the Moon
A piece of Mars to toy with
Lunar souvenirs are slumping, but Martian rocks are soaring as today’s super-rich fight to get the best fragments from space on their desks
What would life on Mars actually look like?
It would need more than 100 million people to make it viable for a start – living in airlocked, subterranean bases, producing food and oxygen in artificially-lit greenhouses
From revolutionary Paris to the moon
Thirlwell’s protagonist Celine flees malicious gossip in revolutionary France to ponder on sisterly solidarity, patriarchal violence, motherhood, colonialism and slavery
Heavenly beauty: Doppelmayr’s Atlas Coelestis
It seems something of a disservice to a work of this seriousness to say how beautiful it is, but that…
New light on the Sun
The Sun is a star that many astronomers assume is only worth studying because of its averageness; it’s middle-aged and…
Moving heaven and earth: Galileo’s subversive spyglass
We live in an age of astronomical marvels. Last year Europe’s Rosetta spacecraft made a daring rendezvous with the comet…