Could we colonise mars?

The prospect of life on Mars – Earth’s planetary next-door neighbour, an alien world that betrays tantalising hints of a watery past – has bewitched humanity for centuries. From the ‘canals’ seen by a

Scientists distinguish between weight and mass, which may seem pedantic until you see what happens on a world where gravity is radically different to Earth’s

Amazing answers to your curious questions

Your dusty, distant destination awaits, with unique geology that reveals billions of years of cosmic collisions

Yes, plenty! For a planet to have seasons as we normally perceive them, its axis of rotation must be tipped over at an angle so that the amount of sunlight reaching different parts of its surface changes as it orbits the Sun. In our Solar System, Mars, Saturn and Neptune all have axes tilted at roughly the same angle as Earth’s, so they experience a similar cycle of spring, summer, autumn and winter, though over a much longer period. Uranus is tipped over at a much sharper angle, so it experiences even more extreme seasons, while Jupiter, Venus and Mercury are more or less ‘upright’ and don’t experience seasons.

The high-tech Japanese sake company Asahi Shuzo is taking a bold step forward by attempting to brew its sake off-world for the first time, with the ultimate goal of being able to brew sake on the Moon