There are a few upcoming books about virtual reality (VR), which makes a lot of sense considering its now a top priority for many major tech companies, and the Oculus Quest 2 is still selling incredibly well. Its also a ripe setting for stories about the blurring of our lives, identities and desires and Deep Dive is one were really looking forward to.

Its about a video game developer called Peter who takes the opportunity to try a brand new VR headset. But, you can see where this is going. Yep, things dont go to plan: once he steps out of his VR world and back into real life, he discovers the world around him mightlooksimilar, but critical details about his life are entirely, and horrifyingly, different.

Expected: February 21, 2022

Sci-fi stories often transport us to a world that feels ominously like our own but just a few steps ahead, and thats the vibe we immediately got after learning about Tochi Onyebuchis upcoming novel Goliath.

Its set in the 2050s when people with money leave Earth behind and head up to live in space colonies. Life on the surface is challenging, as those without means or privilege try to survive on an Earth without infrastructure.

Described as a biblical epic, Goliath threads together the different stories of those who were able to start a new life in space and those attempting to live off the scraps left behind. In allowing us to imagine the ramifications of colonising space in a fictional future which isnt hard to believe, given the number of rich dudes whizzing up there all the time right now it also explores powerful themes of race, class and history that are important points of discussion today.

Expected: August 4, 2022

In 2021, Bethany Clift wrote one of our favourite sci-fi/end-of-the-world books. Last One at the Party was an eerily prescient look at what might happen if a deadly virus (yes, how topical) tore through the UK. Amongst the mounting bodies and armies of rats, theres a poignant story thats full of heart and humor.

Fast-forward a year, and Clifts next book is on its way. Its about the invention of an algorithm that uses quantum computing to find your ultimate soulmate. The twist is, it doesnt just look for your perfect match in this universe, but the entirety of the multiverse, too.

Like her last novel, this one feels perfectly timed. Were increasingly using science and technology to demystify the world around us, but can we apply the same tools and principles to solve love? We'll find out soon.

Expected: February 17, 2022

In Plutoshine, all of the planets in the Solar System are being terraformed, and Plutos next on the list with bold plans to capture asteroids and use solar mirrors to deliver the heat and light needed to make it habitable. Then the mission is sabotaged but by who?

An unlikely friendship emerges between terraformer Lucian and nine-year-old Nou, who is traumatized and mute after a horrifying incident. This friendship ends up having repercussions for the novel's terraforming missions and, ultimately, the future of humanity.

Kissicks novel looks like its going to be an ambitious space story about humanitys journey away from Earth, with plenty of technical details for those who like to immerse themselves in the details of space exploration and colonization. But it sounds like it'll be tied together by a very grounded emotional connection, which should make it an interesting read.

Expected: January 4, 2022

Anyone interested in the sci-fi genre has probably consumed a lot from the alien abduction sub-genre over the years. But Light Years From Home tells a story thats less about the actual abducting part and more about the consequences that a sudden disappearance and subsequent reappearance might have on an already fractured family. Expect this novel to go deep on character, trauma and family drama.

Thats not to say we dont expect there to be some exciting science-fiction plot points woven throughout Light Years From Home. Although many real-world abductions turn out to be fake or questionable, its not clear whether the abduction in Light Years From Home is a hoax or not. And if you have genuinely been taken, what might be the purpose of your return?

Expected: April 28, 2022

Emily St. John Mandel wrote the 2014 novel Station Eleven, an incredibly popular story about a world ravaged by a deadly virus and the dystopian future that follows. It proved to be so popular, in fact, that it's since been adapted into a TV series for HBO Max.

So hopes are high for her latest novel, Sea of Tranquility, which sounds fascinating. Sci-fi themes are clearly at the forefront, including parallel worlds, space colonies and time travel. And it sounds like it'll all be weaved together with stories spanning space and time, such as an unforgettable experience in the Canadian wilderness in the early 1900s, and a detective in Night City investigating a time anomaly.

Expected: February 2022

The first season of Star Trek: Picard really divided fans. Some loved seeing a beloved character on a new space adventure and found the action between the Romulans and the Borg well-considered and mythic. Others, though, weren't so keen on what transpired as part of it plot.

Well, luckily for everyone,Star Trek: Picard, Season 2seems to be taking the series in a different direction. That direction is back to the 21st century. From what we can tell, there's some kind of timeline anomaly (Q seems to be the obvious culprit as he stars in the new season, but we won't point fingers just yet). This transforms Jean-Luc's present into a totalitarian nightmare, requiring a trip back to the past to rectify things.

Some of the events shown in the trailer look very much like those we saw in Star Trek: The Next Generation's very first episode, Encounter at Fairpoint, when Q puts some of the crew on trial against humanity. If you're not one for the mind-bending intricacies of time travel paradoxes, maybe give this one a miss.

As well as the return of Q, we got a glimpse of other favorite characters in the trailer, like Seven of Nine and the Borg Queen. New characters that we met in the first season, including Cris Rios, Raffi Musiker, Soji Asha and Elnor, are also returning.

Expected: Late 2022

Rogue One was a fantastic Star Wars movie. Wed even go so far as saying its one of our favourites (come on, it beat the prequels, at least). Thats why its exciting that one of the main characters of Rogue One, Cassian Andor, is getting his own Disney Plus series in 2022.

The show will be set around five years before the events in Rogue One and focuses on Andors time as an intelligence officer for the Rebellion. Interestingly, Diego Luna, who reprises his Rogue One role as Andor, has teased that well definitely see some familiar faces. So expect characters you already know and love to crop up as they transform from a random bunch of rebels into a force capable of overthrowing the Empire.

The movies co-writer Tony Gilroy is the showrunner for Andor, and hes also the Bourne scriptwriter, so were hoping for a mash-up that brings us an espionage thriller set amongst the stars.We're also getting more Star Wars shows in the form of Obi-Wan Kenobi TV show and The Bad Batch season 2, as well as the return of another fan favorite series, which you can read up on below.

Expected: Late 2022

The Mandalorian season 3 will be with us at some point in 2022, although there's no official word on a release date just yet. We hope it's soon because, boy, are there some big questions we need answering from last season.

We'll save you the major spoilers but, needless to say, events have hit a high point. So we can't wait to see what's next for Mando, Grogu, and company soon.

There are no official details about who is definitely coming back, although we can expect Pedro Pascal to be returning as Din Djarin, aka The Mandalorian. One character not making a comeback this time round is Gina Carano, who won't be returning as former Rebel Shock Trooper Cara Dune after her sacking over controversial views she made in 2021.

Expected: Early 2022

Co-created by Justin Roiland (Rick and Morty) and Mike McMahan (the brains behind Star Trek: Lower Decks), Solar Opposites is a sci-fi show about a sort-of alien family who escape to Earth when their homeland, planet Shlorp, is destroyed.

It follows their effort to fit in when they find themselves in a small town in the US. This is made all the more amusing by the fact that most humans seem spectacularly non-plussed about the bunch of aliens that have moved in next door.

Expect the kind of laugh-out-loud, sometimes childish but often incredibly smart humor you've come to love from Rick and Morty, as well as some truly exceptional voice talent from Roiland, as well as Sean Giambrone, Mary Mack and Thomas Middleditch.

Expected: Summer 2022

Stranger Things season 4 was meant to land in 2021, but that date was pushed back and now we can expect it to arrive on Netflix in summer 2022.

One of the benefits of this long wait has been that more and more details about what to expect from the new season have been revealed. The build-up to a new season of Stranger Things is always a really exciting time with plenty of rumors, clues and teasers and, so far, season 4 has been no exception.Comb through our Stranger Things season 4 guide for a blow-by-blow look at everything we know so far about the next season.

But some of the most interesting bits include the return of Hopper. Granted, we assumed he wasn't going anywhere, but now we know he's trapped in a prison in Russia. What's more, Eleven and the Byers family have relocated to California. But moving to another part of the US doesn't mean that they're safe from the Upside Down. So expect their past endeavours catch up with them in some way.

Expected: Late 2022

Based on the super popular, century-spanning Isaac Asimov novels of the same name, this Apple TV Plus series is a high-concept sci-fi epic. The basic premise is that Dr Hari Seldon, a psychohistorian and mathematician, develops a fancy way to predict the future with maths. This is how he foresees the coming of a new Dark Age in 500 years and starts putting plans in motion to save civilization.

The first season of Foundation pulled together a number of different threads. And, although some fans of the original books arent happy with the direction season one took the series diverges from the books in many ways itll be fun to see how two major cliff hangers are addressed in its next season.

Continued here:
Sci-fi in 2022: the biggest movies, TV shows and books you need to know about - TechRadar

I have been making best TV lists in one form or another since 2006, taking only one year off in that entire time. (It was 2020, because I did this instead.) And in those 15 years, my introductions to my lists have only grown more ambivalent about the nature of list-making, especially for a medium where theres so much stuff to consume.

So in making my 2021 list, I opted not to try to have a comprehensive survey of the best because Im increasingly convinced that no one person can watch enough television to reasonably say what the best even is. What I watched this year was completely arbitrary. I long ago gave up on trying to keep up with TV as a medium, and I really only watched shows in 2021 if I thought I would find them interesting. So consider this list even more idiosyncratic and personal than it normally would be.

But I really do think that even if I had watched literally every show on TV, my top show of the year would have remained the same. Ive known what my No. 1 would be since I screened it last spring, and nothing has really challenged it for the top spot. So heres the best TV show of 2021, then 12 other shows I loved a bunch.

Any given series being lost amid the never-ending onslaught of new releases is completely understandable. I get why director Barry Jenkinss astonishing adaptation of Colson Whiteheads Pulitzer Prize-winning novel seemingly evaporated the instant it was released. Theres too much stuff!

Yet the fact that Prime Video seemed almost to treat this tremendous work the best TV series Ive seen in years and years as an afterthought continues to frustrate me. Yes, a 10-episode miniseries about slavery and the ways it paints every single element of life in the United States with its poisoned brush to this day was always going to be a tough sell. But Prime Video didnt even seem to try. (Releasing the series all at once when it resists easy binge-watching also may have been an issue.)

So let me do their job for them: This miniseries is a titanic piece of television. It follows an escaped slave named Cora (Thuso Mbedu) as she flees north, through a series of communities that serve almost as expressionistic explorations of the Black American experience in the wake of the Civil War, as potential progress is destroyed by white supremacy at every turn. All the while, she is pursued by a slave catcher who aims to drag her back to the plantation.

The miniseriess most successful choice is to turn Whiteheads novel already episodic into a TV series that leans into that structure. Jenkins, primarily known for his work on films like Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk, intuitively understands how Underground Railroad could perhaps only work as a TV series. Every episode gives us a chance to adjust to some new horrifying normal, before it is ripped away by the arrival of the slave catcher. Its maybe not a series you would binge, but its storytelling choices mean watching it never feels like doing homework.

Its as gorgeous and alive as any TV show Ive ever seen, and it deserved so, so much better.

How to watch it: The Underground Railroad is streaming on Prime Video.

Possibly the wildest show on television right now, Evil is a series made up entirely of ideas that would get tossed out of most other TV shows for being too weird. A kind of more-religious X-Files, it follows a skeptical psychologist and a believer priest who investigate the supernatural. Its the kind of show that accepts as a given that arguing over whether demons are real is a worthwhile discussion to have. In its second season, it deepened its mythology and gleefully tore through horror tropes as though it were holding a chainsaw tied to a machete.

How to watch it: Evil is streaming on Paramount+. A third season is in production.

The second season of this alternate history space race drama improved by leaps and bounds over an already pretty great first season. In the world of For All Mankind, the main front of the Cold War in the 1980s is on the surface of the moon, and all eyes are on Mars as the next possibility for colonization. And yet the chief pleasure of this series is the dynamite character work, as showrunner Ron Moore and his writers explore a world where everything is different, but were still dealing with the same old shit.

How to watch it: For All Mankind is streaming on Apple TV+. A third season is in production.

Quite possibly TVs horniest show, The Great lets Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult fume, flirt, and other F-words at each other in 1800s Russia. As Catherine the Great (see what the title did there?), Fanning is delectably fun, and as her husband, Peter, Hoult somehow finds a way to play the archetypal disapproving wife from a CBS sitcom, while being a man and starring in a prestige dramedy about Russian nobility in the 19th century. Season two deepened an already-good show, revealing that Catherine and Peter are really human underneath it all.

How to watch it: The Great is streaming on Hulu. No decision has yet been made on a third season.

The pinnacle of horror auteur Mike Flanagans recent run of limited series on Netflix, this horror tale of Catholicism and vampires is a piercing examination of the allure and toxicity inherent in any tradition that insists it has all the answers. Hamish Linklater is tremendous as a priest who leads his flock toward a brutal, bloody truth that will ravage their little town. There have been lots of horror stories about death cults destroying the world in the name of controlling it in recent years. This is one of the best.

How to watch it: Midnight Mass is streaming on Netflix.

As you know if youve been reading my work for any amount of time, I hate joy, and my year-end lists always skew heavily toward drama. But this Apple TV+ comedy is so funny and so winning that it bypassed my defenses. The second season dug into the unlikely working relationship between pompous Ian (Rob McElhenney) and frazzled Poppy (Charlotte Nicdao) as they attempt to build a better video game at the studio they both work for. Every actor in this show is amazing, but Nicdao gave maybe my favorite TV performance of the year.

How to watch it: Mythic Quest is streaming on Apple TV+. A third season has been ordered.

If Nicdao didnt give my favorite performance, then that honor goes to Reservation Dogs Devery Jacobs, as Elora, a young woman trying like hell to escape the reservation on which she grew up. Sterlin Harjos series (co-created with Taika Waititi) takes viewers inside the lives of Elora and her friends as they pull off small-scale crimes in the name of funding an escape from Oklahoma to California. Reservation Dogs is a series that very slowly reveals what its really about, but across its eight episodes, its also incredibly funny and inventive.

How to watch it: Reservation Dogs is streaming on Hulu. Season two is in production.

The end of the world feels downright inviting in HBO Maxs unfortunately timed Station Eleven. Set in a world where a pandemic killed 999 out of every 1,000 people, Station Eleven had the bad luck to begin production right before Covid-19 swept the world, then the worse luck to launch the exact week everybody got obsessed with the omicron variant. Look beyond the premise to see a series that finds the human heart at the end of all things. This shows sense of people caring for each other after all is lost can be deeply restorative.

How to watch it: Station Eleven is streaming on HBO Max. New episodes debut every Thursday through January 13.

Kind of the consensus TV show we* all care about at this moment, Successions third season was a grand and glorious thing, beginning with father pitted against son and then somehow finding an even more gutting place to take its characters by its season finale. Endlessly witty and effortlessly of the moment, Succession is the only TV show that winds together the twin strands of familial abuse and toxic capitalism designed solely to benefit the people at the very tippy-top. A masterpiece? A masterpiece. *people who write about TV online

How to watch it: Succession is streaming on HBO Max. A fourth season is in production.

Just six episodes long, this British import made a good case for the continued existence of so many new streaming services. If Peacock didnt exist, I likely wouldnt have ever seen this amazing comedy about an all-lady, all-Muslim punk band named Lady Parts. I am especially taken with the deftly sketched frenemies relationship between Lady Parts lead guitarist Amina (Anjana Vasan) and lead singer Saira (Sarah Kameela Impey), who have a real Lennon-McCartney spark. They hate each other; they make amazing music together.

How to watch it: We Are Lady Parts is streaming on Peacock. A second season has been ordered.

What might be TVs queerest show is also one of the best shows about aging. Chicago-based comedian Abby McEnany stars as a semi-autobiographical version of herself in this comedy that effortlessly explores the intersections of gender and sexuality that make this moment in queerness so dizzying and so complicated. Even more potent, though, is the series depiction of what happens when you realize you have to just keep living the life youve made for yourself. None other than Lilly Wachowski co-wrote and directed several episodes.

How to watch it: Work in Progress is streaming on Showtime Anytime. No decision has been made on a third season.

The new drama Yellowjackets had me in its first 30 seconds. A girl runs through the snowy woods. Strange, eerie cries surround her. She falls through the snow into a trap and is impaled by spikes. Then a mysterious figure shrouded in animal furs strings the dead girl up to collect her meat. Teen girl cannibals in the woods? I love it! Im also struck by how smart this series is about how minor slights in adolescence ripple into dissociative episodes in adulthood. A lot of shows claim to be about trauma; this is one of the few that actually is.

How to watch it: Season one is airing on Showtime and Showtime Anytime on Sundays through January 16. A second season has been ordered.

I dont know how the team behind You got three seasons of TV out of the premise you have to hang out in the perspective of a stalker man all the time. I also dont know how the third season was the shows best. Murderous serial killer Joe (Penn Badgley) has found his perfect match in fellow serial killer Love (Victoria Pedretti), and a series already laced with razor-sharp satire found its best target yet in Silicon Valley tech culture. A poison apple of a show. (Co-creator Sera Gamble is a friend of mine, but I liked the show before I knew her.)

How to watch it: You is streaming on Netflix. A fourth season is in production.

Here are five other shows I had great fun with, this time presented in reverse alphabetical order because there are no rules! If your favorite show isnt on this list, assume that either I didnt see it or I completely forgot about it. My taste and yours are exactly the same, I promise.

More here:
How to watch the best TV shows of 2021: From You to Reservation Dogs - Vox.com

The Enfield Horror has been nightmare fuel of the southern Illinois woods for decades. The first reports of this unknown creature began on April 25th, 1973 near the village ofEnfield, southeast of McLeansboro.

It wasn't a sasquatch or a derangedgorilla but the descriptions are equally if not more terrifying.

The first reported encounter involved a young boy, 10 years old at the time, who claimed to be attacked by an odd creature. On the same night, another family would report a situation involving a creature with nearly the same description.

the being as having at least three legs, slimy grey skin, claws, and red eyes

The child told local police the creature used its feet to claw at his sneakers, which were torn to shreds.

Not long after the first report, another came in from a man who claims he heard scratching on the front door of his home. When he opened the door out of curiosity he saw a creature which he described almost verbatim with that of the child's, adding

about five feet tall, with a flat body, grayish in color, with a strange disappearing head at least twelve inches across.

He added that it appeared to have three legs and glowing pink eyes.

What is more frightening is when happened when he opened fire on the creature, according to AstonishingLegends.com.

Henry, no doubt shocked at what was before him, fired a pistol which caused the being to hiss and then bound away from the house. He watched it cross the railroad tracks.

There were more reports, one of which claims someone saw this same creature casually walking a set of train tracks.

In late May/early June of the same year, there were no more reports of sightings and encounters with the unknownthing.

Another cryptozoologist shared his conclusion.

I am of the opinion that it was neither alien nor demon, but some sort of bizzare, unknown, but entirely corporeal creature, possibly even a genetic mutation of some sort.

In a related note, the Enfield Horror occurred in an area of southern Illinois known as "Devil's Kitchen."

a designation left behind by the Native Americans and the early settlers to explain strange sights and sounds like unexplained balls of light, apparitions, screams in the night and various other unsettling types of phenomena.

I'll leave you to decide if the Enfield Horror is real or completely fabricated.

See original here:
A Monster is Said to Lurk the Woods of Southern Illinois - 929nin.com

If youve ever gazed up at a dark, clear night sky, you might feel the same thing that I do each and every time: like its beckoning us, drawing us in, calling us to explore and wonder whats out there in the great abyss of space. Each point of distant, twinkling light isnt just a star in its own right, but also a chance: for planets, for biochemistry, and for life. If we really allow our imaginations to run wild, we might even imagine the existence of something better than merely life, such as the existence of life like us thats intelligent, self-aware, and technologically advanced.

But that brings up a question that humanity has obsessed over for generations: if the ingredients for life are common, and we evolved naturally, then where is everyone else? Many of you consistently write in with variations on this question, including Franco Camporeale, Oleg (Alex) Naum, and Zoe Eppley, asking things like:

The Fermi Paradox has come up a few times in my recent reading does:

have anything to do with what the resolution to the question of where is everyone?'

Its a fascinating topic to speculate about, but even a better topic for laying out the science. Lets take an in-depth look at what we know about all thats out there.

If we want to understand how the Universe makes intelligent life, we have to consider two things. First, we have to consider the steps that needed to occur in order to bring about our own existence. And then, we need to think about ways that intelligent could arise in circumstances that differ from our own, and to make sure, wherever possible, that were doing it in as quantitatively accurate a fashion as possible. We also have to make sure that we dont make unfounded assumptions, or fall for any one of a number of logical fallacies, like conflating absence of evidence with evidence of absence or the post hoc ergo propter hoc (this came after, therefore it was caused by) fallacy.

Its also important to learn how not to make an estimate of whats out there, and there are two all-too-common pitfalls that people even the most brilliant of scientists make when considering this question. One is that they make point estimates, akin to, we may not know this parameter, so heres what we estimate it to be, which is relatively meaningless. If youre going to make such an estimate, its only meaningful if you include either an uncertainty range, a set of error bars, or some other likelihood predictor. Theres an enormous difference between saying that you estimate the odds of something are 1-in-100 with a 10% uncertainty, a 1000% uncertainty, or a two-tailed uncertainty where it could be as high as 1-in-10, but there could be no lower limit at all.

But the other mistake that people make is perhaps the most common mistake of all when it comes to attempting to answer the Fermi Paradox: making use of the Drake equation. Now, the Drake equation has many lessons for us that are interesting, and when it was first put forth, it was a monumental achievement from a scientific perspective. For the first time, it broke up a seemingly unknowable question of how many intelligent, spacefaring civilizations there are within our galaxy today, right at this very minute, into a series of smaller questions that we could conceive of solving one-at-a-time.

We could, for example, measure or estimate things like:

Multiply all of those things together, and youll wind up with an estimate for the number of active civilizations that we could potentially detect today.

But immediately, we run into a few major problems. For one, weve measured the rate of star formation in the Milky Way, and we actually know it pretty well. Unfortunately, if you took that star formation rate and multiplied it by the age of the Universe since the hot Big Bang, youd wind up with almost no stars; youd calculate that the Milky Way should have formed a total of around 10 billion stars over our cosmic history.

I know that 10 billion probably sounds like a big number, but compared to the actual estimate for the number of stars in our galaxy which is more like 400 billion its only 2-3%.

Fortunately, its easy to identify the reason why this method of calculating how many stars weve formed, which youd imagine would give you the total number of stars in the galaxy, is so thoroughly wrongheaded. The superficial reason is fairly obvious: the star formation rate is not constant over our cosmic history. In fact, weve come to understand that the Universe was born without stars, that stars began forming during the first ~200 million years or so, and then the star formation increased for the first ~3 billion years of our cosmic history, reached a peak, and has been dropping ever since. Locally, weve probably experienced bursts of star formation when weve absorbed smaller, satellite galaxies, and may even be starting to experience another as the Magellanic Clouds and Andromeda exert their gravitational influence on the gas, dust, and other neutral matter within our own galaxy.

But thats only the superficial reason why the Drake equation is problematic today. The deeper reason is that the Drake equation, when it was put forth, made an assumption about the Universe that we know, today, is untrue: it assumed that the Universe was eternal and static in time. As we learned only a few years after Frank Drake first put forth the famous equation that bears his name, the Universe doesnt exist in a steady state, where its unchanging in time, but rather has evolved from a hot, dense, energetic, rapidly expanding state: a hot Big Bang, that occurred a finite duration in our cosmic past.

Instead, its a much more productive route to calculate the quantities we now, today, can speak about with some level of certainty, and then move on to the great cosmic unknowns in as responsible a fashion as we can.

Unlike the situation some 60+ years ago, when the Drake equation was first proposed, we now have an excellent idea of what our Universe is like, both in and beyond the Milky Way and Local Group. We understand what the various populations of stars are that exist, and what sorts of steps need to occur to make heavy elements, rocky planets, and allow for the possibility of complex chemistry and important reactions, such as the formation of energy-storing molecules from nothing more than the ubiquitous building blocks and starlight.

Additionally, weve also learned an incredible amount about the types and abundances of planets that exist around stars other than our own: exoplanets. As little as 30 years ago, we were only discovering our very first planets around stars beside the Sun; today, at the end of 2021, were closing in on having a whopping 5,000 confirmed exoplanets. And sure, there are biases in our data were preferentially detecting the planets that are the easiest to detect but we know how to account for and quantify those biases.

Instead of needing to speculate about how many stars form, how many have planets, how many planets per system have the potential for life, etc., we can actually go to some excellent data. Here in our modern Milky Way, we already know:

and many other vital parameters. On this front, its actually straightforward to come up with a solid estimate for how many potentially habitable planets are in our galaxy.

In fact, we can perform that calculation in a variety of ways, just to show how powerful our set of knowledge is.

There are about 400 billion stars in the Milky Way: ~80% of which are red dwarfs, ~18% of which are Sun-like, and only ~2% of which are too massive and short-lived to be interesting for life.

There are, as far as we can tell, about 5-to-10 planets per stellar system, with approximately ~1-to-2 planets in what we (questionably) call the habitable zone around each star.

Of the planets that exist around Sun-like stars, we believe that about ~20% of them are Earth-like in terms of size; a greater percentage than that are terrestrial around the more common red dwarf stars.

If we assume, conservatively, that red dwarf systems are not habitable at all, but Sun-like systems are, then all we have to do is multiply:

then we arrive at an estimate for the number of potentially inhabited planets in the Milky Way: 21,600,000,000.

It doesnt make sense to use so many significant figures; 20 billion is good enough, but also we have to remember that all of these numbers have uncertainties. There may be as few as 200 billion stars; half of our estimate. Some of the stars may be too low in metals what astronomers call the heavy elements in the Universe for planets with life, but the percentage is small; less than 10% for certain. Some stars might not have planets, but again the percentage is small; less than 20% for certain. The habitable zone may be larger or narrower than we think; tack another ~33% uncertainty onto our estimate.

And we havent sampled the low end of the mass/radius portion of the exoplanet population very well; our estimate of 20% being Earth-like in size could go up or down; its reasonable to put a 25% uncertainty on that figure. All in all, there could reasonably be as few as 5 billion potentially habitable planets in the Milky Way, or perhaps as many as 50 billion. If red dwarf systems are potentially habitable as well, that number could increase tenfold. And at the same time, many of the things weve worried about in the past:

likely dont particularly matter one way or the other.

But beyond that, we still have some major, major unknowns where our level of cosmic ignorance is truly staggering. We know the ingredients that life requires are ubiquitous everywhere we look: in asteroids, in gas in the galactic center, in outflows around massive, newly forming stars, and even in the atmospheres and on the surface of other planets and moons in our Solar System.

But even with all the raw ingredients, what is the fraction of potentially inhabited planets where life actually arose from non-life? In Carl Sagans original Cosmos series, he gave a figure of 0.1 10% and asserted that was a conservative number.

That is not necessarily the case; life could be difficult. Just because it arose early on in the history of Earth doesnt mean that a significant fraction of planets actually have (or ever had) life on them. It could be nearly 100%, or 10%, or 1%, or 0.01%, or a one-in-a-million chance or slimmer that life arises from non-life. If we rewound the clock and started Earth over again, how likely is it that life would have arisen and thrived here? Our ignorance is astounding.

Similarly, once life does arise, how often does it get wiped out, versus how often does it endure for many billions of years? How frequently does it remain in a relatively simple state, unable to develop complexity, differentiation, multicellularity, or sexual (meiotic) reproduction? How often, even after billions of years, does it actually begin to look like life on Earth did at the start of the Cambrian explosion?

Again, we have no knowledge at all of how this works. If you estimated it occurred 10% of the time, thats reasonable, but so is 90% of the time, and so is 0.001% of the time. Without observational or experimental evidence to point us in the right direction, were simply deluding ourselves if we make a strong assertion.

Furthermore, we know that after life on Earth became complex and differentiated and multicellular and reproduced sexually, it still took more than 500 million years, and was likely just the result of random chance, for a species to arise that would become technologically advanced. How often does that occur? Is this a chance where its a number that makes sense to write in percentages, or is this such a rare event that its like winning the Powerball lottery five times in a row? And furthermore, how long does that life endure? Does it ever become a multi-planet or even an interstellar civilization, or is the progression from technologically advanced to extinct a relatively rapid one?

At this point, our uncertainties are so large that its eminently reasonable that not only might human beings be the only intelligent life in the Milky Way, but in the entire observable Universe, which likely contains more than a trillion (1,000,000,000,000) times as many stars as our own galaxy.

We can confidently say, give or take, that there are perhaps 20 billion Earth-sized planets, made of similar elements to our own world, at the right distance from their parent star to have liquid water on their surface, assuming an Earth-like atmosphere as well. But of those worlds, how many of them have life? It could be most of them, many of them, or only a tiny fraction. Of the ones with life, how many of them develop complex, differentiated, intelligent, and technologically advanced life?

Before we even start asking questions about longevity, colonization, or machine-based life, we should admit with a non-negligible probability the most obvious resolution to the Fermi Paradox: the reason we havent made first contact with intelligent, technologically advanced, spacefaring alien civilizations is because there are none. In all the galaxy, and perhaps even in all the Universe, it really may just be us.

Without evidence to the contrary, we have every reason to keep looking and searching, but no reason other than our own preferences to believe that other creatures, similar to humans, are out there. While it may be incredible fun to theorize a myriad of possible explanations as to why intelligent extraterrestrials might remain hidden from us, the simplest possibility, that they just arent out there, should be the default hypothesis until proven otherwise.

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Ask Ethan: Why haven't we made "first contact" with aliens yet? - Big Think

Latinos across Nevada, especially those with Mexican ancestry, gathered at churches this weekend for prayer of the rosary and novena, a nine-day prayer and meditation; multiple mass services; traditional Aztec dance performances; and to sing las maanitas, a birthday song, at midnight.

Its all part of the feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, a significant spiritual event celebrating the manifestation of the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus Christ, in what is now modern-day Mexico. Her history is rooted in the nation's history of colonization.

Aside from local celebrations, she inspires millions of people each year to make a pilgrimage to Mexico Citys Baslica de Guadalupe, one of the most-visited Catholic sites in the world.

Ivn Sandoval-Cervantes, a cultural anthropology professor at UNLV, said la virgen is ubiquitous and enduring because she is a safe harbor for so many people. Some may see her as a purely Catholic or religious figure, while others see the roots of Mexicos Indigenous cultures.

The virgen is so popular because she can mean many things for many people and yet she unites them, Sandoval-Cervantes said, adding that people devoted to the Virgin of Guadalupe, called Guadalupanos, can be found across the world.

Thats the importance of the Virgen de Guadalupe and her legacy and why shes survived so many years.

Linda Curcio-Nagy, associate dean of the UNR Liberal Arts College and professor of Latin American history, added that the Virgin of Guadalupe transcends the religious aspect of her image.

Even if you're not a Catholic who goes to mass every Sunday, goes to confession every other day you might feel very secular there's still really strong devotion to her, so shes set aside both as a religious devotion and as a national symbol, she said.

Pope John Paul II proclaimed the Virgin of Guadalupe the Empress of Latin America in 1999.

The story of La Virgen de Guadalupe

The story begins with Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, a member of the Chichimeca people whose name roughly translates to he who speaks like an eagle in Nahuatl, a pre-Hispanic language still spoken in modern-day Mexico. He lived in a region that was known as Anahuac, roughly meaning near the water in Nahuatl, outside of what today is Mexico City. Juan Diego lived from 1474 to 1548 and was baptized by Catholic missionaries during colonization, which occurred with the arrival of the Spanish in 1519.

Juan Diego is said to have encountered the Virgin of Guadalupe on a hill in Tepeyac while walking between his home and a Franciscan mission.

The Virgin of Guadalupe spoke to him in his Nahuatl language, he recounted later. She stood in front of the sun, a crescent moon and angel at her feet, and wore a cloak full of stars, representing the beginning of a new civilization. A black ribbon around her waist represents pregnancy, which Pope John Paul II related to the birth of Jesus Christ in the New World.

This encounter was the first papal-approved sighting of Mary that happened in the New World outside of Europe, and the first Indigenous presentation of the Virgin Mary.

She is a morenita, Curcio-Nagy said, referring to the dark-skinned image of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Her clothes that shes wearing and even the belt and the way it is tied is indicative of a noble Indigenous woman of the time period.

She asked Juan Diego to approach the regional bishop to request that a church be built on Tepeyac hill in her name. The bishop asked Juan Diego for proof that he had seen an apparition of the Virgin Mary.

According to the story, she instructed him to climb the hill and pick flowers there, which were unseasonably in bloom during the winter in a place where normally only cactus grew, and she then placed them in his tilma, or cloak, to take to the bishop. When Juan Diego released the flowers before the bishop, an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe miraculously revealed itself on his cloak. The bishop knelt before the image and agreed to build a temple on the hill of Tepeyac, where a small shrine was built to protect and venerate Juan Diegos cloak.

Pope John Paul II canonized Juan Diego a saint in 2002 at the Baslica de Guadalupe in Mexico City. He is the patron saint of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Juan Diegos cloak was eventually moved, and it remains in the basilica protected by bulletproof glass.

A complicated connection

Daniel Enrique Prez, associate dean of the UNR College of Liberal Arts and professor of Chicanx and Latinx studies, said at least part of the reason the Virgin of Guadalupe is deeply revered is because she represents an intersection of Mexicos Indigenous past and colonized present.

Shes very much a representation of brownness and mestizaje and the coming together, Enrique Prez said. One important thing to do is not pretend that that coming together was not conflictual or that it didnt involve the loss of lives and genocide.

In Spanish, mestizaje roughly means of mixed race, but specifically refers to the mixing of Indigenous populations among the Spanish and other Europeans who colonized their region. Many see Mexicos people as mestizos as a result of this past, but scholars such as Sandoval-Cervantes argue that the reality is more complicated, and the idea that all people in Mexico are mesitzo threatens to erase modern Indigenous groups in Mexico.

Sandoval-Cervantes and Enrique Prez said its important to view the Virgin of Guadalupe through the perspective of colonization, as a means of converting Indigenous people to Catholicism.

It was almost a forcing of the two worlds, Enrique Prez said. Its a very complicated and complex history that goes way beyond just revering her.

The Virgin of Guadalupe is often linked to the Aztec goddess of the earth and corn, Tonantzin, (Nahuatl for our mother) because of the matriarchal representation and belief that the site where the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to Juan Diego was the site of a temple for Tonantzin before the Spanish destroyed it.

Sandoval-Cervantes said it could have been a strategy used by Spanish missionaries to convert Indigenous people, using a Catholic figure to replace an Indigeous deity through plays or stories.

In a lot of ways, the idea of Tonantzin was able to survive precisely because there was a figure that was really similar to who Tonantzin was, he said. But at the same time, this is really a strategy from the colonizers to try to replace those symbols. Even if those symbols survive, they have been transformed in very significant ways.

Personal connections

The connection people from Latin American countries and Latinos in the U.S. feel to the Virgin of Guadalupe is evident through the prominence of her image in homes, businesses, places of worship, clothing, jewelry and tattoos.

Curcio-Nagy said the Virgin of Guadalupes image helps create a sense of connection for people who have left their homes in Mexico or other countries, but long to maintain their cultural and ethnic identity.

Her own connection to the Virgin of Guadalupe began at a very young age in her hometown in New Jersey, where her grandmother kept an altar to the figure in her bedroom. In the summer, she and her family joined local weeks-long celebrations and she was tasked with carrying her mother and grandmothers chairs and umbrellas during miles-long processions.

As an adult, Curcio-Nagy visited the Baslica de Guadalupe in Mexico City, where she heard stories from people who told her they had been miraculously healed by Mary, and women who said she gave them the confidence to leave abusive relationships or the hope to continue their education.

Later on in her life, an evolved perspective of the Virgin of Guadalupe helped her better understand the women in her family.

I grew up poor, Curcio-Nagy said. There were a lot of challenges. There was tragedy and I realized that the women in my family shouldered a lot of the burden of moving forward, taking care of the kids, making changes in our lives And I realized that a lot of their strength came from their religious faith.

UNR professor Enrique Prez, who is an atheist, nonetheless embarked on a sort of pilgrimage seeking answers after his mother died some years ago at 51.

I very much did not want to accept that she was dead and gone and I wanted to know if she existed in an afterlife of some sort, he said.

His journey took him to a site where the Virgin of Guadalupe had allegedly appeared on a farm in Venezuela.

I was really looking for my mother, Enrique Prez said. But I went looking for my mother in spots where la virgen had appeared, and of course, my mother wasnt there.

Thats part of the connection to the Virgin of Guadalupe, he added. Because she represents a wide diversity of people, its easy for people to see their own loved ones in her image.

Enrique Prez found his mother, but not where or how he expected.

I realized my mother is in me because of the way she raised me, he said. I am the person that I am because of her. It was an important search to engage in, and I learned valuable lessons from it, but of course I didnt find my mother where I thought I would find her. I found her much closer.

Visit link:
Virgin of Guadalupe, first Indigenous apparition of Mary, remains sacred and towering figure among Latinos - The Nevada Independent

One thing that sets "Lost in Space" apart is that it manages to balance the actual grim stakes of nearly dying in space a lot with a fundamental wholesomeness, or a sort of resolute positivity. It is as fantastical as the original series, but has a more modern warmth and humanity instead of the more cheesy '60s vibe. If you want a show that will take you further and make you cry actual tears, Cartoon Network's "Steven Universe" might actually be your best bet.

An '80s-inspired universe where galactic warriors called "Gems" protect the Earth from invasion, it tells the story of a half-human half-Gem named Steven that has a great destiny to fulfill. It's funny, beautifully drawn, and has the occasional musical number. It's purely entertaining for kids, while also telling a layered, fascinating story about family, identity, trauma, and many other things. By the time the story wraps up, somehow the bright colors and unexpected depth of empathy you feel for the characters makes you feel like Andy giving his toys away at the end of "Toy Story 3."

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Shows Like Lost In Space That Sci-Fi Fans Need To Watch - Looper

If America has stood for anything, its surely forward-looking optimism. In New York, Chicago, Detroit and other shining cities, its soaring skyscrapers pointed to the future. But has the bubble burst in the 21st century?

We dont see ourselves striding toward a better tomorrow, columnist Frank Bruni wrote in the New York Times last month, citing research that found 71% of Americans believe that this country is on the wrong track. We see ourselves tiptoeing around catastrophe. That was true even before Covid. That was true even before Trump.

This disquiet hovers over Futures, a new exhibition that marks the reopening of the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building after nearly two decades lying moribund on Washingtons National Mall.

Spanning 32,000 sq feet, the show offers a sobering reminder from the past that utopian predictions of the future usually turn out to be wrong. It warns about the danger of unintended consequences: todays wonder invention is tomorrows arch polluter. And then it has a dilemma familiar to journalists who report on the climate crisis: how to walk the line between alarm and fatalism.

Its a needle we tried to thread throughout the whole exhibition, says Rachel Goslins, director of the Arts and Industries Building. How do we be hopeful without being naive and how do we surface challenges without creating more anxiety?

Everybody wanted to be part of this exhibition because theres a real hunger on the part of artists, designers and scientists to be part of a narrative that allows people to imagine the future they want and not the future they fear. To be part of an exhibition that came from a place of hopefulness about the future was attractive.

The display includes innovations in protein production, a bioreactor that uses algae to capture carbon from the air with 400 times the efficiency of a tree, an alternative to a coffin in the form of a biodegradable capsule that enables a decomposing body to nourish a tree, and coin-operated washing machines hooked up to grow a garden of wetland plants an ecosystem on rinse cycle.

Goslins continues: Sustainability is woven throughout the whole exhibition, partially in how we built it and the materials we use, but also in the solutions we explore. There are a lot of really big ideas in this exhibition that, if they come to scale, could fundamentally change our relationship with the planet.

No single one of these things is the answer but what we want people to take away is that there are solutions out there, there are answers out there. We have to pick them and we have to invest in them.

But there are also be-careful-what-you-wish-for lessons from the past. Among the objects on show is a 1909 cast iron Bakelizer machine used by chemist Leo Baekeland to manufacture the worlds first synthetic plastic, or Bakelite. At first this seemed a giant gain that could be used in electronics, jewelry, toys and much else; now it is recognised as a clear and present danger to the environment.

In so many ways, it opened up the world, Goslins reflects. Because of plastic, we can put artificial hearts in babies and we have cars that go faster and are lighter and use less resources. We can fly to the moon. But also because of plastic, our planet is choking.

So as we ask people to walk through this exhibition and imagine the future they want and imagine the possibilities, were also asking them to be thoughtful about what the consequences of those choices are and how we can act to lean into the best case scenario of some of these technologies and ideas and avoid the worst-case scenario.

Among the stars of the show are the Bell Nexus, a self-driving hybrid-electric air taxi that has a Star Wars grandeur, and Virgins Hyperloop vehicles which speed at 600 miles per hour through an enclosed tube with most of the air removed to eliminate aerodynamic drag. The latter is displayed with a subway-style map that envisions travelling from Boston to New York in 25 minutes, from there to Philadelphia in 12, from there to Baltimore in 13, from there to Washington in six, and so on all the way to Seattle.

Its not just, it would be great to be able to get to LA in three hours without leaving the ground, but it could change the way people live in cities. It could change fundamental patterns of the way we inhabit the Earth, which is where we might need to have options around as our climate changes.

Other highlights include costumes from the Marvel Studios movie Eternals, part of an interactive exhibit that shows how films imagine the future, and objects such as a tortoise robot from 1950, an AI-powered kinetic sculpture, an experimental Alexander Graham Bell telephone, the first full-scale Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome built in North America and the first genderless voice.

There is a solar panel installed at the White House by President Jimmy Carter at the height of the energy crisis in 1979; they were subsequently removed by the Ronald Reagan administration.

At the heart of the show is me + you, a sculpture by artist Suchi Reddy that incorporates artificial intelligence and is sponsored by Amazon Web Services. It listens for the words My future is ... at several circular listening posts and renders the speakers sentiment in a display of coloured lights and patterns. Its interpretations will evolve and become more nuanced over time.

Standing beside me + you in the vast central rotunda, Goslins says: I saw it in renderings and then I saw it half-assembled, I saw it in pieces and now I get to see it for real. Its fantastic.

It is this gorgeous, inspiring, luminous structure thats meant to capture the hopes and dreams of our visitors and mirror those back to them. That is literally the raison detre of this exhibition, so its a wonderful metaphor and its also just a really fun thing to interact with.

The British novelist LP Hartley observed: The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. The Futures exhibition serves up reminders of the follies of the past. The 1904 Worlds Fair in St Louis, it notes, was supposed to mark Americas progress and displayed the automobile, outdoor electric lighting and X-rays.

A sign continues: But it also featured Living Exhibits with Indigenous people on display, like animals in a zoo. The largest was the Filipino Village, which included more than 1,000 people over a period of seven months. This disturbing exhibit marked the recent colonization of the Philippines by the United States.

The Arts and Industries Building itself has a storied history and mix of architectural styles. It was the first US national museum and the first museum built on the national mall. For 140 years it was a Palace of Wonders with contents such as the original Spar-Spangled Banner, the Spirit of St Louis aeroplane and the Apollo 11 command module from the first moon landing.

But those objects dispersed to other museums in the Smithsonian Institution, which celebrates its 175th birthday this year. The Arts and Industries Building went dark in 2004, in part because of a need for structural renovation. Now it reawakens with Futures, scheduled to remain open until 6 July and designed by the award-winning architecture firm Rockwell Group.

David Rockwell, 65, its founder and president, says: I thought the building was such an incredible survivor and had seen so many versions of what the future was going to be and had been through so much history, so when Rachel approached us it felt like an amazingly worthwhile project. I liked the fact that I didnt know the answer before we began. Thats a sign of a good project.

Like Goslins, Rockwell hopes that visitors will come away with a sense of possibilities about the future rather than paralysing despair. We are living in a world in which there seems to be endless debate about everything and weve been through an enormous upheaval.

Optimism is the only way forward. It doesnt mean blind optimism, but optimism where youre able to be prompted by things you hadnt thought about. Whats the future going to be like in 10, 20, 30, 50 years?

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Optimism is the only way forward: the exhibition that imagines our future - The Guardian

To reduce the costs of space missions, it is necessary to be able to reuse the equipment and to be able to ensure a large number of shots at a sustained rate. For businessman Elon Musk, this may be where the shoe pinches for his interplanetary rocket project Starship and the company that supports the initiative, SpaceX .

In an email addressed to the employees of the company, he mentioned a crisis in production of Raptor engines which worsens and which could lead to a real risk of bankruptcy for SpaceX if the pace of a bi-weekly Starship rocket launch cannot be sustained next year.

With some 39 engines Raptor necessary, we will have to hold a high production rate. Part of the problem Elon Musk mentioned seems to emerge with the departure of several SpaceX officials, including one in charge of propulsion development, for lack of progress.

The billionaire called all employees who can to be present at Hawthorne (the companys head office) to avoid what currently presents itself as a disaster , and this during the extended (and family) weekend of Thanksgiving, for which he himself had planned to take a little rest.

If the production of Raptor engines does not is not sufficient, it will not be possible to carry out the Starship missions but also to carry out the deployment of the Starlink v2 network of satellites providing access to the Internet, for which the launchers Falcon 9 will not be powerful enough.

Elon Musk presents Starlink v2 as the real cornerstone of the economic model of satellite internet access, the current network v1 having above all to validate the technologies and create a customer base by selling the connection kits at a loss.

Without a Starlink v2 network on time, the beautiful mechanics will stop and costs will quickly add up. Without Starship rockets available, it is all of SpaceXs ambition (orbital flights, colonization of the Moon and then of Mars ) which is compromised, despite the insolent successes already obtained with the Falcon 9 launcher and the Dragon capsule. .

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SpaceX: production problems of Raptor engines, Elon Musk evokes a risk of bankruptcy Bulk Solids Handling - Bulk Solids Handling

Having a mean density of 3,346.4kg/m3,[2] the Moon is a differentiated body, being composed of a geochemically distinct crust, mantle, and planetary core. This structure is believed to have resulted from the fractional crystallization of a magma ocean shortly after its formation about 4.5 billion years ago. The energy required to melt the outer portion of the Moon is commonly attributed to a giant impact event that is postulated to have formed the Earth-Moon system, and the subsequent reaccretion of material in Earth orbit. Crystallization of this magma ocean would have given rise to a mafic mantle and a plagioclase-rich crust.

Geochemical mapping from orbit implies that the crust of the Moon is largely anorthositic in composition,[3] consistent with the magma ocean hypothesis. In terms of elements, the lunar crust is composed primarily of oxygen, silicon, magnesium, iron, calcium, and aluminium, but important minor and trace elements such as titanium, uranium, thorium, potassium, and hydrogen are present as well. Based on geophysical techniques, the crust is estimated to be on average about 50km thick.[4]

Partial melting within the mantle of the Moon gave rise to the eruption of mare basalts on the lunar surface. Analyses of these basalts indicate that the mantle is composed predominantly of the minerals olivine, orthopyroxene and clinopyroxene, and that the lunar mantle is more iron-rich than that of the Earth. Some lunar basalts contain high abundances of titanium (present in the mineral ilmenite), suggesting that the mantle is highly heterogeneous in composition. Moonquakes have been found to occur deep within the mantle of the Moon about 1,000km below the surface. These occur with monthly periodicities and are related to tidal stresses caused by the eccentric orbit of the Moon about the Earth. A few shallow moonquakes with hypocenters located about 100km below the surface have also been detected, but these occur more infrequently and appear to be unrelated to the lunar tides.[4]

Several lines of evidence imply that the lunar core is small, with a radius of about 350km or less.[4] The size of the lunar core is only about 20% the size of the Moon itself, in contrast to about 50% as is the case for most other terrestrial bodies. The composition of the lunar core is not well constrained, but most believe that it is composed of metallic iron alloy with a small amount of sulfur and nickel. Analyses of the Moon's time-variable rotations indicate that the core is at least partly molten.[5]

In 2010, a reanalysis of the old Apollo seismic data on the deep moonquakes using modern processing methods confirmed that the Moon has an iron rich core with a radius of 330 20 km. The same reanalysis established that the solid inner core made of pure iron has a radius of 240 10 km. The core is surrounded by the partially (10 to 30%) melted layer of the lower mantle with a radius of 480 20 km (thickness ~150km). These results imply that 40% of the core by volume has solidified. The density of the liquid outer core is about 5g/cm3 and it could contain as much 6% sulfur by weight. The temperature in the core is probably about 16001700K (13301430C).[6]

In 2019, a reanalysis of nearly 50 years of data collected from the Lunar Laser Ranging experiment with lunar gravity field data from the GRAIL mission, shows that for a relaxed lunar fluid core with non-hydrostatic lithospheres, the core flattening is determined as (2.20.6)104 with the radii of its core-mantle boundary as 38112km.[7]

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Internal structure of the Moon - Wikipedia

The University of New South Wales (UNSW) has agreed to help its compatriots at Australian construction start-up Luyten fast-track the R&D of a machine capable of 3D printing lunar structures.

Working as part of the Meeka Project, the organizations plan to expedite the development and testing of a new gantry-mounted lunar regolith 3D printer. Playfully named Platypus Galacticas, the system is designed to allow for the rapid construction of Moon-based infrastructure up to 9m x 12m in size, and ultimately aid Australias ambitions to establish a permanent presence on the lunar surface.

We are absolutely delighted and extremely honoured to be partnering with UNSW to make building on the Moon possible, said Luyten CEO Ahmed Mahil. UNSW is renowned for its academic leadership and world class research and we couldnt be more pleased to be working together. Our partnership will solidify Australias leading role in the worlds fast developing space economy.

Our combined expertise and passion for innovative and exceptional building outcomes, will help the human race to expedite colonization of the Moon and other planets.

Luytens Platypus portfolio

Founded just last year, Luyten is a start-up with the stated aim of bridging the technological gap between the construction and manufacturing sectors. In an attempt to achieve this, the firm has developed a line of modular Platypus concrete 3D printers, which it not only sells for $31-35,850 (USD), but markets as a service for building huge one-off structures.

At present, Luytens portfolio includes both the original entry-level Platypus and its more advanced Expeditionary system. Although the machines feature a similar gantry-layout, the former is designed to make 3D printing complex prototypes viable for architectural newcomers, while the latter is built to provide greater mobility to users, enabling them to scale construction on-site where desired.

The firm has also begun developing another portability-focused edition of the Platypus called the X12, which can be transformed into a 12m x 16m 3D printer within twenty minutes. Little is known about the upcoming system, but its scalability is said to be enabled by a robotic transformer, and Luyten has stated that its set to be a robust, mobile and lightweight unit.

Prior to its Meeka announcement, the companys technologies had firmly been earmarked for home building applications here on terra firma, with the Southern Hemispheres first compliant 3D printed structure set to be built in December 2021. However, having identified the cost, pace and customization potential of the Platypus here on Earth, Luyten has now set its sights on extraterrestrial sites as well.

When we developed our groundbreaking concrete 3D printers, we thought we would be solving building and construction issues across the world, explained Mahil. But with discussions currently taking place with people across the space industry, we are now looking at solving building and construction issues on the Moon. As a result, we have commissioned Project Meeka.

Making moves on the Moon

As part of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the organizations, the UNSW has now committed to help develop a new addition to the Luyten lineup: the Platypus Galacticas. Being built under the codename Project Meeka (meaning Moon in Australian aborigine), the machine is set to be lightweight-but-larger than the other Platypuses at 3m x 4m, as well as scalable and lunar regolith-compatible.

Once finished, the 3D printer is expected to reduce the amount of machinery and materials that need to be fired to the Moon, in the event that Australian astronauts seek to build a permanent base there. By employing such a CAD design-based approach to erect settlements, UNSW Associate Professor Matthias Haeusler says that it could even be possible to make them uniquely lunar-customized.

With computational design, one has a method to design protective shells for habitats on the moon with a foremost consideration on requirements for human habitat in mind, said Haeusler. [For example], It allows scientific knowledge on how to protect humans from solar and cosmic radiation to feed into a script that generates a shelter with the required 80-plus centimetres of solid material.

Already, the project is set to be at a stage where the organizations are tuning and testing different lunar materials and designs, but the technology still remains a long way from end-use. If deployed on the Moon, for instance, the Platypus Galacticas would have to be preceded by regolith-mining rovers, which in turn, would need to ferry materials to base where they could be sintered into something printable.

According to Mahil, however, the benefits of developing such scalable technologies wont just be felt on the Moon but back here on Earth, and the mission is set to yield learnings that inform the construction of housing in extreme climates as well.

A lot of the daily conveniences that Australians have come to expect, are actually underpinned by space-based technologies, concluded Mahil. It is easy to forget that things such as internet access, weather forecasting, GPS, online banking and emergency responses to natural disasters, all heavily rely on the innovations floating in space above the earths surface.

Is regolith-based AM taking-off?

While lunar regolith-based 3D printing remains at an early stage of development, several related research projects have now been backed by national space agencies, with each seeking to investigate its Moon base-building potential.

Space systems specialist Redwire, for instance, has been contracted by NASA to assess the feasibility of 3D printing regolith into on-demand lunar structures. Scheduled to take place on the International Space Station, Redwires Regolith Print (RRP) study is designed to serve as a tech demo for using Moon dust-simulating feedstock to create orbital builds.

Likewise, Texan construction firm ICON has also been commissioned by NASA to assess the potential of 3D printing for producing off-world structures, albeit for Mars rather than the Moon. Using its Vulcan system, the company has already erected a 1,700 sq. ft Mars Dune Alpha habitat, which NASA intends to use as a means of assessing the long-term impact of prolonged exposure to Martian conditions.

Over in Russia, the countrys Roscosmos agency has embarked on a similar mission to 3D print regolith-based shelters, as has Chinas National Space Administration, which revealed its own plans to 3D print a Moon base back in January 2019.

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Featured image shows a rendering of what a future Luyten 3D printed lunar structure may look like. Image via Luyten.

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UNSW to help Luyten ramp up the R&D of 'Platypus Galacticas' lunar 3D printer - 3D Printing Industry