Life on Mars to become a reality in 2023, Dutch firm claims

Thousands apply to become one of four astronauts selected to set up a human colony in a plan that comes with snags

Maria Muixí Gancedo

A few months before he died, Carl Sagan recorded a message          of hope to would-be Mars explorers, telling them: "Whatever the reason you're on Mars is, I'm glad you're there. And I wish I was with you."

On Monday, 17 years after the pioneering astronomer set out his hopeful vision of the future in 1996, a company from the Netherlands is proposing to turn Sagan's dreams of reaching Mars into reality. The company, Mars One, plans to send four astronauts on a trip to the Red Planet to set up a human colony in 2023. But there are a couple of serious snags.

Firstly, when on Mars their bodies will have to adapt to surface gravity that is 38% of that on Earth. It is thought that this would cause such a total physiological change in their bone density, muscle strength and circulation that voyagers would no longer be able to survive in Earth's conditions. Secondly, and directly related to the first, they will have to say goodbye to all their family and friends, as the deal doesn't include a return ticket.

The Mars One website states that a return "cannot be anticipated nor expected". To return, they would need a fully assembled and fuelled rocket capable of escaping the gravitational field of Mars, on-board life support systems capable of up to a seven-month voyage and the capacity either to dock with a space station orbiting Earth or perform a safe re-entry and landing.

"Not one of these is a small endeavour" the site notes, requiring "substantial technical capacity, weight and cost".

Nevertheless, the project has already had 10,000 applicants, according to the company's medical director, Norbert Kraft. When the official search is launched on Monday at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York, they expect tens of thousands more hopefuls to put their names forward.

Kraft told the Guardian that the applicants so far ranged in age from 18 to at least 62 and, though they include women, they tended to be men.

The reasons they gave for wanting to go were varied, he said. One of three examples Kraft forwarded by email to the Guardian cited Sagan.

An American woman called Cynthia, who gave her age as 32, told the company that it was a "childhood imagining" of hers to go to Mars. She described a trip her mother had taken her on in the early 1990s to a lecture at the University of Wisconsin.

In a communication to Mars One, she said the lecturer had been Sagan and she had asked him if he thought humans would land on Mars in her lifetime. Cynthia said: "He in turn asked me if I wanted to be trapped in a 'tin can spacecraft' for the two years it would take to get there. I told him yes, he smiled, and told me in all seriousness, that yes, he absolutely believed that humans would reach Mars in my lifetime."

She told the project: "When I first heard about the Mars One project I thought, this is my chance – that childhood dream could become a reality. I could be one of the pioneers, building the first settlement on Mars and teaching people back home that there are still uncharted territories that humans can reach for."

The prime attributes Mars One is looking for in astronaut-settlers is resilience, adaptability, curiosity, ability to trust and resourcefulness, according to Kraft. They must also be over 18.

Professor Gerard 't Hooft, winner of the Nobel prize for theoretical physics in 1999 and lecturer of theoretical physics at the University of Utrecht, Holland, is an ambassador for the project. 'T Hooft admits there are unknown health risks. The radiation is "of quite a different nature" than anything that has been tested on Earth, he told the BBC.

Founded in 2010 by Bas Lansdorp, an engineer, Mars One says it has developed a realistic road map and financing plan for the project based on existing technologies and that the mission is perfectly feasible. The website states that the basic elements required for life are already present on the planet. For instance, water can be extracted from ice in the soil and Mars has sources of nitrogen, the primary element in the air we breathe. The colony will be powered by specially adapted solar panels, it says.

In March, Mars One said it had signed a contract with the American firm Paragon Space Development Corporation to take the first steps in developing the life support system and spacesuits fit for the mission.

The project will cost a reported $6bn (£4bn), a sum Lansdorp has said he hopes will be met partly by selling broadcasting rights. "The revenue garnered by the London Olympics was almost enough to finance a mission to Mars," Lansdorp said, in an interview with ABC News in March.

Another ambassador to the project is Paul Römer, the co-creator of Big Brother, one of the first reality TV shows and one of the most successful.

On the website, Römer gave an indication of how the broadcasting of the project might proceed: "This mission to Mars can be the biggest media event in the world," said Römer. "Reality meets talent show with no ending and the whole world watching. Now there's a good pitch!"

The aim is to establish a permanent human colony, according to the company's website. The first team would land on the surface of Mars in 2023 to begin constructing the colony, with a team of four astronauts every two years after that.

The project is not without its sceptics, however, and concerns have been raised about how astronauts might get to the surface and establish a colony with all the life support and other requirements needed. There were also concerns over the health implications for the applicants.

Dr Veronica Bray, from the University of Arizona's lunar and planetary laboratory, told BBC News that Earth was protected from solar winds by a strong magnetic field, without which it would be difficult to survive. The Martian surface is very hostile to life. There is no liquid water, the atmospheric pressure is "practically a vacuum", radiation levels are higher and temperatures vary wildly. High radiation levels can lead to increased cancer risk, a lowered immune system and possibly infertility, she said.

To minimise radiation, the project team will cover the domes they plan to build with several metres of soil, which the colonists will have to dig up.

The mission hopes to inspire generations to "believe that all things are possible, that anything can be achieved" much like the Apollo moon landings.

"Mars One believes it is not only possible, but imperative that we establish a permanent settlement on Mars in order to accelerate our understanding of the formation of the solar system, the origins of life, and of equal importance, our place in the universe" it says.

The longest anyone has ever spent in space is 438 days, achieved by Valeri Polyakov, of Russia, in a manned space flight in 1994.

But the Mars One website states: "While a cosmonaut on board the Mir was able to walk upon return to Earth after 13 months in a weightless environment, after a prolonged stay on Mars the human body will not be able to adjust to the higher gravity of Earth upon return.

"There is a point in time after which the human body will have adjusted to the 38% gravitation field of Mars, and be incapable of returning to the Earth's much stronger gravity. This is due to the total physiological change in the human body, which includes reduction in bone density, muscle strength, and circulatory system capacity."

Here is the web page of this project, where we can see all the different people who has applied for the project. 

http://applicants.mars-one.com/ 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqSmeXhlrIM  

How to improve your study skills, by Marta Casado

There are many ways to prepare for a test or to do an assignment. Good study habits are a must for anyone who wishes to achieve great success in their courses.

1. Create an appropriate study environment. You will need limited noise, a lot of sunlight, a tidy surface, and comfortable furniture. Find a quiet place to study where you won't be bothered. This is very important and should be given great care in doing.

2. Get everything you need before you sit down to study. Pencils, pens, notebooks, college ruled paper, your laptop, textbooks, etc.

3. Develop a schedule. All students should keep a schedule of classes, assignments and other key dates. As part of that schedule, they should set aside specific time for studying and project work. That way, they're less likely to find themselves scrambling to complete a project at the last minute or cramming the night before a big test. The schedule should also set aside time for non-school activities like sports. In fact, the more comprehensive the schedule, the more efficient most students will be in completing their schoolwork.

4. Develop a calm attitude. Be calm and patient with yourself. Nobody learns anything straight away.

5. Take notes in any classes that you have. You can even take notes at work. It may be easier to use abbreviations for common words, only record important information (and/or key words), use clear headers to organize information and use pictures/diagrams to demonstrate. Highlight or underline key points in your material.

6. Start with the homework that is hardest to you. For example, if you're taking chemistry, math, English, and Spanish. Start with Chemistry and end with English. If you start with the hardest subject, your brain will be fresh.

7. Avoid distractions. If you have family members that distract you, politely ask them to leave so you can continue with your assignments. If you have kids, this might not be possible. Make sure the TV and radio are off. If you need background noise, classical music might be of interest.

8. Take frequent breaks. Go for a walk, ride your bike, or be with family. When you take frequent breaks, you find that you aren't boggled with the stress of homework and you can't wait to get back to your assignments later.

9. Develop effective memorization techniques - You can use lists when having to memorize several things eg. (formulae). Flash cards are good for memorizing large amounts of grouped information.

10. Develop critical reading skills. As students move into higher grades, they're assigned larger and more complex reading assignments. Poor reading skills or an inability to read for important information will make these assignments a burden and undermine overall academic success. Students need to deliberately learn to read for key information. If reading skills are weak, it's important for the student to seek help improving them; otherwise performance in many subjects would be impacted.

11. Focus on the areas that require the most attention. Study things more if you have a hard time doing them.

12. Improve test-taking strategies. A poor test result doesn't always mean that the student doesn't have a good grasp of the academic material or skill gaps. It's possible that the student understands the material, but doesn't take tests well. An effective test-taking strategy includes: learning how to prioritize material when studying for a test; preparing for a test over a number of days and not just the night before; coping with stress during the test; and managing time during a test so that all sections or areas are completed.

13. Develop a study group. This way you can quiz each other and learn things from each other
.
14. Ask questions to yourself. Asking questions should lead to emphasis on the what, why, how, when, who and where of study content. Ask yourself questions while you read or study. Answering them will help to make sense of the material, and aid you in remembering it, because the process will make an impression on you. Those things that make impressions are more meaningful, and therefore more easily remembered. 

15. Make sure you get enough sleep. Staying up late studying is not a good idea. Lack of sleep prevents you from concentrating and reduces your ability to remember what you have learnt 

 

By Gemma Sanz

 

Legend and tradition

The legend of Sant Jordi and the dragon

Jaume Ferrer II (15th C.). Altarpiece. Catalan School. Lleida City Council. Photo: AISA.

 

According to popular tradition, Sant Jordi was a Roman soldier and was born in the 3rd century in Capadocia in Turkey. This Saint, who was under the orders of the emperor Diocletian, refused to carry out the emperor's edict to persecute all Christians and for this reason he was martyred and decapitated by his companions. In the eastern part of the Roman Empire, he soon became venerated as a martyr and shortly after this, fantastic stories related to him began to appear.

The exploits of Sant Jordi and the Dragon became popular throughout Europe around the 9th century under the name of "Golden legend" and were compiled by the archbishop of Genoa, Iacopo da Varazze, in 1264, in the book 'Legenda sanctorum '. In this version, however, the exploits took place in Libya.

The most popular legend in Catalonia about Sant Jordi tells that at Montblanc, in Conca de Barberà, there was a terrible dragon which viciously attacked men and beasts. To pacify it, lots were drawn and a person was chosen to be given as a sacrifice to the monster. One day, the misfortune fell on the king's daughter, who would have died in the beast's claws if it had not been for the arrival of a handsome knight who challenged the dragon and killed it.
This same legend, although with slight variations, is told as a popular legend in England, Portugal and Greece.

by Gina Martí

Lego school promises the building blocks to successful learning

Danish firm brings its research into child development as well as cash to new Billund venture centred on inquiry-based education

• Helen Russell in Billund
• The Guardian, Monday 22 April 2013 17.29 BST

The International School of Billund will combine the international baccalaureate with the Danish school system and an emphasis on creativity and play. Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

For many children, it's the ultimate fantasy. For a few, it's about to become a reality. In August a newly refurbished building in Billund,Denmark, will open its doors to become the first ever "Lego school".

The fee-paying establishment is the brainchild of the toy manufacturer's billionaire owner, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, who hopes the school will help put the town in rural Jutland – a place Copenhageners refer to as Hicksville – on the map as the Capital of Children.

The International School of Billund will combine the international baccalaureate (IB) with the Danish school system and Lego's emphasis on creativity and play. Centred around "inquiry-based learning", the idea is that children are more motivated when they generate their own questions. As one prospective parent of the new school put it: "In the UK you're taught how to pass exams. In Scandinavia you're taught how to think."

The school's champions hope that by combining this free and easy approach to learning with Lego's research into child development and the international baccalaureate, pupils will have the tools to both "think" and "do" in their chosen careers.

The headteacher is British physicist-turned-international-school-tsar Richard Matthews, a seasoned head, having led schools all over the world from Botswana to Grimsby. As one of the few men in Denmark to wear a tie, he is referred to by some prospective parents as "Tie Man".

"Allowing time for creativity, play and getting into a state of flow is at the centre of Lego's philosophy and we'll be experimenting with this and other ideas in the timetabling," he said. "But we also have a responsibility — the children's education comes first and sometimes the old methods will be the best."

The UK debate about child-centred learning was revived on Monday when Liz Truss, the early years minister, complained to the Daily Mail that in nurseries she had "seen too many chaotic settings, where children are running around" in an environment with "no sense of purpose".

Billund, Denmark, which Lego's owner wants to turn into the 'Capital of Children'. Photograph: Graphic

The new school in Billund is just one of a long line of projects in a town of 6,000 people sponsored by the Lego family. The family has also paid for an airport – the second largest in Denmark – and worked with the council to construct a church, community facilities, a library and a theatre.

Lego owner Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

The Kirk Kristiansens are the most famous dynasty in the country and Kjeld is the richest man in Denmark, but he still chooses to live and work in Billund. As well as supporting the drive to make his hometown the Capital of Children, he is chairman of the board of theLego Foundation, an organisation funding research into child development and the psychology of play.

There has already been plenty of interest from parents, although some have expressed fears about the experimental nature of the venture. "I worry about using my children as guinea pigs," said one parent. "They're trying to do something quite different, so there are bound to be teething problems."

The school will open for three- to seven-year-olds in August, with pupils up to the 16 invited to join from 2015. The intake will be 50% Danish and 50% international.

The school will be subsidised, with the government paying two-thirds of fees and parents covering the remaining third, 3,000 Danish kroner a month (£344).

On a tour of the plot where the school will be, Matthews describes bike routes he intends to create, playgrounds to be built, a hexagonal music studio to be developed and the "Lego Lab" ("the amount of Lego we can have is obviously not an issue", he said). Kindergarten will be "one big adventure," he says, "things to climb up, crawl through, slide down and swing on as part of the environment. Lego is building something quite remarkable."

Lego's endorsement is enough to shore up the school financially andwith company profits up 40% last year and the owner's name attached, there's a sense that the venture will not be allowed to fail.

CAN YOU TRAIN YOURSELF TO GET BY ON LESS SLEEP? BY ELENA AMÉZOLA

Margaret Thatcher did it. So did Salvador Dali. They survived the day with only a few hours of sleep. The question is whether you can force yourself to do the same.  

We waste a third of our lives sleeping – or that’s how some people see it. When there doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day, you yearn to be like the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who was said to get by on just four hours sleep a night, or the artist Salvador Dali who wasted as little time as possible slumbering.

There is a quite a range in the number of hours we like to sleep. As Jim Horne writes in Sleepfaring, 80% of us manage between six and nine hours a night; the other 20% sleep more or less than this. But how easy is it to change your regular schedule? If you force yourself to get out of bed a couple of hours early every day will your body eventually become accustomed to it? Sadly not.

There is plenty of evidence that a lack of sleep has an adverse effect. We do not simply adjust to it – in the short-term it reduces our concentration, and if it’s extreme it makes us confused and distressed, and turns us into such poor drivers that it’s the equivalent of being drunk. The long-term effects are even more worrying. Repeatedly getting less sleep than you need over the course of decades is associated with an increased risk of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.

But what about those people who do happily appear to manage on fewer hours than the rest of us?  Why does it not seem to make them ill? 

Firstly, you can console yourself with the fact that there are plenty of myths about people’s bold claims. Napoleon allegedly said that sleep was only for weaklings, but in fact he got plenty of shut-eye.

But there are a few very rare individuals who can manage with only five hours sleep a night without experiencing deleterious effects. They are sometimes known as the “sleepless elite”. In 2009, a team led by geneticist Ying-Hui Fu at the University of California San Francisco discovered a mother and daughter who went to bed very late, yet were up bright and early every morning. Even when they had the chance to have a lie-in at the weekend (a tell-tale sign that you are sleep-deprived) they didn’t take it. 

Tests revealed that both mother and daughter carried a mutation of a gene called hDEC2. When the researchers tweaked the same gene in mice and in flies, they found that they also began to sleep less – and when mice were deprived of sleep they didn’t seem to need as much sleep in order to catch up again. This demonstrates that genetics play at least some part in your need for sleep; unfortunately the sleepless elites’ enviable state of affairs isn’t available to rest of us, because at the moment we are stuck with the genes we have (that’s my excuse anyway).

But while it might not be possible to train yourself to sleep less, researchers working with the military have found that you can bank sleep beforehand if you plan well in advance. At the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research they had people go to bed a couple of hours earlier than usual every night for a week. When they were subsequently deprived of sleep they didn’t suffer as much as the people who hadn’t had the chance to bank sleep in advance.

This does involve a lot of effort, so in general what you need to do is work out your personal sleep requirement and then try to stick to it. In his book Counting Sheep Paul Martin describes a method of working this out. You probably need to do it while you’re on holiday because you need to wake up naturally, rather than rely on an alarm clock. Every night for two weeks you go to bed at the same time and see what time you wake up by yourself next morning.  For the first few nights you might well be catching up on missed sleep, but after that the time you wake up gives an indication of the length of your ideal night’s sleep.

You might be disappointed to find you need more sleep than you’d hoped, but don’t see it as a waste. This is time spent valuably allowing your body and mind to function at their best during waking hours.  It may use up a third of your life, but it makes the other two thirds so much better. The politician whose sleep patterns inspire me isn’t Margaret Thatcher, but Winston Churchill. He disliked getting out of bed so much that he stayed there working all morning, even receiving visitors in his bedroom. 

 

Three more homes for life in the universe? (Posted by Angela Blasi)

By Meg Urry, Special to CNN

April 22, 2013 -- Updated 1417 GMT (2217 HKT)

Editor's note: Meg Urry is the Israel Munson professor of physics and astronomy and chairwoman of the department of physics at Yale University, where she is the director of the Yale Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics.

(CNN) -- Is anybody out there?

For millennia, humans have gazed at the night sky, asking this question. That's why scientists and NASA are eagerly searching for "exoplanets" -- that is, planets that orbit around stars other than our sun.

Last week NASA's Kepler satellite reported the discovery of three Earth-sized exoplanets within the so-called "habitable zone," defined as the neighborhood of a star where liquid water -- essential for life as we know it -- can exist.

Meg Urry

In our solar system, only three planets lie in the sun's habitable zone -- Venus, Earth and Mars.

Planets too close to the star they orbit, like Mercury, are too hot for liquid water. Even Venus turns out to be too hot, thanks to a runaway greenhouse effect caused by its carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere. Planets farther from their star, like Jupiter, are too cold, at least on its surface -- although Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, may have oceans of liquid water beneath an icy crust.

3 new planets could host life

Say hello to the three new exoplanets: Kepler 62e and Kepler 62f orbit are the fifth and sixth planets orbiting the star Kepler 62, and Kepler 69c is the third planet orbiting -- you guessed it -- Kepler 69. All three are nearly the same size as our Earth.

Kepler 62f has a diameter 40% larger than the Earth's. It orbits its star once every 267 days, very similar to the 225-day period of Venus. We do not know what Kepler 62f is made of but other exoplanets of a similar size are known to be rocky, so that's the best guess for now.

Kepler 62e is about 60% larger than the Earth and is probably hotter because it lies at the inner edge of the habitable zone, in a 122-day orbit -- slightly longer than Mercury's 88-day orbit.

You can see a pattern: the shorter the orbital period, the closer the planet is to its star. For physics lovers, this follows directly from Newton's law of gravity -- but that's a lesson for another time.

NASA discovers planet similar to Earth

Take a one-way trip to Mars?

For now, I can tell you that one Mercury-year is 88 Earth-days, one Venus-year is 225 Earth-days, one Earth-year is 365 days, and one Jupiter year is about 12 Earth-years. (By "year" I mean the time that a planet takes to orbit its star. By "day" I mean the rotation period of the planet. What a "day" or "year" means clearly depends on the planet!)

Since Kepler 62 is a cooler star than our sun, planets can orbit closer to it than the Earth can to our sun before overheating.

In contrast, the third Earth-like planet, Kepler 69c, orbits a star very similar to our sun (that is, hotter than Kepler 62). It is 70% larger than the Earth and orbits Kepler 69 once every 242 days -- very like Venus.

Debra Fischer, noted exoplanet hunter and my colleague at Yale, explained the significance of the discovery: "The radii of these planets makes them the smallest ever detected outside the solar system. The host star is about a billion years older than our Sun, so it is intriguing to speculate about whether life might inhabit these planets."

We know from scientific studies on Earth that, given the right chemical elements and some energy, organic compounds form. Living organisms have been found even in apparently inhospitable regions of the Earth, like the driest deserts or Antarctica, or near thermal vents in the black depths of the ocean. With the right ingredients, it seems, life is nearly impossible to prevent.

We don't know for sure whether there is life on Venus or Mars. If there is, it's unlikely to look like ET, canal-building aliens, or any other science fiction-type fantasy. Walking, talking aliens would have been visible decades ago to telescopes and rovers.

But could there be intelligent life in another planetary system, in orbit around one of the 100 billion other stars in our Milky Way galaxy? Could we communicate with them? Could we visit them?

The Kepler satellite was designed to look for planets around each of about 100,000 stars. As of April 19, 2013, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Planet Quest website reports 851 confirmed planets and 2781 candidates, totaling as many as 3,632 exoplanets. Most were discovered by scientists using Kepler data -- and a few were found by ordinary citizens analyzing Kepler data at planethunters.org.

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We can't travel to the nearest stars in a human lifetime -- such a journey would take tens of thousands of years with current technology. But we do have the technology to speak to distant civilizations. In fact, we've been broadcasting television signals to the cosmos for more than 80 years.

We have had the technology to explore space and to communicate over long distances for less than 100 years -- a tiny fraction of the few million years since the first humans, much less the 4.5 billion years since the Earth formed.

So it is likely that any other technologically sophisticated civilization would be far more advanced than we. That means they probably could let us know they were here, if they wanted to. For now, we can keep sending our TV broadcasts, listening for their broadcasts and studying exoplanets for signs of life.

Thursday, at a meeting of the NASA science advisory committee I serve on, NASA Associate Administrator for Science and astronaut John Grunsfeld finished his presentation by giving us a heads up about the exciting Kepler exoplanet discoveries. As he said in the press release, we are "a bit closer to finding a place like home. It is only a matter of time before we know if the galaxy is home to a multitude of planets like Earth, or if we are a rarity."

After our committee meeting ended today, I asked one of the NASA audio-visual staff whether he had heard about the new exoplanets. "Oh yes," he answered, "the ones in the habitable zone." He asked whether life might exist on one of these planets, and whether we could visit them. Such ideas are why he is thrilled to work at NASA.

People want to learn about life elsewhere in the universe. We want to visit those planets, to see what creatures live there, to compare to our own world -- to learn what is out there.

Thanks to Kepler, NASA, dedicated scientists and curious citizens, we are that much closer to finding out.

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A Pep Talk from Kid President to You

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-gQLqv9f4o

Laura Izquierdo

Where is the limit?? Wingsuit flying at Montserrat By: VICTOR MARROQUIN

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8L8UCfxmtSw