No Planet B can 'ever' be made as comfortable as Earth, says British astronomer Martin Rees

The end of the world is the main focus of his new book.

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  • Everybody from Elon Musk to Stephen Hawking has said we should colonize a 'Planet B' due to the threat to our existence. Martin Brees, the UK's Astronomer Royal, has another perspective on it.
  • "I think we have to accept that there's no planet B, which can ever be made as comfortable as the Earth," he recently told The Current's Anna Maria Tremonti.
  • In a time of ever-worsening climate change that threatens the very existence of human beings, his focus is on maintaining and fixing the planet we now live on, but still with an eye toward the stars.
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10 great minds we lost in 2018

Renowned scientists and technologists who've passed away in 2018.

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  • We lost a great deal of internet pioneers and geniuses of physics in 2018.
  • Creations of fiber optic cables, men on the moon and the unsung heroes of the life sciences made their mark on the scientific enterprise.
  • The loss of men like Stephen Hawking leaves a hole in the sciences, but his work and many others will continue to inspire the generations to come.
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Technology & Innovation

A $100-million startup shares incredible plan to propel spacecraft with giant lasers

Breakthrough Starshot is moving ahead with an audacious vision for space exploration.

  • The Breakthrough Starshot initiative was co-founded by Stephen Hawking.
  • The project raised $100 million and is moving ahead with extensive research.
  • The goal of Starshot is to send tiny "StarChip" spacecraft to explore neighboring star systems.
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Ask a NASA astronomer! How did Stephen Hawking change the world?

Stephen Hawking was one of the greatest scientific and analytical minds of our time, says NASA's Michelle Thaller.

Stephen Hawking was one of the greatest scientific and analytical minds of our time, says NASA's Michelle Thaller. She posits that Hawking might be one of the parents of an entirely new school of physics because he was working on some incredible stuff—concerning quantum entaglement— right before he died. He was even humble enough to go back to his old work about black holes and rethink his hypotheses based on new information. Not many great minds would do that, she says, relaying just one of the reasons Stephen Hawking will be so deeply missed. You can follow Michelle Thaller on Twitter at @mlthaller.

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Technology & Innovation

The 10 greatest living scientists in the world today

The most influential contemporary scientists and their accomplishments.

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