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In The Martian, fictional astronaut and consummate wiseacre Mark Watney survives being stranded on the red planet by growing potatoes in the Martian soil, extending his usual rations well past their expected usefulness. But in the real world, there have been concerns over using Mars’s soil to grow food, due to there being a great deal more heavy elements found in it, as compared to what’s found in typical Earth dirt. However, a new study from the Netherlands appears to show that Watney may have been on to something.
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One of the major problems faced by science today is that our current model of physics is woefully incomplete, most infamously so in regards to the inability of physicists to make the theory of relativity and quantum theory work together. This problem becomes extremely apparent when it comes to figuring out how black holes work: relativity tells us that nothing would be able to escape a black hole, causing a fundamental loss of the quantum information that that made up the material that falls into it, but quantum mechanics tells us that that information is indestructible, meaning that that loss can’t happen to begin with.
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One of the major roadblocks our culture has in regards to space travel is that in order to travel at speeds that could make a trip to a distant planet or star in a reasonable time frame is the application of energy: currently, we’re stuck burning chemical fuel to propel our vehicles, of which means also lugging that fuel along with the vehicle, meaning the vehicle weighs more because of the extra fuel, meaning the vehicle has to carry more fuel to offset that weight — it unfortunately becomes a cycle of inefficiency, making for a very slow vehicle.
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Of all of the sources of images of potentially anomalous objects, video feeds from orbiting NASA spacecraft have provided a treasure trove of images and video for UFO hunters. Ultimately, the data that comes from our space agencies is also controlled and can be censored by said agencies, a fact that can potentially hinder civilian efforts to discover anomalous images. But what if someone were to bypass the middleman, and gather data from orbit on their own?
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