Extraterrestrial life is a common theme inscience fiction, but is it a serious prospect in the real world? Astrobiologyis the emerging field of science that seeks to answer this question.The possibility of life elsewhere in the cosmosis one of the most profound subjects that human beings can ponder. AstrophysicistAndrew May gives an expert overview of our current state of knowledge, lookingat how life started on Earth, the tell-tale 'signatures' it...

Mars is back. Suddenly everyone – from Elon Musk to Ridley Scott to Donald Trump – is talking about going to the Red Planet.When the Apollo astronauts walked on the Moon in 1969, many people imagined Mars would be next. However NASA's Viking 1, which landed in 1976, was just a robot. The much-anticipated crewed mission failed to materialise, defeated by a combination of technological and political challenges.Four decades after Viking and almost half a century after Apollo tec...

People are used to seeing “fake physics” in science fiction – concepts like faster-than-light travel, antigravity and time travel to name a few. The fiction label ought to be a giveaway, but some SF writers – especially those with a background in professional science – are so adept at “technobabble” that it can be difficult to work out what is fake and what is real. To confuse matters further, Isaac Asimov’s 1948 piece about the fictitious time-travelling substance thiotimoline was written...

**Dreams, schemes and opportunity as space opens for tourism and commerce.Twentieth century space exploration may have belonged to state-funded giants such as NASA, but there is a parallel history which has set the template for the future.**Even before Apollo 11 landed on the Moon, private companies were exploiting space via communication satellites - a sector that is seeing exponential growth in the internet age. In human spaceflight, too, commercialisation is making itsel...

As end-of-the-world scenarios go, an apocalyptic collision with an asteroid or comet is the new kid on the block, gaining respectability only in the last decade of the 20th century with the realization that the dinosaurs were wiped out by just such an impact. Now the science community is making up for lost time, with worldwide efforts to track the thousands of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects and plans for high-tech hardware that could deflect an incoming object from a collision co...

In this bundle, three Hot Science titles by astrophysicist Andrew May take a deep dive into space exploration and our continued and evolving fascination with the cosmos. Astrobiology The possibility of life elsewhere in the cosmos is one of the most profound subjects that human beings can ponder. May gives an expert overview of our current state of knowledge, looking at how life started on Earth, the tell-tale signatures it produces, and how such signatures might be detected elsewhere in t...

The Cold War saw scientists in East and West racing to create amazing new technologies, the like of which the world had never seen. Yet not everyone was taken by surprise. From super-powerful atomic weapons to rockets and space travel, readers of science fiction (SF) had seen it all before.Sometimes reality lived up to the SF vision, at other times it didn’t. The hydrogen bomb was as terrifyingly destructive as anything in fiction, while real-world lasers didn’t come close to the p...

As end-of-the-world scenarios go, an apocalyptic collision with anasteroid or comet is the new kid on the block, gaining respectability only inthe last decade of the 20th century with the realisation that the dinosaurs hadbeen wiped out by just such an impact.Now the science community is making up for lost time, withworldwide efforts to track the thousands of potentially hazardous near-Earthobjects, and plans for high-tech hardwar...

People are used to seeing “fake physics” in science fiction—concepts like faster-than-light travel, antigravity, and time travel, to name a few. The fiction label ought to be a giveaway, but some SF writers—especially those with a background in professional science—are so adept at “technobabble” that it can be difficult to work out what is fake and what is real. To confuse matters further, Isaac Asimov’s 1948 piece about the fictitious time-traveling substance thiotimoline was written, not...

It’s the height of the Swinging Sixties, and promiscuous sex is the in-thing with students and professional academics alike. Sometimes it’s even done in the name of science. Thelemic Field Theory stands out as one of the great triumphs of Sixties science. Based on a mixture of Quantum Physics and Black Magic, the theory predicts a multi-dimensional branching of reality which all boils down to one thing: DO WHAT THOU WILT SHALL BE THE WHOLE OF THE LAW. A scientific experiment called Project...

Jesus calls his disciples to follow him, but where does he lead us?Responding to Jesus' summons, we find ourselves leaving familiar certainties and securities behind as we step out boldly in faith. Old boundaries dissolve as we are led into liminal spaces - exhilarating situations, new places of discovery and radical spiritual growth. In such experiences Christ reveals himself to us anew. The place of risk is the threshold of the divine.Beyond the Edge is f...

Ancient legends of ghostly apemen haunting the Cambridgeshire woods! Mysterious government agents, sinister Cold War secrets and a Japanese professor of Robotics! A gateway that leads to a parallel world! And a giant-sized mechanical gorilla! Multiple strands of weirdness converge to a head-on collision in this fast-moving novelette about a group of students who set off in search of the "British Bigfoot"... and get more action than they bargained for!