In this Special Section on Familiarizing the Extraterrestrial / Making Our Planet Alien, edited by Istvan Praet and Juan Francisco Salazar, Leah V. Aronowsky uses the history of an unrealized technology, the bioregenerative life-support system, to rethink conventional accounts of American spaceflight that cast the space cabin as the ultimate expression of humans’ capacity to technologically master their environments.
In this Special Section on Familiarizing the Extraterrestrial / Making Our Planet Alien, edited by Istvan Praet and Juan Francisco Salazar, Istvan Praet focuses on the ultraviolet spectrum to examine how astrobiologists look at celestial bodies, planetary atmospheres, the skin, and the eye. He offers a reflection on how outer space can be apprehended from a humanities perspective.
A new research station at the South Pole is a sign of increasing international scientific collaboration. The newest Amundsen-Scott Station is larger than previous stations and has a better design, offering the potential for increased longevity in one of the world’s harshest climates.
Denis Wood tells the story of our entire past, from the Big Bang to the World Wide Web. Five Billion Years of Global Change takes readers through the formation of the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, continents, and mountains; the origin of life; the evolution of the human species; the spread of agricultural production; and the growth of international trade.
Copernicus introduces the idea of a heliocentric universe in which the planets move around the sun.
