Fossils provide our most decisive evidence for testing hypotheses about the abundance, diversity, and evolution of life on Earth over the past three-and-a-half billion years. They are also our best hope for answering one of the most compelling questions in science: was there ever life on Mars?
New papers: To Mars and beyond! (But with a conscience)
This week I had two new papers formally published. The first of these, A Field Guide to Finding Fossils on Mars, was written with a host of co-authors from the NASA Astrobiology Institute. This paper aims to help forthcoming NASA and European missions to search for traces of ancient life on the red planet. Three … Continue reading New papers: To Mars and beyond! (But with a conscience)
Book review: Nobody Owns the Moon
Is the exploration of space justified by our natural wanderlust? Are we morally obliged to terraform other planets in order to avert stagnation or extinction on Earth? Should we worry about the socio-economic consequences of asteroid mining, or the aesthetic damage done by the extraction of Helium-3 from the moon?
