Category Archives: Terraforming Mars

Modern board games can be wonderfully complex and intricate, weaving a web of overlapping mechanics, visual design, and narrative to create a fun and memorable experience every time you play. But before you start exploring mysterious ruins, terraforming a planet, or just building a really nice zoo, you have to learn how to play. And after that, you must take on an even more intimidating task: being the brave soul who tries to teach your friends how to play a new board game.

In my friend group, I am inevitably that brave soul, which probably isnt surprising, given my current job writing about board games for Wirecutter. After teaching dozens of games to family, friends, and coworkers for various Wirecutter board game guides (and also just for fun), Ive learned how to make the prospect of being a living board game tutorial a little less intimidating. In addition, I collected tips from experts like Plaid Hat Games Donald Shults, who has taught games to hundreds of attendees at the tabletop gaming convention GenCon, and Rodney Smith of the YouTube channel Watch It Played. And to get other perspectives on how to make learning and teaching rules a bit easier, I looked for advice online from sources like the fantastic games review channel Shut Up & Sit Down.

Im a firm believer that tabletop games are for everyone, but that doesnt mean all players are going to appreciate every game. Although complicated and heavy games can be exciting and deeply rewarding, not everyone is going to want to invest the time and energy needed to learn to play those beasts.

For players who are newer to modern board games, it may be better to start off with simpler fare. Games like Splendor and Ticket to Ride are wonderful introductory board games for newer players. This is partially because theyre great games that are fun to play. But its also because they serve as useful lessons, each highlighting common game mechanics that come together to make up more-involved, complex games, like Terraforming Mars and Root.

One of the easiest mistakes to make when youre teaching a game to friends is reading the rulebook to them.

For instance, Splendor is all about using resources to buy cardsfrom a shared marketwhich then produce more resources, which you can use to buy more valuable cards (a game mechanic known as engine building). Ticket to Ride emphasizes claiming territory on a shared board and predicting the routes and plans of the other players (in order to potentially foil them). Add in Skull, a wonderful little bluffing game that also includes a bidding/auction mechanic, and youll have all the skills needed to play the delightfully intricate and brain-burny game Power Grid.

Smith also pointed out that theme is another thing to consider when picking a game. Theme will buy you a lot of grace from your audience. If someones invested in the theme, if they think the game looks cool, suddenly theyre willing to suffer through a slightly more complicated rules teach. If you know that all the people in your group were huge fans of the Redwall books (novels about woodland creatures having Arthurian-esque battles and adventures) when they were younger, theyll probably be onboard for trying to learn Root (where woodland creatures battle for control of a quaint woodland area), even if theyve shied away from intimidating war games in the past.

This may seem obvious, but its important for you to get a good handle on the rules of the game before trying to teach it to others. If you get over that hurdle before introducing the game to friends, youll be in a much better position to help them have an easier and more enjoyable experience.

There are a number of ways to do this, from watching rules tutorials and playthroughs online to running a mock game where you play all of the player characters by yourself (I spent a good portion of a day doing this to learn how to play Brass: Birmingham). But at the very least, youll want to crack open the rulebook and make sure you understand the finer points fairly well. As Rodney Smith said during our conversation, Ultimately, generally speaking, somebody does have to read those rules. In your game group, someone is probably gonna have to do it.

While youre learning, try to focus on finding and internalizing how the game flows and progresses. A lot of board games are like rhythm, Shults told me, adding that, its this weird give and take, and once you get the rhythm its easier [to play the game]. Finding that rhythm will make it simpler both to play the game and to teach others to play.

Also, as a reward for your efforts, the first time youre unpacking a new game to learn the rules, the simple joy of punching out all the little cardboard pieces is yours alone to savor.

Once youve picked out the game and learned the rules, its a good idea to do a dry run. It may seem a little dorky, but I recommend doing a practice teach out loud, Smith told me. Its a great way to be sure you really do understand how the game works, as well as to map out the easiest route to take when teaching it, flagging parts where your group might have questions.

One of the easiest mistakes to make when teaching a game to friends is reading the rulebook to them (or, more often in my experience, at them). Rulebooks are not written like an exciting adventure novel, Smith said. So reading them out loud is super boring. The interest that people might have had in joining you for a game session will evaporate very quickly. Probably after the second sentence.

Smith and Shults had slightly different approaches and starting points, but they both emphasized providing a group relevant information when and how they need it.

Smith starts with the theme as a hook. I dont tend to tell people what the objective is initially because I dont believe it will mean anything to you, he told me. So I want to first give you a sense of place. We are armies trying to take over the world, if its Risk or something like that. He recommends explaining the objective and turns after the players are more situated in the world in which theyll be playing. Smith also tries to be as comprehensive as possible before playing, but how comprehensive varies by group. Not everyone has the attention span to take the entire rules info-dump at once. But the problem is, some players want that. They dont feel comfortable beginning to play if they dont know what all of the options are. So I have to get a sense of what the table wants that way.

Shults, on the other hand, starts with the games objective. I want to tell you how were trying to win, what is the goal, what are we doing, what does the end kind of look like. From there, he moves into how players go about achieving that end goal, walking through the rhythm of the games actions, turns, and rounds. He tries to get players involved quickly so less time is spent in the rulebook and more is spent interacting in the playspace of the game. This method works well for players who enjoy learning by doing, and for those who dont mind making choices without complete information about their possible ramifications.

Either of these methods will work well with different groups, and getting a sense of the way your play group learns and processes information is helpful for finding the balance between them. One way to help players along is to focus on the broader, more universal concepts and rules during the initial explanation, while keeping more edge-case or situational information only for when they come up in play. For instance, instead of explaining the inner workings of Terraforming Mars special reserved areas before the game starts, wait until this comes up in the game or until a player specifically asks about it. This helps players process the information in context, instead of trying to hold all of it in their head until it comes up later. There are many times in a teach where youll have someone say to you, You never told me that, and you did tell them that, Smith told me. But it was so abstract, and meant so little to them in the moment, it didnt click, it didnt mean anything to them.

Regardless, dont worry too much about making sure everyone has a perfect understanding of the rules before you start playing. Try to remain consistent and fair as the game goes along, but if you dont follow the rulebook to the letter, thats okay. As Smith put it, There are no rules police, no ones gonna break down your door if youre playing wrong. Be comfortable making mistakes.

The tabletop gaming community has built a number of resources to catalog, compare, and share information about games. BoardGameGeek is one of the best known of these, and its where a ton of information about rules can be found. In general, if youve run into a question about a particular situation or rule in a game youre playing, theres a very good chance theres a discussion about that exact same thing on the BoardGameGeek forums. Googling the game name and the specific rules question is usually a simple and quick way to get an answer.

Objectively, winning may be the goal of playing a game, but (in my experience anyway) it is rarely the point. Games offer a structure in which to have fun with your friends. They allow us as players to adopt new and unfamiliar temporary goals, restrictions, and abilities in an effort to inscribe and communicate an experience of different agencies.1 In order to do this, we have to try to win the game, but winning is just a means to an end, not the end itself.

When youre introducing others to a gameteaching them the rules, and making sure youre available to answer their questions as they come upyoure often more focused on making sure everyones having a good time than on your optimal play strategy. And that means youre probably going to be less likely to win. Thats okay, because if your friends end up liking the game, hopefully youll be playing it again soon.

This article was edited by Erica Ogg.

1. At least, this is the case philosophy professor C. Thi Nguyen makes in his book Games: Agency as Art.Jump back.

View original post here:

How to Teach Someone a Board Game (and Even Have Fun Doing It) - The New York Times

Welcome, X-Fans, to another uncanny edition of X-Men Monday at AIPT!

If you loved X-Men 92: House of XCII as much as I did, then youre in for a treat this week, X-Fans. Writer Steve Foxe initially hyped his radical, 90s reinvention of Jonathan Hickmans own reinvention of the X-Men franchise in X-Men Monday #147. But that was before we had a chance to read the first issue. Now that the mini-series has wrapped, its time for the X-Men 92: House of XCII eXit interview.

Fortunately for us, Steve had lots to share, so lets get started.

Courtesy of stevefoxe.com

AIPT: Welcome back to X-Men Monday, Steve and congratulations on the eXcellent X-Men 92: House of XCII! Its clear A LOT of thought and research went into putting this mini-series together. From adapting key moments from the Krakoa saga to only using characters who had appeared on X-Men: The Animated Series to 90s-accurate costumes for Marvel guest stars and relevant pop culture references (Bruce and Demi). I could go on and on. What can you share about your research process for this project?

Steve: Ive actually never seen the animated series. This was all just a paycheck to me, Chris. Whats a mutant?

I kid, I kid. Not to sound too gee-willikers about it, but X-Men 92: House of XCII is the sort of bucket-list, pie-in-the-sky gig I never expected to come my way, let alone have it be my first main-line Marvel project. Ive been reading X-Men titles uninterrupted since I was about 6 years old, and X-Men: The Animated Seriesis one of two shows I can and do watch on repeat (the other being The Golden Girls). And as luck would have it, a few years ago, I started a chronological re-read of every X-Men comic ever published, from Giant-Size on. I had, hand to [A], just finished X-Cutioners Song, which ran from 1992 to 1993, when Jordan D. White, X-Men Group Editor extraordinaire, emailed me about writing this series. It was unbelievable timing and if my boyfriend hadnt been looking over my shoulder at the email, Im not sure I would have accepted it as reality.

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

Of course, as you acknowledge, the 90s and the animated series are only half of House of XCII the other era to which were paying tribute is the Krakoan resurgence thats been sweeping the line since 2019. While Ive never been a lapsed reader, I was one of many bowled over by Jonathan Hickman and co.s work from the jump, and am lucky enough to be friends with some of the talented 616 X-architects. The modern-day side of things didnt require a lot of brushing up Ive been hungrily snatching up these issues each and every Wednesday.

I did revisit key moments from the animated series for inspiration, and to remind myself of the heightened ways the characters were depicted on TV. The X-Men 92 comics may technically be their own distinct timeline, but we wanted readers to be able to approach it from all sorts of angles and find ways to have fun. The writing on that show informed so much of my childhood love for the X-Men, and still looms large when we imagine how Storm, Rogue, and the rest of the cast speak and interact.

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

As for which characters pop up on the page under Salva Espins talented pen, there are actually a good number in House of XCII who never made it on the show. The rule I set for myself was to try to use everyone who did appear on the animated series, which we came darn close to doing save for like, most of the Inner Circle Club because they just werent visually interesting enough for the cameos (sorry, Mastermind). But Id guess a solid 80% or more of characters who showed up on the animated series, including unnamed cameos like Gatecrasher, do make an appearance in the comic mini-series.

The other part of the rule was to not use anyone created after 1994. I picked that as the dividing line so we could get 90s classics like Adam-X and Cyber and Random in there, but stopped short before the comics really turned a corner with Generation X and the second half of the decade. One of the last pages of issue #5 nods toward this, too, with Jubilee talking about the future and new members, and Maggott, Cecilia Reyes, and Marrow all popping up, signaling the passing of the torch from the first half of the 90s to the second.

A lot of that continuity was second nature. It was honestly stuff like Bruce and Demi that took more research. While the show ran until 1997, the book is called 92, so I wanted the references to make sense for 1992 when it came to things like the playlist in issue #2, or whos in charge of the Soviet Union, stuff like that. In ongoings set in the current day, those references get dated fast. In a nostalgia tribute like this, its a key part of the set dressing!

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

AIPT: You managed to pack a lot into just five issues. There have to have been story beats and jokes you had to leave on the cutting room floor.

Steve: To be completely honest, very little got cut from the initial proposal. When I pitched the series, the first Hellfire Gala was either in progress or wrapping up. I think I knew about Inferno from my pals writing the books, but it wasnt officially announced. So I had some really strong touch points to wrap issues around: HoXPoX, the Dawn of X kickoff, X of Swords, and the Gala. Im also a big proponent of leaving it all on the field. If you check out my Spider-Ham books with Shadia Amin over at Scholastic, or my Web-Weaver short with Kei Zama in Edge of Spider-Verse, we really try to make the most of the page space given to us when it comes to story beats, cameos, groundwork for more, etc. Especially in an instance like House of XCII where getting more than five issues wasnt really a goal or known possibility, I wanted to give readers a lot of bang for their buck in the 100 pages (plus data pages) we had to work with.

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

If anything, things got added to the plot as it went along. Issues #1-3 stayed very close to my outline, but my original pitch actually hinged on Sinister betraying the island, in a sort of, Duh, what did you expect? black-and-white cartoon morality moment. My logic was that the animated series would default to the bad guys being bad guys, since only Magneto really got a hefty redemption arc on the show. But after I accidentally made a habit of killing Beast in each issue, I realized I had a perfect opportunity to swerve. I sent Jordan and Associate Editor Lauren Amaro a frantic email late one night justifying using Dark Beast and deviating from my approved pitch, thinking theyd put up resistance, but they were just like, Sounds great! We have Sinister plans anyway, so this is perfect.

So, thank you, Kieron Gillen, for making Essex such a compelling bastard that I got the chance to live my Dark Beast fantasy for a few issues.

AIPT: Well, speaking of Dark Beast Hanks resurrection turning him into Dark Beast was definitely unexpected, and one way this adaptation really deviates from the source material. Was this decision at all a reference to Hanks increasingly dark tendencies in the Krakoan era?

Steve: Aside from the previously mentioned opportunity to make House of XCII stand out more from where the 616 line was headed with Sinister, Dark Beast was definitely a nod to Hanks long arc toward uhhhh being a real mean jerk! Ive said it elsewhere, but writing Hank in the first three issues was incredibly bittersweet. As a creator, reader, and fan, I appreciate and enjoy his descent into immorality, which arguably started in the 90s but certainly accelerated in the last decade between Brian Michael Bendis and Ben Percy.

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

But as a kid of the late 80s, Beast is always going to be an erudite, slyly clever jokester to me the college professor who gets rowdy at the bar with students while debating Proust. Having this Beast become Dark Beast is a way to poke fun at and literalize his character arc in the main book. It hurt me a little to do, but I couldnt resist.

AIPT: Of course, we cant get too far into the interview without talking about the biggest change. Moira MacTaggert was well-established on the animated series, but you chose to swap her out with Jubilee. Other than giving readers a twist on the source material, what thoughts went into this decision?

Steve: Swapping out Moira for Jubilee served three functions: giving readers something meaningfully different about this version of events; celebrating an icon of the 90s; and producing a first-issue surprise that would make you want to read more.

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

Youre right that Moira did appear plenty in the cartoon, and maybe I could have written her with a heavier accent to set her apart from Jonathan Hickmans take, but I just couldnt see the point in keeping the lynchpin of events the same as in the 616 version. Ive always loved What Ifs, which House of XCII is in all but name, and the best What Ifs change the starting point of known storylines and explore the reverberations from there.

Ive talked about it before, but I also feel like Jubilee often gets a raw deal. Shes so associated with the time of her debut that some readers who dont have firsthand, nostalgic experience with her dismiss her as a relic of the 90s. And since her original character traits were really all about being young and bratty, aging her up has necessarily changed who she is shes now a post-vampire doting surrogate mother. Which is very cool! But that means that the version of Jubilee a lot of us met is not coming back any time soon. Since this book is meant to celebrate the 90s, celebrating Jubilee making her the most important mutant of all felt like a solid choice. And that page-turn of Jubilee in the secret bunker, talking smack to Xavier and Magneto, really seemed to work as intended to get readers to go wait, WHAT and want to pick up #2 to find out what this twist was all about.

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

Plus, I could make comic-book-science sense of how her powers could work for the function, by suggesting that fireworks (small explosions) were a prelude to a Big Bang (big explosion). No, I did not pursue science beyond mandatory high school classes. Yes, this still makes as much sense as most comic science.

Fun fact: we discussed other possibilities including Senator/President Robert Kelly, Morph, Stryfe, Rachel Summers, and Dazzler for the role. But ultimately only Jubilee had a personal resonance with the cast in a way that elevated the story!

AIPT: Weve also got a very different version of the Five Karma, Healer, Fabian Cortez, Tempo, and our returning champion, Proteus. Was this combination a no-brainer or did you work through a few different combinations before arriving at this group?

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

Steve: Some members of this combo were for sure no-brainers, like Tempo for Tempus, because I love Tempo and her powers operate somewhat similarly by affecting time. Some were harder, like Karma, Fabian, and Proteus working as a proxy for how Hope, Egg, and Proteus do in the main line. I will admit that originally I wanted Healer to be Darrell Tanaka, a mutant who only appeared on the TV show in the Skull Mesa arc and who had healing powers, but rights get tricky at times, and I love the Morlocks, so I was pretty happy to get Healer in that Elixir role instead.

Ultimately, because we cover so much ground in 100 pages, some of the other substitutes for 616 teams or characters are more subtle or glossed over. We dont have time to do a bunch of magic adventures a la Excalibur, but we see Apocalypse and Scarlet Witch fussing with the mystic arts. Rogue gets a Marauders boat in a panel that got the Twitter traction I kind of hoped it would. If the series was 10 issues long, Im sure I would have explored more of those nods, but Im also happy with quick glances suggesting a larger framework for this world. Better to get readers thinking about how things might translate than to leave them feeling like theyve seen too much.

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

AIPT: On the animated adaptation of The Dark Phoenix Saga, the Hellfire Club became the Circle Club, as Hellfire is just too much for kids. It was fun to see that same level of censorship carried over to your story with the Inner Circle Gala and mutants coming out of resurrection eggs fully costumed. Im assuming that was all part of the fun?

Steve: The Inner Circle was one of those happy discoveries, since its a term that originates in the comics and then got used with more prominence in the cartoon. We kept Orchis because its a fun name and it felt too confusing to try to replace it, but Quiet Council sounds so mature and modern and forward-thinking. The Council literally sits in a circle, so Inner Circle was cartoon-logic perfect. And we did try to keep the content more or less cartoon-friendly, though we probably pushed it by the time Genesis cuts off Arkons head.

A lot of those choices were not mandates, but ways to give readers a different experience from the main line. I knew from the jump that hewing too close to the 616 version of events was kind of a waste of everyones time and of Salvas massive talents. That era is still ongoing, and Ive even been lucky enough to contribute to it. You can very easily read the original HoXPoX if you want those events. So things like the mutants being fully clothed post-resurrection (which I think was an offhand joke Jordan made during our first call) help add up to a distinct reading experience.

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

Its also fun to compare House of XCII to the prior X-Men 92 run from Chris Sims, Chad Bowers, Alti Firmansya, and others, because they were operating in such a different world when they created their series. In 2015/2016, I dont think any of us imagined a direct continuation of the actual cartoon, so the creative team went more meta with things like actual censorship bars and fourth-wall breaks from Cassandra Nova and all sorts of characters who not only werent around during the animated series run, but probably never would have made it in, like the X-Statix crew. And I love that series as such a who the eff cares, lets go bonkers take. Now the main X-line is as forward-thinking and popular as ever, and the cartoon is coming back with many of the same talents, the book Salva, Israel Silva, Joe Sabino, and I did is aimed at staying in-universe a little more.

AIPT: The X-Men have never been low on prominent humans who hate them. Was it a lot easier assembling the 90s version of Orchis? And was the romance between Boliver Trask and Lady Deathstrike a nod to Alia Gregor and Erasmus Mendel?

Steve: It sounds terrible to phrase it this way, but it was a ton of fun to assemble all those anti-mutant bigots! If we take a step back and look at the long arc of the X-Men, we probably got fewer, on average, new human bigot villains after the mid-90s. Graydon was one of the last big ones, as the X-Men dealt with more and more mutant-specific problems leading up to Decimation, and by then we were seeing a lot of the older bigots make grand returns.

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

Another reason for building Orchis like this, which Ive cited a lot, is that the animated series was really great about foregrounding the hated and feared aspect of the X-Men. If you read the comics chronologically, thats certainly a recurring theme, but there are years of the line where its more about space travel or mystic threats or clones or whatever, and the way the wider world views mutants takes a backseat as it must. The series cant revolve around only one theme for 50 years.

But since that bigotry was such a major part of the TV show, and gave a generation of fans a really strong sense of the mutant cause mirroring various civil rights and marginalized struggles (however imperfectly), it made sense to make this Orchis more defined by the human bigots who left such major impressions throughout the 80s and early 90s, like Cameron Hodge and Donald Pierce, and even the more reluctant G.W. Bridge.

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

The romance between Trask and Deathstrike is definitely a nod to Alia and Erasmus, which was a wrinkle in the Nimrod story I really appreciated. Its a brilliant way to deepen and personalize the stakes of the Nimrod program from the non-mutant side. As we saw in Hickmans time on the book, theres an element of Nimrods rise that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for the X-Men. I dont see that as blaming the victim, but as a way of showing how complex these webs of cause-and-effect can become. Its easy to dismiss raging bigot villains as the clear bad guys, but some members of Orchis have justifiable reasons to worry about the future or hold grudges, even if their overall goals are abhorrent. With Deathstrikes demise and the loss of his human body our Trask has some of the most personal stakes of all. Its another ripple toward making our version of events unique, and also just a fun visual: Deathstrike cozying up to a Sentinel inspired by Krang from TMNT.

AIPT: X of Swords was a 20+ issue event that you fit into a single comic. Obviously, the new take is a very different storyline, but is there anything you could share about how you adapted it?

Steve: The intent of the House of XCII spin on X of Swords was absolutely to be fun-stupid and to evoke video games like Mortal Kombat and Marvel vs. Capcom, one of my earliest Marvel loves (and the reason I think Blackheart and Shuma Gorath are so cool). Salva also took inspiration from MvC for his art approach to the whole series, so I wanted to devote an issue to leaning into that.

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

Im good friends with Tini Howard, the co-architect of X of Swords, and she got a huge kick out of seeing how we crammed a tournament into one issue. At one point, I did consider mirroring the more unique contests of the 616 X of Swords by including like, a breakdancing competition, but it just seemed right to show readers what a fight-only version of X of Swords might have looked like, since many expected that out of the original event. A lot of fun for one issue, but not so sure it would have carried 20!

As for swapping in Arkon, that was in my original pitch, since Saturnyne never shows up on the cartoon and explaining all of Otherworld in one issue would have been a lot. Plus, hes usually a brutish barbarian, so a slam-bam brawl works for him, and is another chance to overlap with the cartoon since he got a two-part arc. And it was my excuse to fit in a totally gratuitous two-page spread of the bad guys and good guys running at each other. How could we not?!

AIPT: Brood Ur-Brood and the Deadpool dialogue that followed was genius. How did this idea come to be?

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

Steve: So, Arkons warriors were chosen as a way to include a lot of X-villains and rivals who didnt fit anywhere else, and because introducing a bunch of new Arakkii mutants would break the 90s immersion. I considered asking Salva to draw more 90s-ish versions of White Sword and the others, but the cartoon was really fond of repeat cameos and I couldnt pass up writing in Sauron, Erik the Red, and the rest of the crew.

Deadpool, as he says in the book, was not nearly as meta in 1992 as he is now, but that scene lands right around the midpoint of the entire five issues, so it was a good pressure valve to acknowledge some of the absurdities of the whole concept and problematic stuff like Psylockes old status quo. I always knew hed be piloting a Brood suit, but actually didnt come up with the name Brood Ur-Brood until the lettering pass good thing I did, to hammer that nod home!

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

The other name that didnt sneak in until the last second was Morearms. I was just calling him Sixarms, and we all had a big laugh about the stupid simplicity of it. But I showed a page to Marauders writer Steve Orlando, my closest frenemy, and he coined Morearms off the top of his head. It was too funny not to steal.

AIPT: The all-new, all-different X-Men featuring Feral and Random?!? How did you decide on these two to fill in for Wolverine and Synch?

Steve: I love visibly mutated mutants! Chamber has been one of my favorites forever. Marrow, Beast, Maggott anyone who cant pass always gets my attention, both for visual interest and what it says about a character and how they fit alongside the many handsome and/or gorgeous mutants who make up the core mutant canon.

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

I considered just having the core animated squad winning the election as a bit of a laugh, but I also love Sunfire and Polaris and didnt want to write them out of an extra spotlight. Feral fits the Wolverine role as a young woman with animalistic powers, while Random can morph his body parts to mimic other abilities, which is kiiiiind of like Synch if you squint! Obviously we dont see too much of the team, but any little boost to their profile is a net good from my perspective.

AIPT: The return of Phoenix and Asteroid X. What made you go this route? Is it safe to assume without the help of the Phoenix, even Asteroid X would have been a lift for the 90s X-Men, let alone terraforming Mars?

Steve: Phoenix makes an appearance for a few reasons. Like Dark Beast, shes a big chapter in X-canon that hasnt played heavily into the 616 Krakoa story yet (and thats not a loaded yet Im not teasing or spoiling anything here!), so thats an exciting chance to play around with part of the toy box not currently in use. The modern Jean has moved beyond the Phoenix in a lot of ways, so this was another way of differentiating these takes on the character.

(Sidebar: when the book was announced, I was immediately inundated by upset comments convinced I would have Jean fainting left or right in homage to her often-memed moments of exertion on the TV show. Not only does she not faint in House of XCII, she catches Scott when he almost does! Lets all exhale and learn something about jumping to conclusions, please.)

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

We also didnt use omega mutant in the same way back in 1992. Until Jonathan Hickman helped establish a firm definition and list of those who qualified, that was a somewhat lawless term, thrown around whenever a writer wanted to boost someones profile. While I dont get into the power-level debates that fandom loves, I do appreciate omega meaning something specific now. But it didnt in 1992, and I didnt see the utility in trying to force that in. Instead, terraforming comes courtesy of elemental mutants like Magma, and Phoenix helps guide the process as a universal force of death and rebirth.

Phoenix also needed to show up in #4 so that the final play in #5 didnt come out of nowhere. Its still an intentionally wild moment Phoenix Jubilee! but it would have felt super cheap if we hadnt seen the Phoenix flex her abilities in #4.

AIPT: And then theres Combo Man! What can you share about how this terrible combination man came to be?

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

Steve: Oh boy whats more 90s than Combo Man? I have NO idea what the legality of that character is these days (and am still a little shocked Storms line made it in), but knew I wanted to homage him with the House of XCII chimeras. Under Jonathan Hickman and R.B. Silva, the chimeras left a HUGE impression in a very small number of appearances, and because of how Moiras powers work, we may never see them again. Their designs are slick and smart, so I wanted ours to be clunky and silly. Cartoon logic, baby. Im sure the House of XCII chimera was a very special nightmare to design and draw in action, though, which is why he appears and promptly zooms off panel into the sun!

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

AIPT: Your ending really leans into the timeline reset something Inferno managed to solve with a depowered Moira. Obviously, the Krakoa saga is ongoing. Was it challenging to put a bow on your version?

Steve: Since we approached House of XCII from the jump as a standalone five-issue story, we knew we needed to actually end things, even though the main line very much doesnt have a firm ending coming any time soon. I actually remember Jordan phrasing it like a challenge how will we reset the pieces so we dont leave the cartoon-inspired universe completely changed? and I was like uhh, well just reset? Which is of course stupidly simple, but thats how cartoons solve problems sometimes! Serial media, especially back in the day when kids caught whichever episodes they could and there was no streaming or OnDemand to fill in the blanks, can only change the status quo so much. The toys dont break arc to arc. So a hard reset was a solution available to us that the main line cant use, of course.

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

And now you can read House of XCII however youd like: in concert with the previous 92 series, with the cartoon, etc. It literally fits wherever youd like it to fit, or can be totally ignored if its not your speed.

AIPT: As we wrap up, we need to gush about Salva Espin and how much he crushed it on art.

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

Steve: 95% of the reason this book works is Salva Espins artwork. His ability to meld an animated style with his own super-strong visual storytelling and to marry humor with enough stakes for the book to avoid becoming an out-and-out joke elevated every single aspect of House of XCII. He was also game for anything. I counted and, by the end of the five issues, he had drawn about 150 characters from Marvel canon. 150! That is wild. But his willingness to adapt everyone from Cyber to Zaladane to Tusk to Genesis to his own unique style is what made this book feel big and inclusive and expansive all at once. I feel like I could write 10,000 words on how grateful I was to have him as a collaborator I knew he was perfect before he drew a page, but I REALLY knew he was perfect the first time he drew a little monster Krakoa face but the work speaks for itself better than I ever could.

Major credit to Israel Silva and Joe Sabino for their contributions on colors and letters, too. I couldnt have asked for a better, more in-tune team for this project, and Im very lucky and grateful I was part of it!

AIPT: And finally, can we talk about those radical data pages?

Steve: The data pages! I usually saw these just before print, so they were my big surprise treat, too. When I pitched the series, I requested a more Saved by the Bell-approach but was also clear I could work with black text on white pages if we needed to for budget or timing. Instead, Jay Bowen went way above and beyond to put a personal and totally zany spin on each data page concept I could dream up, which inspired me to do things like RPG manuals and startup disk menus and a photocopied mix tape song list.

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

The sleek, sophisticated design of Jonathan Hickman and Tom Muller would look wildly out of place in 1992, so Im extra grateful to Jay putting in that effort, especially since most reviews credited letterer Joe Sabino (who did killer work in his own lane!) instead. For the record, and for all the 90s flowers he deserves, it was all Jay on those 10 design pages, and I still let out a huge laugh each time I see them.

AIPT: Well, thats all I have for you, Steve. Thanks for taking the time to dig into X-Men 92: House of XCII with me and I cant wait to read what you do neXt in the X-Office including the just-announced, Firestar-focused X-Men Annual #1!

But before we call it an X-Men Monday, how about a few eXclusive preview images, courtesy of Jordan D. White?

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

Until neXt time, X-Fans, stay eXceptional!

Want to take our relationship to the next level? Become a patron today to gain access to exclusive perks, such as:

More:

X-Men Monday #172 - Steve Foxe Reflects on 'X-Men '92: House of XCII' AIPT - AIPT

Engagingly, he does not wring his hands about this, nor thumb his nose from on high. Instead, he thinks practically about how to shape public discourse for the good. The evidence suggests to him that nowadays a tiny number of influencers can change everything. Not social media influencers but rather people who can reach huge popular audiences and animate them about unsexy, long-term problems. He names the Pope, Greta Thunberg, David Attenborough and Bill Gates. On long-term climate and health issues, he says all in different ways have had great influence.

And they are needed. Unless a crisis is imminent, he says, its hard to focus ministerial attention onto even the most important long-term policy issues. On this list, Lord Rees puts energy supply, securing the internet, supply chains for essential goods and resilience against extreme weather. Rather than having too much influence on politicians, scientific advisors hardly have any clout on these issues. I know because I know some of them, he says.

When public debate gets poisoned, Lord Rees suggests, everyone loses. The botched introduction of GM crops in Europe two decades ago saw them dubbed Frankenfoods and banned, for example, even though they have been usefully grown and consumed in the US ever since. By contrast, the UK has a balanced regulatory policy on stem cell research prohibited to public funding in America that is regarded as world-leading. Lord Rees regards it as an example of scientific advance, politics and public opinion being successfully balanced for the long-term benefit of all.

Yet in our age of ever-more fractious culture wars, balancing competing interests even in the short term is tricky enough. How much harder then, are the intergenerational trade-offs that come with long-term decisions? Or as Lord Rees puts it: How much should we sacrifice now to ensure that the world is no worse when our grandchildren grow old? Even on climate change, about which he is very concerned, those advising the government, themselves have a range of opinions on what the best policies should be. And even there, they should express these views as citizens and not claim special weight for them.

Its at this point that I go back a bit in our conversation and ask him about the Pope: what is Martin Rees, secular scientist, explainer of creation rather than creationist, doing saluting the Popes contribution to science? It turns out that he is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and its meetings require him to travel to the Vatican, where he stays in the Santa Marta residence that the Pope inhabits and they occasionally bump into each other. The fact that Lord Rees cant believe in the resurrection or any of that, is no bar to his membership. He is there because he is spreading his own good word that of the evangelical scientist.

And it works. In 2015, academy advice on the environment contributed to Pope Franciss second Encyclical, Laudato si , a statement that swayed hundreds of millions of Catholics in Latin America, Africa and East Asia to pressurise their leaders to sign up to the Paris Agreement in December 2015.

Lord Rees admits he appreciates the music and beauty of the chapel at Trinity and describes himself as a practising, non-believing Christian, content to sing hymns about a God whose existence he does not accept, valuing them as a glorious ritual.

Cambridge has been his home ever since he was appointed Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy in 1973, aged just 30. It was an appointment that, for all Lord Reess modesty, underscores his academic brilliance. His parents were both teachers, setting up a school in the midst of the war on the south Shropshire border with Wales, where Lord Rees had a happy childhood, though a rather lonely one.

From there he went to Shrewsbury School and Cambridge, taking maths a choice, he admits, motivated as much by being bad at foreign languages as by enthusiasm for the sciences. Then, as now, he bridled against the narrowness of English education. He thinks a broader baccalaureate would be better than A-levels, and US-style major and minor studies better than single university degrees. Breadth, he says, is especially important today so that schoolchildren do not give up on science and can develop a feel for it that will stop them being bamboozled by propaganda and bad statistics.

Lord Rees refers to poor UK performance in educational league tables as a depressing augury for the Wests future, blaming the lack of good science teachers. He describes himself as Old Left, adding, I think you need higher taxes and better public services. I guess youd call me part of the public sector establishment. He is certainly no Liz Truss fan.

But just as his appreciation of ritual overcomes his atheism, so, too, his politics do not prevent him admitting the allure of the private sector. He sits on the board of a venture capital firm in Cambridge, and laments that the investment in UK start-ups does not match that in Silicon Valley. He admires the revolving door that shuttles staff between private enterprise and government in the US, seeding ideas between the two, and wishes it was replicated in the much more siloed system here.

The balance of public and private also animates him when it comes to manned spaceflight. He is excited by the prospect of humans venturing into that great beyond which he has spent his lifetime studying. However, he thinks it is madness that Nasa is spending many billions doing it. Leave it to adventurous plutocrats such as Elon Musk, a 21st-century Brunel, or Jeff Bezos, he argues. He reckons Nasas Artemis programme, which has been repeatedly delayed, is very expensive and probably mismanaged.

Ultimately, he says, thats because the American public wont accept imposing high risks on publicly-funded astronauts, given that human spaceflight will just be an expensive spectator sport of no practical use. The result will be a costly project, bloated by endless safety measures. By contrast, we would cheer on the private adventurer having a crack at the Red Planet. So might Mars provide a lifeboat a Planet B as some describe it to a humankind which has wrecked Earth? The answer is an emphatic no. Its a dangerous illusion, he says. The process of terraforming Mars, or making it Earthlike, and so habitable for billions, is a doddle compared to dealing with climate change.

Not that Lord Rees, author in 2003 of Our Final Century: Will the Human Race Survive the Twenty-first Century, and co-founder of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, thinks climate change is the only risk we face. Pandemics obviously, he says. But he also worries about a population explosion trapping Africa in poverty, with the agriculture required to feed everyone destroying both the environment and biodiversity.

Read more:

Lord Martin Rees: 'Long term, humans won't exist they'll evolve into something digital' - The Telegraph

Country

United States of AmericaUS Virgin IslandsUnited States Minor Outlying IslandsCanadaMexico, United Mexican StatesBahamas, Commonwealth of theCuba, Republic ofDominican RepublicHaiti, Republic ofJamaicaAfghanistanAlbania, People's Socialist Republic ofAlgeria, People's Democratic Republic ofAmerican SamoaAndorra, Principality ofAngola, Republic ofAnguillaAntarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S)Antigua and BarbudaArgentina, Argentine RepublicArmeniaArubaAustralia, Commonwealth ofAustria, Republic ofAzerbaijan, Republic ofBahrain, Kingdom ofBangladesh, People's Republic ofBarbadosBelarusBelgium, Kingdom ofBelizeBenin, People's Republic ofBermudaBhutan, Kingdom ofBolivia, Republic ofBosnia and HerzegovinaBotswana, Republic ofBouvet Island (Bouvetoya)Brazil, Federative Republic ofBritish Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago)British Virgin IslandsBrunei DarussalamBulgaria, People's Republic ofBurkina FasoBurundi, Republic ofCambodia, Kingdom ofCameroon, United Republic ofCape Verde, Republic ofCayman IslandsCentral African RepublicChad, Republic ofChile, Republic ofChina, People's Republic ofChristmas IslandCocos (Keeling) IslandsColombia, Republic ofComoros, Union of theCongo, Democratic Republic ofCongo, People's Republic ofCook IslandsCosta Rica, Republic ofCote D'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Republic of theCyprus, Republic ofCzech RepublicDenmark, Kingdom ofDjibouti, Republic ofDominica, Commonwealth ofEcuador, Republic ofEgypt, Arab Republic ofEl Salvador, Republic ofEquatorial Guinea, Republic ofEritreaEstoniaEthiopiaFaeroe IslandsFalkland Islands (Malvinas)Fiji, Republic of the Fiji IslandsFinland, Republic ofFrance, French RepublicFrench GuianaFrench PolynesiaFrench Southern TerritoriesGabon, Gabonese RepublicGambia, Republic of theGeorgiaGermanyGhana, Republic ofGibraltarGreece, Hellenic RepublicGreenlandGrenadaGuadaloupeGuamGuatemala, Republic ofGuinea, RevolutionaryPeople's Rep'c ofGuinea-Bissau, Republic ofGuyana, Republic ofHeard and McDonald IslandsHoly See (Vatican City State)Honduras, Republic ofHong Kong, Special Administrative Region of ChinaHrvatska (Croatia)Hungary, Hungarian People's RepublicIceland, Republic ofIndia, Republic ofIndonesia, Republic ofIran, Islamic Republic ofIraq, Republic ofIrelandIsrael, State ofItaly, Italian RepublicJapanJordan, Hashemite Kingdom ofKazakhstan, Republic ofKenya, Republic ofKiribati, Republic ofKorea, Democratic People's Republic ofKorea, Republic ofKuwait, State ofKyrgyz RepublicLao People's Democratic RepublicLatviaLebanon, Lebanese RepublicLesotho, Kingdom ofLiberia, Republic ofLibyan Arab JamahiriyaLiechtenstein, Principality ofLithuaniaLuxembourg, Grand Duchy ofMacao, Special Administrative Region of ChinaMacedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic ofMadagascar, Republic ofMalawi, Republic ofMalaysiaMaldives, Republic ofMali, Republic ofMalta, Republic ofMarshall IslandsMartiniqueMauritania, Islamic Republic ofMauritiusMayotteMicronesia, Federated States ofMoldova, Republic ofMonaco, Principality ofMongolia, Mongolian People's RepublicMontserratMorocco, Kingdom ofMozambique, People's Republic ofMyanmarNamibiaNauru, Republic ofNepal, Kingdom ofNetherlands AntillesNetherlands, Kingdom of theNew CaledoniaNew ZealandNicaragua, Republic ofNiger, Republic of theNigeria, Federal Republic ofNiue, Republic ofNorfolk IslandNorthern Mariana IslandsNorway, Kingdom ofOman, Sultanate ofPakistan, Islamic Republic ofPalauPalestinian Territory, OccupiedPanama, Republic ofPapua New GuineaParaguay, Republic ofPeru, Republic ofPhilippines, Republic of thePitcairn IslandPoland, Polish People's RepublicPortugal, Portuguese RepublicPuerto RicoQatar, State ofReunionRomania, Socialist Republic ofRussian FederationRwanda, Rwandese RepublicSamoa, Independent State ofSan Marino, Republic ofSao Tome and Principe, Democratic Republic ofSaudi Arabia, Kingdom ofSenegal, Republic ofSerbia and MontenegroSeychelles, Republic ofSierra Leone, Republic ofSingapore, Republic ofSlovakia (Slovak Republic)SloveniaSolomon IslandsSomalia, Somali RepublicSouth Africa, Republic ofSouth Georgia and the South Sandwich IslandsSpain, Spanish StateSri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic ofSt. HelenaSt. Kitts and NevisSt. LuciaSt. Pierre and MiquelonSt. Vincent and the GrenadinesSudan, Democratic Republic of theSuriname, Republic ofSvalbard & Jan Mayen IslandsSwaziland, Kingdom ofSweden, Kingdom ofSwitzerland, Swiss ConfederationSyrian Arab RepublicTaiwan, Province of ChinaTajikistanTanzania, United Republic ofThailand, Kingdom ofTimor-Leste, Democratic Republic ofTogo, Togolese RepublicTokelau (Tokelau Islands)Tonga, Kingdom ofTrinidad and Tobago, Republic ofTunisia, Republic ofTurkey, Republic ofTurkmenistanTurks and Caicos IslandsTuvaluUganda, Republic ofUkraineUnited Arab EmiratesUnited Kingdom of Great Britain & N. IrelandUruguay, Eastern Republic ofUzbekistanVanuatuVenezuela, Bolivarian Republic ofViet Nam, Socialist Republic ofWallis and Futuna IslandsWestern SaharaYemenZambia, Republic ofZimbabwe

Go here to read the rest:

Book review: 'How the World Really Works' | Community | bgdailynews.com - Bowling Green Daily News

It was likely a warm spring day in the Northern Hemisphere when the dinosaur-ending asteroid careened into Earth some 65 million years ago, according to scientists latest hypothesis. In the ensuing firestorm and the so-called impact winter that followed, the lush and towering coniferous forests that had marked the Cretaceous disappeared, and for roughly a decade, there was only cold and darkness. Even after light returned, it took thousands of years for life to claw its way back, ushering in a new age dominated by the mammals and flowering plants of today.

Scientists can readily detect this Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg or K-P) mass extinction in the geological record thanks to a thin layer of pale stone enriched in iridium, a chemical element released during asteroid impacts, that separates the rock from the two periods. But since the 1970s, geologists have also noted the existence of another layer, just above the iridium-rich one, that contains lots and lots and lots of fossil fern spores and not much else, says Ellen Currano, a paleobotanist at the University of Wyoming. We see very few conifers or angiosperms or anything like that, she adds, leading researchers to dub the layer the fern spike.

Ferns arent any better preserved in the fossil record than other types of plants, and so their explosion in abundance in the centuries following the asteroids impact suggests that something about ferns means they did well in those conditions, Currano says. Several hypotheses have been bandied about to explain the spike. Ferns are hardy, often the first to pierce lava fields, for example, while their sporeswhich are smaller than dust and capable of dispersing across vast distancescan remain dormant for decades. And unlike many trees, which cant grow back from only their roots, ferns spring back following above-ground damage thanks to underground stems called rhizomes, which may have been insulated from surface firestorms. Despite these suppositions, nobody ever bothered to figure out, from the biological side, what the spike was all about, says University of Florida plant evolutionary biologist Emily Sessa.

The halcyon days of this mini-Cretaceous are numbered.

Now, at last, Sessa, Currano, and their colleagues may have the chance to do so. In 2019, NASA funded the groups research proposal as part of the agencys interest in exploring how organisms respond to extreme environments, including those that occurred during Earths mass extinctions. Sessa and Jarmila Pittermann, a plant ecophysiologist at the University of California (UC), Santa Cruz, are using a greenhouse to create Cretaceous-like conditions and, at some point, will set off a simulated meteor impact. The unsuspecting plants inside include angiosperms, gymnosperms, and ferns in both of the plants life stages: the large, recognizable sporophyte and the much smaller, mosslike gametophyte. In tandem, Currano and Regan Dunn, a paleoecologist at La Brea Tar Pits and Museum in Los Angeles, are mining museum specimens and traveling to well-known K-Pg sites in Colorado, Montana, and Wyoming to compare the greenhouse plants to fossilized fern leaves and spores from the time of the iridium anomaly and the fern spike.

Broadly speaking, theres three ways to study the past: You can read directly from the fossil record, you can search for contemporary analogs in the world around us, or you can use an experimental approach . . . to simulate the event, says Jonathan Wilson, a paleobotanist at Haverford College in Pennsylvania who previously collaborated with Pittermann but is not involved in the current work. This project, he says, is such a novel approach to a big event like this because it involves all three. I think this will help us set the field for future experiments.

Micrograph of a fragment of leaf cuticle showing epidermal cells (clustered) and a fern spore (bottom center) from a K-Pg site in southern Colorado

REGAN DUNN

The project has had a few hiccups so far. The equipment can be finicky, Pittermann tells The Scientist, and the work was delayed for a year by the COVID-19 pandemic, when campuses closed down and it became challenging to source plants and other materials. Even today, with the work well underway, its all just hoping that nothing goes wrong, that the equipment doesnt break, that the plants dont overheat, Pittermann says. Those are the kinds of things that keep me up at night literally just the practical aspects.

Reconstructing the environmental conditions pre asteroid impact has also taken time, and a vast trove of paleoclimate literature. For now, Pittermann is growing the plants in the Santa Cruz greenhouse at roughly 25 C during the day and 17 C at night, keeping the humidity high, and holding the carbon dioxide at 1,000 parts per million. This first phase has now been running for several months, and the team recently collected its first batch of data, including the timing and extent of spore germination, plant growth, cell morphology, and metabolites.

The halcyon days of this mini- Cretaceous are numbered, of course. Soon, the asteroid will strike. The greenhouse will be covered with tarps to block out most of the light, and the temperature will plummet to below 10 C. A lab technician will periodically paint the plants leaves with a dilute solution of sulfuric acid to mimic acid rain. (The team cant risk the sensitive monitoring equipment being damaged by misting, so it will all have to be done by hand, Pittermann explains.) Sessa is running a similar experiment in growth chambers at her lab in Florida focusing on the smaller gametophytes.

Meanwhile, Currano and Dunn will use their combined expertise to link the results with what is visible in the fossil record. Currano has been pulling rare fossils of fern leaves from museum collections to compare with the greenhouse samples, while Dunn is using a proxy she previously developed based on microscopic analyses of leaf morphology to estimate the amount of light a fossilized plant received when it was alive. The results are preliminary, but Dunn tells The Scientistthat her approach does seem to register changes in canopy light levels from just before the iridium-rich layer to just after it, a pattern that could be consistent with the ecological effects of an impact.

Ellen Currano and Alex Baer inspect plants in a greenhouse at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

REGAN DUNN

Jeffrey Benca, an experimental paleobotanist at UC Berkeley, says that the project sounds extremely challenging. While not involved in this research, Benca spent years preparing his own extinction experiment, which focused on the worlds largest known mass extinction: an event that took place around 250 million years ago called The Great Dying. Prior to starting his experiment, Benca challenged bonsai conifers with stressful conditionsfull sun, low nutrients, and very little soilfor a year to prepare them to weather months of UVB radiation that would probably kill most aquatic organisms in minutes, to determine whether ozone degradation following volcanic eruptions might explain an odd pattern of misshapen pollen in the fossil record. He found that the radiation didnt just malform the pollen, it sterilized the trees, potentially killing off entire forests.

Benca says he wonders how the team studying the asteroid impact will tease apart the effects of so many variables. He altered only a single parameter, UV exposure, in his study to be sure he could identify a clear cause. Once you get into the realm of having to test multiple variables, it gets a lot harder to figure out whats actually causing the signal and what variables are really important, he says.

Theres the additional consideration that, even though ancient plant lineages persist today, its not clear whether greenhouse plants will react as their predecessors would have 65 million years ago. However, researchers who spoke to The Scientistthink that the fundamental aspects of plant biology, including that of ferns, have remained largely fixed since the Cretaceous. When you look at something like the K-P, its actually an ideal event to study because we feel like we know the cast of characters, Wilson says. So its particularly amenable to this kind of approach.

The work could one day aid NASA scientists considering extraterrestrial aims: If ferns are hardy enough to survive one of the five largest mass extinctions, they might also be a first step toward terraforming Mars, for instance. The project could also do much to illuminate fern biology, about which so little is known. In general, if you ask any kind of question you can imagine about plant ecology or evolution, chances are the answer in ferns is, We dont know or We need to know more, Sessa says. Thats made them a really fun group to work on.

Read more:

Why Did Ferns Persist When All Other Plants Perished? - The Scientist

As someone who spent way too much time watching the World Series of Poker in my college dorm room, I've always fantasized about high-dollar stakes in games of chance and skill. But now, as a thirtysomething, I'd settle for a friendly game of "Terraforming Mars" with people who seem to be taking it as seriously as me. That's why I was so charmed to learn more about the upcoming World Series of Board Games, an annual Las Vegas tournament for the best and the brightest of the board game community.

Established in 2019, the World Series of Board Games hitherto known as WSBG for word count purposes invites participants to participate in tournament-style play, with one of 16 games being drawn randomly in each round. These games range from classics like "Carcassone" or "Catan" to more modern games like "Gaia Project" and "Wingspan." In total, the WSBG will hand out over $100,00 in cash prizes to the finalists, and players can choose from several packages (including a stay-and-play option that will allow you to keep playing for fun even after you've been eliminated).

So even if you're not someone drawn to heated tabletop competition, the WSBG might offer you a (reasonably) cost-effective way to meet others in the community and play a few of your favorite games. Be sure to make up your mind quickly, though registrations are only valid through the end of August, and no tickets will be sold at the tournament itself.

Read this article:

Cardboard Cinema: LOTR, American Psycho, The World Series Of Board Games, And Zine Quest - /Film

The first annual Hellfire Gala concluded with the X-Men terraforming Mars into Arakko. The adventures of the Arakki have been followed in X-Men Red as Storm, Cable, Magneto, and more navigate the political system of Sol. Unfortunately, Arakko gets tied up in the newest Marvel event series A.X.E.: Judgment Day, and readers of the first issue witnessed the planet-sized damage inflicted by Uranos the Undying, who is Thanos' great-uncle sent by the Prime Eternal Druig. Readers only saw the fallout of Uranos' trail of destruction, but a preview of X-Men Red #5 reveals the moments that lead up to Arakko's "mutant massacre" moment.

ComicBook.com has an exclusive preview of X-Men Red #5 from Al Ewing, Stefano Caselli, and Federico Blee. It counts down to the last minute before Uranos the Undying makes landfall on Arakko, as The Great Ring huddles to go over its war strategy against the Eternals. Storm is Regent of Sol but is off-planet, representing Arakko in Krakoa's Quiet Council. Abigail Brand, Magneto, and Cable attempt to prepare The Great Ring for what's to come. However, before Cable has a chance to give a rundown of each member of the Eternals, a blue flash distracts them. This is more than likely Uranos teleporting on Arakko.

Judgment Day writer Kieron Gillen recently revealed how the choice was made for Arakko to get taken out of the fight so early.

"TheEve of Judgmentprologue special was an Eternals story, but one of the things I wanted to do in it was answer the question, 'Why don't the Eternals do the obvious thing?' If you're trying to wipe out the mutants, why go fight them? Eternals are smarter than that. So,Eve of Judgmentremoves the obvious first strike from the table," Gillen told CBR.

"The question then becomes, 'If one was going to do a surprise attack on the mutants, what would be a relatively sensible way of doing it?' Moira and Druig answer that in this issue. Krakoa ain't the problem. Arakko is. So, you do the strike there, and at least remove them from the conflict for the duration. The first two issues ofJudgment Dayare the first act of the story, and they detail the Eternals vs. X-Men war. So, when I pitched what I wanted the size of the devastation on Arakko was kind of open. I basically said, 'Right out of the gate, we've got to take Arakko out of the fight.'"

You can find the preview of X-Men Red #5 below. Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

See the original post here:

Marvel Reveals the Moment Before the X-Men Suffer a Planetary Mutant Massacre (Exclusive) - ComicBook.com

Im old enough to have viewed the grainy TV images of the first Moon landings by Apollo 11 in 1969. I can never look at the Moon without recalling Neil Armstrongs One small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind. It seems even more heroic in retrospect, considering how they depended on primitive computing and untested equipment.

Once the race to the Moon was won, there was no motivation for continuing with the space race and the gargantuan costs involved. No human since 1972 has travelled more than a few hundred miles from the Earth. Hundreds have ventured into space, but they have done no more than circle the Earth in low orbit. In the mid-1960s, Nasa absorbed 4 per cent of the US federal budget; today its 0.6 per cent. If that momentum had been maintained, there would surely be footprints on Mars by now.

Space technology has, nonetheless, burgeoned in the past four decades. We depend routinely on thousands of orbiting satellites for communication, navigation, environmental monitoring, surveillance and weather forecasting. Space telescopes orbiting far above the Earths atmosphere have beamed back images from the remotest cosmos. They have surveyed the sky in infrared, UV, X-ray, and gamma ray bands that dont penetrate the atmosphere and therefore cant be observed from the ground. They have revealed evidence for black holes and have probed the afterglow of creation the microwaves pervading all space, whose properties hold clues to the very beginning, when the entire observable cosmos was squeezed to microscopic size.

Of more immediate public appeal are the findings from spacecraft that have journeyed to all the planets of the solar system. Nasas New Horizons beamed back amazing pictures from Pluto, 12,000 times farther away than the Moon. The European Space Agencys Rosetta landed a robot on a comet. These spacecraft took five years to design and build and then nearly ten years journeying to their remote targets. The Cassini probe spent 13 years studying Saturn and its moons and was even more venerable: more than 20 years elapsed between its launch and its final plunge into Saturn in late 2017. These missions used 1990s technology; its not too hard to envisage how much more sophisticated todays follow-ups could be just think how drastically smartphones have advanced in those decades.

During this century, the entire solar system planets, moons, and asteroids will be explored and mapped by fleets of tiny, automated probes, interacting with each other like a flock of birds. Giant robotic fabricators will be able to construct, in space, solar energy collectors and other giant lightweight structures. Just this week, we have seen the first images from the James Webb telescope, which was launched in December a big advance on the Hubble telescope in deepening our vision of the cosmos. It can probe 98 per cent of cosmic history, the genesis of galaxies, and can perhaps find evidence of life on planets orbiting nearby stars. The telescopes successors, with oversize mirrors assembled in zero gravity, will further expand our vision of exoplanets, stars, galaxies and the wider universe. Future (and still larger) generations of instruments will be assembled by robots, which may also be used for space mining.

If there were a revival of the Apollo spirit and a renewed urge to build on its legacy, a permanent lunar base would be a credible next step. It could be built entirely by robots, bringing supplies from Earth and mining some from the Moon. An especially propitious site for human habitation is the Shackleton crater, at the lunar south pole, 21km across and with a rim 4km high. Because of the craters location, its rim is always in sunlight and so escapes the extreme monthly temperature contrasts experienced on the rest of the Moons surface. Moreover, there may be a lot of ice in the craters perpetually dark interior crucial for sustaining a colony.

Hopefully, people who are alive today will walk on the Moon, and even on Mars. The future of human spaceflight lies not with governments, but with privately funded adventurers who will be prepared to participate in a cut-price programme far riskier than western nations could. SpaceX, led by Elon Musk, or rival effort Blue Origin, bankrolled by Jeff Bezos, will soon offer orbital flights to paying customers.

These ventures bringing a Silicon Valley culture into a domain long dominated by Nasa and a few aerospace conglomerates have shown its possible to recover and reuse the launch rockets first stage, presaging real cost savings. They have innovated and improved rocketry far faster than Nasa or ESA has done. The future role of the national agencies will become more akin to an airport than to an airline.

More importantly, private enterprises can be less risk-averse than Nasa and find volunteers who are willing to tolerate greater dangers than a western government could impose on publicly funded civilian astronauts. So its these cut-price ventures with private sponsorship that should be at the forefront of human space travel.

Later this century, courageous thrill-seekers in the mould of (say) Sir Ranulph Fiennes, or the early polar explorers may well establish bases independent of Earth. Elon Musk himself (now aged 51) says he wants to die on Mars but not on impact.

But what is the longer-range scenario? Musk and my late colleague Stephen Hawking envisaged that the first settlers on Mars would be followed by millions of others aiming to escape the Earths problems. But this is a dangerous delusion. Coping with climate change is a doddle compared to terraforming Mars. Nowhere in our solar system offers an environment even as clement as the Antarctic, the top of Everest, or the ocean bed.

Because humans will be ill-adapted to Martian conditions, they will have a more compelling incentive than those of us on Earth to redesign themselves and this may not remain science fiction. Indeed, its surely on the cards that human beings their mentality and their physique may become malleable through the deployment of genetic modification.

For this to happen, two advances are needed: first, deep analysis of the human genome to determine which combination of genes optimise specific desired qualities; and second, the ability to synthesise a genome with these properties.

Optimists suspect that by the end of the century designer babies will become conceivable (in both senses of that word). One hopes that such techniques will be constrained, because they are risky: the genome is so complicated that attempts to modify it may have unenvisaged downsides that outweigh any benefits.

Another futuristic concept, more familiar from science fiction, is that our descendants could become cyborgs, their mental capacities being enhanced by linking the brain (or plugging it in) to electronic attachments. Its spacefaring adventurers, not those of us comfortably adapted to life on Earth, who will lead the post-human era evolving within a few centuries into a new species. This evolution, best described as secular intelligent design, could proceed on the timescale of technological advance, potentially thousands of times faster than Darwinian selection.

Moreover, there may be limits to the capacity of organic brains; perhaps humans are near this limit already. If our descendants make the transition from flesh and blood to fully inorganic intelligences, they wont need an atmosphere. And they may prefer zero-gravity, especially for constructing massive artefacts. So its in deep space not on Earth, nor even on Mars that non-biological brains may develop powers that humans cant even imagine.

Billions of years lie ahead. The Sun formed 4.5 billion years ago: its taken most of that immense time for life to evolve from its still-mysterious beginnings into the immensely complex biosphere of which were a part. Humans are not the culmination the top of the tree. We may in fact be nearer the beginning than the end of a cosmic process.

The Sun is still less than halfway through its life: it will survive six billion more years before its fuel runs out. And the expanding universe will continue far longer perhaps for ever. So even if intelligent life had originated only on the Earth, it need not remain a trivial feature of the cosmos: it could initiate a diaspora whereby ever more complex intelligence spreads through the whole galaxy. Interstellar voyages would hold no terrors for near-immortal electronic entities. Theres plenty of time ahead.

Even though we are not the terminal branch of an evolutionary tree, humans could claim truly cosmic significance for jump-starting the transition to electronic entities, spreading their influence far beyond the Earth.

This raises a further question: will our remote progeny be the first intelligences to spread through the galaxy? Or will they encounter aliens already out there, which originated from a planet around an older star where evolution had a headstart over us?

Perhaps the galaxy already teems with advanced life, and our descendants will plug in to a galactic community as rather junior members. On the other hand, Earths intricate biosphere may be unique and searches for aliens may fail. Our tiny planet this pale blue dot floating in space could be the most important place in the entire cosmos.

Either way, our cosmic habitat seems tuned to be an abode for life. Even if we are alone in the universe, we may be far from the final destination of this drive towards complexity and consciousness.

See original here:

How humans may populate the universe in the billions of years ahead - The Spectator

Engineering the global environment of Venus to make it suitable for humans

The terraforming of Venus or the terraformation of Venus is the hypothetical process of engineering the global environment of the planet Venus in such a way as to make it suitable for human habitation.[1][2][3] Terraforming Venus was first proposed in a scholarly context by the astronomer Carl Sagan in 1961,[4] although fictional treatments, such as The Big Rain of The Psychotechnic League by novelist Poul Anderson, preceded it. Adjustments to the existing environment of Venus to support human life would require at least three major changes to the planet's atmosphere:[3]

These three changes are closely interrelated because Venus's extreme temperature is due to the high pressure of its dense atmosphere and the greenhouse effect.

Prior to the early 1960s, the atmosphere of Venus was believed by many astronomers to have an Earth-like temperature. When Venus was understood to have a thick carbon dioxide atmosphere with a consequence of a very large greenhouse effect,[6] some scientists began to contemplate the idea of altering the atmosphere to make the surface more Earth-like. This hypothetical prospect, known as terraforming, was first proposed by Carl Sagan in 1961, as a final section of his classic article in the journal Science discussing the atmosphere and greenhouse effect of Venus.[4] Sagan proposed injecting photosynthetic bacteria into the Venus atmosphere, which would convert the carbon dioxide into reduced carbon in organic form, thus reducing the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Unfortunately, the knowledge of Venus's atmosphere was still inexact in 1961, when Sagan made his original proposal for terraforming. Thirty-three years after his original proposal, in his 1994 book Pale Blue Dot, Sagan conceded his original proposal for terraforming would not work because the atmosphere of Venus is far denser than was known in 1961:[7]

"Here's the fatal flaw: In 1961, I thought the atmospheric pressure at the surface of Venus was a few bars... We now know it to be 90 bars, so if the scheme worked, the result would be a surface buried in hundreds of meters of fine graphite, and an atmosphere made of 65 bars of almost pure molecular oxygen. Whether we would first implode under the atmospheric pressure or spontaneously burst into flames in all that oxygen is open to question. However, long before so much oxygen could build up, the graphite would spontaneously burn back into CO2, short-circuiting the process."

Following Sagan's paper, there was little scientific discussion of the concept until a resurgence of interest in the 1980s.[8][9][10]

A number of approaches to terraforming are reviewed by Martyn J. Fogg (1995)[2][11] and by Geoffrey A. Landis (2011).[3]

The main problem with Venus today, from a terraformation standpoint, is the very thick carbon dioxide atmosphere. The ground level pressure of Venus is 9.2MPa (91atm; 1,330psi). This also, through the greenhouse effect, causes the temperature on the surface to be several hundred degrees too hot for any significant organisms. Therefore, all approaches to the terraforming of Venus include somehow removing almost all the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The method proposed in 1961 by Carl Sagan involves the use of genetically engineered algae to fix carbon into organic compounds.[4] Although this method is still proposed[10] in discussions of Venus terraforming, later discoveries showed that biological means alone would not be successful.[12]

Difficulties include the fact that the production of organic molecules from carbon dioxide requires hydrogen, which is very rare on Venus.[13] Because Venus lacks a protective magnetosphere, the upper atmosphere is exposed to direct erosion by the solar wind and has lost most of its original hydrogen to space. And, as Sagan noted, any carbon that was bound up in organic molecules would quickly be converted to carbon dioxide again by the hot surface environment. Venus would not begin to cool down until after most of the carbon dioxide had already been removed.

Although it is generally conceded that Venus could not be terraformed by introduction of photosynthetic biota alone, use of photosynthetic organisms to produce oxygen in the atmosphere continues to be a component of other proposed methods of terraforming.[citation needed]

On Earth nearly all carbon is sequestered in the form of carbonate minerals or in different stages of the carbon cycle, while very little is present in the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide. On Venus, the situation is the opposite. Much of the carbon is present in the atmosphere, while comparatively little is sequestered in the lithosphere.[14] Many approaches to terraforming therefore focus on getting rid of carbon dioxide by chemical reactions trapping and stabilising it in the form of carbonate minerals.

Modelling by astrobiologists Mark Bullock and David Grinspoon[14] of Venus's atmospheric evolution suggests that the equilibrium between the current 92-bar atmosphere and existing surface minerals, particularly calcium and magnesium oxides, is quite unstable, and that the latter could serve as a sink of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide through conversion to carbonates. If these surface minerals were fully converted and saturated, then the atmospheric pressure would decline and the planet would cool somewhat. One of the possible end states modelled by Bullock and Grinspoon was a 43 bars (620psi) atmosphere and 400K (127C) surface temperature. To convert the rest of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a larger portion of the crust would have to be artificially exposed to the atmosphere to allow more extensive carbonate conversion. In 1989, Alexander G. Smith proposed that Venus could be terraformed by lithosphere overturn, allowing crust to be converted into carbonates.[15] Landis 2011 calculated that it would require the involvement of the entire surface crust down to a depth of over 1km to produce enough rock surface area to convert enough of the atmosphere.[3]

Natural formation of carbonate rock from minerals and carbon dioxide is a very slow process. Recent research into sequestering carbon dioxide into carbonate minerals in the context of mitigating global warming on Earth however points out that this process can be considerably accelerated (from hundreds or thousands of years to just 75 days) through the use of catalysts such as polystyrene microspheres.[16] It could therefore be theorised that similar technologies might also be used in the context of terraformation on Venus. It can also be noted that the chemical reaction that converts minerals and carbon dioxide into carbonates is exothermic, in essence producing more energy than is consumed by the reaction. This opens up the possibility of creating self-reinforcing conversion processes with potential for exponential growth of the conversion rate until most of the atmospheric carbon dioxide can be converted.

Bombardment of Venus with refined magnesium and calcium from off-world could also sequester carbon dioxide in the form of calcium and magnesium carbonates. About 81020 kg of calcium or 51020 kg of magnesium would be required to convert all the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which would entail a great deal of mining and mineral refining (perhaps on Mercury which is notably mineral rich).[17] 81020 kg is a few times the mass of the asteroid 4 Vesta (more than 500 kilometres (310mi) in diameter).

Research projects in Iceland and the US state of Washington have recently shown that potentially large amounts of carbon dioxide could be removed from the atmosphere by high-pressure injection into subsurface porous basalt formations, where carbon dioxide is rapidly transformed into solid inert minerals.[18][19]

Other recent studies[20] predict that one cubic meter of porous basalt has the potential to sequester 47 kilograms of injected carbon dioxide. According to these estimates a volume of about 9.86 109 km3 of basalt rock would be needed to sequester all the carbon dioxide in the Venusian atmosphere. This is equal to the entire crust of Venus down to a depth of about 21.4 kilometers. Another study[21] concluded that under optimal conditions, on average, 1 cubic meter of basalt rock can sequester 260kg of carbon dioxide. Venus's crust appears to be 70 kilometres (43mi) thick and the planet is dominated by volcanic features. The surface is about 90% basalt, and about 65% consists of a mosaic of volcanic lava plains.[22] There should therefore be ample volumes of basalt rock strata on the planet with very promising potential for carbon dioxide sequestration.

Recent research has also demonstrated that under the high temperature and high pressure conditions in the mantle, silicon dioxide, the most abundant mineral in the mantle (on Earth and probably also on Venus) can form carbonates that are stable under these conditions. This opens up the possibility of carbon dioxide sequestration in the mantle.[23]

According to Birch,[24] bombarding Venus with hydrogen and reacting it with carbon dioxide could produce elemental carbon (graphite) and water by the Bosch reaction. It would take about 4 1019 kg of hydrogen to convert the whole Venusian atmosphere,[citation needed] and such a large amount of hydrogen could be obtained from the gas giants or their moons' ice. Another possible source of hydrogen could be somehow extracting it from possible reservoirs in the interior of the planet itself. According to some researchers, the Earth's mantle and/or core might hold large quantities of hydrogen left there since the original formation of Earth from the nebular cloud.[25][26] Since the original formation and inner structure of Earth and Venus are generally believed to be somewhat similar, the same might be true for Venus.

Iron aerosol in the atmosphere will also be required for the reaction to work, and iron can come from Mercury, asteroids, or the Moon. (Loss of hydrogen due to the solar wind is unlikely to be significant on the timescale of terraforming.) Due to the planet's relatively flat surface, this water would cover about 80% of the surface, compared to 70% for Earth, even though it would amount to only roughly 10% of the water found on Earth.[citation needed]

The remaining atmosphere, at around 3 bars (about three times that of Earth), would mainly be composed of nitrogen, some of which will dissolve into the new oceans of water, reducing atmospheric pressure further, in accordance with Henry's law. To bring down the pressure even more, nitrogen could also be fixated into nitrates.

Futurist Isaac Arthur has suggested using the theorized processes of starlifting and stellasing to create a particle beam of ionized hydrogen from the sun, tentatively dubbed a "hydro-cannon". This device could be used both to thin the dense atmosphere of Venus, but also to introduce hydrogen to react with carbon dioxide to create water, thereby further lowering the atmospheric pressure.[27]

The thinning of the Venusian atmosphere could be attempted by a variety of methods, possibly in combination. Directly lifting atmospheric gas from Venus into space would probably prove difficult. Venus has sufficiently high escape velocity to make blasting it away with asteroid impacts impractical. Pollack and Sagan calculated in 1994[28] that an impactor of 700km diameter striking Venus at greater than 20km/s, would eject all the atmosphere above the horizon as seen from the point of impact, but because this is less than a thousandth of the total atmosphere and there would be diminishing returns as the atmosphere's density decreases, a very great number of such giant impactors would be required. Landis calculated[3] that to lower the pressure from 92 bar to 1 bar would require a minimum of 2,000 impacts, even if the efficiency of atmosphere removal was perfect. Smaller objects would not work, either, because more would be required. The violence of the bombardment could well result in significant outgassing that would replace removed atmosphere. Most of the ejected atmosphere would go into solar orbit near Venus, and, without further intervention, could be captured by the Venerian gravitational field and become part of the atmosphere once again.

Another variant method involving bombardment would be to perturb a massive Kuiper belt object to put its orbit onto a collision path with Venus. If the object, made of mostly ices, had enough velocity to penetrate just a few kilometers past the Venusian surface, the resulting forces from the vaporization of ice from the impactor and the impact itself could stir the lithosphere and mantle thus ejecting a proportional amount of matter (as magma and gas) from Venus. A byproduct of this method would be either a new moon for Venus or a new impactor-body of debris that would fall back to the surface at a later time.

Removal of atmospheric gas in a more controlled manner could also prove difficult. Venus's extremely slow rotation means that space elevators would be very difficult to construct because the planet's geostationary orbit lies an impractical distance above the surface, and the very thick atmosphere to be removed makes mass drivers useless for removing payloads from the planet's surface. Possible workarounds include placing mass drivers on high-altitude balloons or balloon-supported towers extending above the bulk of the atmosphere, using space fountains, or rotovators.

In addition, if the density of the atmosphere (and corresponding greenhouse effect) were dramatically reduced, the surface temperature (now effectively constant) would probably vary widely between day side and night side. Another side effect to atmospheric-density reduction could be the creation of zones of dramatic weather activity or storms at the terminator because large volumes of atmosphere would undergo rapid heating or cooling.

Venus receives about twice the sunlight that Earth does, which is thought to have contributed to its runaway greenhouse effect. One means of terraforming Venus could involve reducing the insolation at Venus's surface to prevent the planet from heating up again.

Solar shades could be used to reduce the total insolation received by Venus, cooling the planet somewhat.[29] A shade placed in the SunVenus L1 Lagrangian point also would serve to block the solar wind, removing the radiation exposure problem on Venus.

A suitably large solar shade would be four times the diameter of Venus itself if at the L1 point. This would necessitate construction in space. There would also be the difficulty of balancing a thin-film shade perpendicular to the Sun's rays at the SunVenus Lagrangian point with the incoming radiation pressure, which would tend to turn the shade into a huge solar sail. If the shade were simply left at the L1 point, the pressure would add force to the sunward side and the shade would accelerate and drift out of orbit. The shade could instead be positioned nearer to the Sun, using the solar pressure to balance the gravitational forces, in practice becoming a statite.

Other modifications to the L1 solar shade design have also been suggested to solve the solar-sail problem. One suggested method is to use polar-orbiting, solar-synchronous mirrors that reflect light toward the back of the sunshade, from the non-sunward side of Venus. Photon pressure would push the support mirrors to an angle of 30 degrees away from the sunward side.[2]

Paul Birch proposed[24] a slatted system of mirrors near the L1 point between Venus and the Sun. The shade's panels would not be perpendicular to the Sun's rays, but instead at an angle of 30 degrees, such that the reflected light would strike the next panel, negating the photon pressure. Each successive row of panels would be +/- 1 degree off the 30-degree deflection angle, causing the reflected light to be skewed 4 degrees from striking Venus.

Solar shades could also serve as solar power generators. Space-based solar shade techniques, and thin-film solar sails in general, are only in an early stage of development. The vast sizes require a quantity of material that is many orders of magnitude greater than any human-made object that has ever been brought into space or constructed in space.

Venus could also be cooled by placing reflectors in the atmosphere. Reflective balloons floating in the upper atmosphere could create shade. The number and/or size of the balloons would necessarily be great. Geoffrey A. Landis has suggested[30] that if enough floating cities were built, they could form a solar shield around the planet, and could simultaneously be used to process the atmosphere into a more desirable form, thus combining the solar shield theory and the atmospheric processing theory with a scalable technology that would immediately provide living space in the Venusian atmosphere. If made from carbon nanotubes or graphene (a sheet-like carbon allotrope), then the major structural materials can be produced using carbon dioxide gathered in situ from the atmosphere.[citation needed] The recently synthesised amorphous carbonia might prove a useful structural material if it can be quenched to Standard Temperature and Pressure (STP) conditions, perhaps in a mixture with regular silica glass. According to Birch's analysis, such colonies and materials would provide an immediate economic return from colonizing Venus, funding further terraforming efforts.[citation needed]

Increasing the planet's albedo by deploying light-colored or reflective material on the surface (or at any level below the cloud tops) would not be useful, because the Venerian surface is already completely enshrouded by clouds, and almost no sunlight reaches the surface. Thus, it would be unlikely to be able to reflect more light than Venus's already-reflective clouds, with Bond albedo of 0.77.[31]

Birch proposed that solar shades could be used to not merely cool the planet but to also reduce atmospheric pressure as well, by the process of freezing of the carbon dioxide.[24] This requires Venus's temperature to be reduced, first to the liquefaction point, requiring a temperature less than 304.128(15)K[32] (30.978(15)C or 87.761(27)F) and partial pressures of CO2 to bring the atmospheric pressure down to 73.773(30)bar[33] (carbon dioxide's critical point); and from there reducing the temperature below 216.592(3)K[34] (56.558(3)C or 69.8044(54)F) (carbon dioxide's triple point). Below that temperature, freezing of atmospheric carbon dioxide into dry ice will cause it to deposit onto the surface. He then proposed that the frozen CO2 could be buried and maintained in that condition by pressure, or even shipped off-world (perhaps to provide greenhouse gas needed for terraforming of Mars or the moons of Jupiter). After this process was complete, the shades could be removed or solettas added, allowing the planet to partially warm again to temperatures comfortable for Earth life. A source of hydrogen or water would still be needed, and some of the remaining 3.5 bar of atmospheric nitrogen would need to be fixed into the soil. Birch suggests disrupting an icy moon of Saturn, for example Hyperion, and bombarding Venus with its fragments.

Paul Birch suggests that, in addition to cooling the planet with a sunshade in L1, "heat pipes" could be built on the planet to accelerate the cooling. The proposed mechanism would transport heat from the surface to colder regions higher up in the atmosphere, similar to a solar updraft tower, thereby facilitating radiation of excess heat out into space.[24] A newly proposed variation of this technology is the atmospheric vortex engine, where instead of physical chimney pipes, the atmospheric updraft is achieved through the creation of a vortex, similar to a stationary tornado. In addition to this method being less material intensive and potentially more cost effective, this process also produces a net surplus of energy, which could be utilised to power venusian colonies or other aspects of the terraforming effort, while simultaneously contributing to speeding up the cooling of the planet. Another method to cool down the planet could be with the use of radiative cooling[35] This technology could utilise the fact that in certain wavelengths, thermal radiation from the lower atmosphere of Venus can "escape" to space through partially transparent atmospheric windows spectral gaps between strong CO2 and H2O absorption bands in the near infrared range 0.82.4m (3194in). The outgoing thermal radiation is wavelength dependent and varies from the very surface at 1m (39in) to approximately 35km (22mi) at 2.3m (91in).[36] Nanophotonics and construction of metamaterials opens up new possibilities to tailor the emittance spectrum of a surface via properly designing periodic nano/micro-structures.[37][38]Recently there has been proposals of a device named a "emissive energy harvester" that can transfer heat to space through radiative cooling and convert part of the heat flow into surplus energy,[39] opening up possibilities of a self-replicating system that could exponentially cool the planet.

Since Venus has only a fraction of the water of Earth (less than half the Earth's water content in the atmosphere, and none on the surface),[40] water would have to be introduced either by the aforementioned method of introduction of hydrogen, or from some other intraplanetary or extraplanetary source.

Paul Birch suggests the possibility of colliding Venus with one of the ice moons from the outer solar system,[24] thereby bringing in all the water needed for terraformation in one go. This could be achieved through gravity assisted capture of Saturn's moons Enceladus and Hyperion or Uranus's moon Miranda. Simply changing the velocity of these moons enough to move them from their current orbit and enable gravity-assisted transport to Venus would require large amounts of energy. However, through complex gravity-assisted chain reactions the propulsion requirements could be reduced by several orders of magnitude. As Birch puts it, "[t]heoretically one could flick a pebble into the asteroid belt and end up dumping Mars into the Sun."[24]

Studies have shown that substantial amounts of water (in the form of hydrogen) might be present in the mantle of terrestrial planets.[41] It has therefore been speculated[42] that it would be technically possible to extract this water from the mantle to the surface even if no feasible method to accomplish this exists currently.

Venus rotates once every 243 Earth daysby far the slowest rotation period of any known object in the Solar System. A Venusian sidereal day thus lasts more than a Venusian year (243 versus 224.7 Earth days). However, the length of a solar day on Venus is significantly shorter than the sidereal day; to an observer on the surface of Venus, the time from one sunrise to the next would be 116.75 days. Therefore, the slow Venerian rotation rate would result in extremely long days and nights, similar to the day-night cycles in the polar regions of earth shorter, but global. The slow rotation might also account for the lack of a significant magnetic field.

It has until recently been assumed that the rotation rate or day-night cycle of Venus would have to be increased for successful terraformation to be achieved. More recent research has shown, however, that the current slow rotation rate of Venus is not at all detrimental to the planet's capability to support an Earth-like climate. Rather, the slow rotation rate would, given an Earth-like atmosphere, enable the formation of thick cloud layers on the side of the planet facing the sun. This in turn would raise planetary albedo and act to cool the global temperature to Earth-like levels, despite the greater proximity to the Sun. According to calculations, maximum temperatures would be just around 35C (95F), given an Earth-like atmosphere.[43][44] Speeding up the rotation rate would therefore be both impractical and detrimental to the terraforming effort. A terraformed Venus with the current slow rotation would result in a global climate with "day" and "night" periods each roughly 2 months (58 days) long, resembling the seasons at higher latitudes on Earth. The "day" would resemble a short summer with a warm, humid climate, a heavy overcast sky and ample rainfall. The "night" would resemble a short, very dark winter with quite cold temperature and snowfall. There would be periods with more temperate climate and clear weather at sunrise and sunset resembling a "spring" and "autumn".[43]

The problem of very dark conditions during the roughly two-month long "night" period could be solved through the use of a space mirror in a 24-hour orbit (the same distance as a geostationary orbit on Earth) similar to the Znamya (satellite) project experiments. Extrapolating the numbers from those experiments and applying them to Venerian conditions would mean that a space mirror just under 1700 meters in diameter could illuminate the entire nightside of the planet with the luminosity of 10-20 full moons and create an artificial 24-hour light cycle. An even bigger mirror could potentially create even stronger illumination conditions. Further extrapolation suggests that to achieve illumination levels of about 400 lux (similar to normal office lighting or a sunrise on a clear day on earth) a circular mirror about 55 kilometers across would be needed.

Paul Birch suggested keeping the entire planet protected from sunlight by a permanent system of slated shades in L1, and the surface illuminated by a rotating soletta mirror in a polar orbit, which would produce a 24-hour light cycle.[24]

If increasing the rotation speed of the planet would be desired (despite the above-mentioned potentially positive climatic effects of the current rotational speed), it would require energy of a magnitude many orders greater than the construction of orbiting solar mirrors, or even than the removal of the Venerian atmosphere. Birch calculates that increasing the rotation of Venus to an Earth-like solar cycle would require about 1.6 1029 Joules[45] (50billion petawatt-hours).

Scientific research suggests that close flybys of asteroids or cometary bodies larger than 100 kilometres (60mi) across could be used to move a planet in its orbit, or increase the speed of rotation.[46] The energy required to do this is large. In his book on terraforming, one of the concepts Fogg discusses is to increase the spin of Venus using three quadrillion objects circulating between Venus and the Sun every 2 hours, each traveling at 10% of the speed of light.[2]

G. David Nordley has suggested, in fiction,[47] that Venus might be spun up to a day length of 30 Earth days by exporting the atmosphere of Venus into space via mass drivers. A proposal by Birch involves the use of dynamic compression members to transfer energy and momentum via high-velocity mass streams to a band around the equator of Venus. He calculated that a sufficiently high-velocity mass stream, at about 10% of the speed of light, could give Venus a day of 24 hours in 30 years.[45]

Protecting the new atmosphere from the solar wind, to avoid the loss of hydrogen, would require an artificial magnetosphere. Venus presently lacks an intrinsic magnetic field, therefore creating an artificial planetary magnetic field is needed to form a magnetosphere via its interaction with the solar wind. According to two NIFS Japanese scientists, it is feasible to do that with current technology by building a system of refrigerated latitudinal superconducting rings, each carrying a sufficient amount of direct current.[48]

In the same report, it is claimed that the economic impact of the system can be minimized by using it also as a planetary energy transfer and storage system (SMES). Another study proposes the possibility of deployment of a magnetic dipole shield at the L1 Lagrange point, thereby creating an artificial magnetosphere that would protect the whole planet from solar wind and radiation.[49]

Originally posted here:

Terraforming of Venus - Wikipedia

Follow in the footsteps of Arnie in Total Recall, and get your butt to Mars with the Terraforming Mars board game, which is currently reduced to one of the lowest prices we've seen it at in the Amazon Prime Day sales.

Right now, you can get Terraforming Mars for just $38.55 at Amazon (opens in new tab), down from it's original price of $69.95. That's a massive 45% discount, saving you just over $31 on one of the best space board games in the known universe (We're covering ourselves here, aliens might have better board games than us.)

Set in the year 2400, Terraforming Mars sees two to five players working together to colonize the Red planet, while also competing to see how can do the best job. It's a cool part co-op, part competitive twist on the usual strategy game formula. You'll have to transform the barren planet and build human infrastructure to gain victory points.

While scientists don't think we're going to get to terraform the real Mars anytime soon, if ever, that doesn't mean we can't have a ton of fun transforming a fictional Mars with this surprisingly in-depth and science-focused game.

You play as one of several mega-corporations looking to get rich on this bold new frontier, collecting and spending resources to enact projects and transform the barren planet into a lush paradise. You're competing with the other players for the best places to build your cities, oceans and greenery.

There are tons of expansions for the game too, so once you've become a terraforming pro, you can take on new challenges like going to the hostile hellscape of Venus in the Venus Next expansion (opens in new tab).

Be sure to check out all of our coverage of theAmazon Prime Day deals, or check out specific guides like our Lego deals page for more great savings.

More space board game deals this Prime Day

View original post here:

Colonize the Red Planet with the Terraforming Mars board game, now 45% off - Space.com