Alex James: The Great Escape
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference."We need to go and dig some holes in the moon," the speaker was saying as I arrived. I had a wonderful feeling I'd come to the right place. It was going to be a day of very clever people making similarly outlandish suggestions. I felt my brain drop everything it was carrying, and I sat down with great relish.
The Appleton Space Conference is an annual high-level heads-together that I sneak into. I love it.
It's been a good year in particle physics. We are edging ever closer to Higgs boson. Most people I've spoken to who know what a Higgs boson is think spotting one is now a formality. The search party is quietly confident, but it's a different story at the big end of things. The dark matter specialists are still wide-eyed and shaking their heads. Most of the universe still seems to be invisible. The very best people are on the case, and I know how they feel. I spend hours talking about my cheese, but I still don't know where it is or what it's going to look like.
For me the best news of the day was that one of Saturn's moons, Enceladus, has active geysers. We looked at photos. Not many places definitely have liquid water. I can only think of Earth and Europa,one of Jupiter's satellites. My friend Richard Crowther, a left-winger in the rocket scientist football team, has got to organise a space sample decontamination chamber, because we will soon be bringing lumps from the Moon and Mars - to Oxfordshire, as it happens. No one knows what these might contain. The world's most famous meteorite, ALH84001, comes from Mars and looks like it contains Mars worms. Wouldn't want anything like that escaping. I couldn't get planning permission for a round window from Oxfordshire council. They don't like them. What will they think about a space-worm stopping facility?
Space weather is a hot topic, too. The sun is more active magnetically than at any time in the past millennium. This is causing some bad space weather. A magnetic storm on the sun, a fairly likely event, would frazzle an astronaut. If things go to plan, there will be a man on Mars in 2033. This means the first man or woman on Mars has been born. I don't think it'll be a woman, though. It's still fundamentally a boy thing, space. People will live on Mars one day. We'll turn it into a lush green paradise and feel all-conquering like the ancient Greeks did, instead of feeling guilty about everything.
It'll take three months to get to Mars in 2033. It took three months to get to Australia when we first started going there, and it was just as dangerous and expensive and ridiculous. Actually, Australia was probably a more ridiculous suggestion then than Mars is now, because no one knew it was there. I've been offered the position of Artist in Residence in Astrophysics at Oxford and I'm feeling very pleased with myself. Space is the new ocean and spaceships are the new cathedrals.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments