Across the Universe: The best way to travel
First published in The Tablet in January, 2007; we first ran it here in 2015. Dark and dreary, January is a time to take off to new and exotic climes; or at least, to daydream about such trips. My own January voyage was a visit to my old hometown, snow-dusted Detroit, to attend a science fiction convention. But a panel discussion at that meeting, “Travel Destinations of the Solar System,” challenged us to imagine really exotic localities. Where among the planets would we love to go? And what it would be like to be standing there, in person? Panelist Bill Higgins, a radiation physicist at Fermi Lab in Chicago [and occasional blogger here at The Catholic Astronomer!], regularly presents spaceflight results as a NASA “Solar System Ambassador” at events like this. He described how Pluto and its moon Charon orbit each other while locked in a spin state that keeps each body always facing the other. “What if we could … Continue reading →