land

“We are much closer today to being able to send humans to Mars than we were to being able to send men to the moon in 1961, and we were there eight years later. Given the will, we could have humans on Mars within a decade.” -Robert Zubrin This is what we can accomplish when we invest in something big. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Mars Science Laboratory. I'm not talking about the Olympics, of course. I'm talking about investing in science, in exploration, in robotics, in engineering, in technology, and in humanity, and what can we accomplish? Image credit: Mars Curiosity / NASA / JPL…

Around 395 million years ago, a group of four-legged animals strode across a Polish coast. These large, amphibious creatures were among the first invaders of the land, the first animals with true legs that could walk across solid ground. With sprawling gaits and tails held high, they took pioneering footsteps. Their tracks eventually fossilised and their recent discovery yields a big surprise that could rewrite what we know about the invasion of land. These animals were walking around 18 million years earlier than expected. The evolution of four-legged creatures - tetrapods - is one of the…