Tagged: science fiction

Impressionist sketch of a fictional abbey on the dark side of one of the planets around the ultra cool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1

9. March 2021

TRAPPIST-1: the Link between Astronomy and Beer

Today we will travel to 2MASS J23062928-0502285, better known as TRAPPIST-1, a star at about 40.5 light years from Earth. That would normally be quite a long journey; even light takes more than four decades to get there. But in our imagination we’re there in the blink of an eye. Ultra-cool TRAPPIST-1 is a so-called ultra-cool red dwarf star, which made the news in 2017 because Belgian astronomers discovered seven Earth-like planets in orbit around it. The terms ultra-cool and Earth-like should not be taken too literally. Anything below 2700 degrees Kelvin (more than 2400 degrees Celsius) is considered ultra-cool… Read More

Artist impression of the planet Venus in a remote future after terraforming, with oceans and continents, cloud patterns and an impressive ring system

Space art

4. July 2020

The Rings of Venus

Terraforming is the modification of a planet in such a way that terrestrial life can thrive there. One should not underestimate such an enterprise. The terraforming of Venus or Mars is a huge project that will take centuries, if not millennia. But on which of our two neighboring planets is such a project the most promising? They both have their pros and cons, but on this page I mainly want to talk about Venus. Sister planet This closest planet in our solar system looks suspiciously like Earth, at first glance. With a diameter of 12,104 kilometers, Venus is only a… Read More

The Ares, the spaceship on which the First Hundred travelled to Mars in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, arrives in orbit around the Red Planet

Space art

5. June 2020

Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy

The Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson is one of the highlights of American science fiction, as far as I’m concerned. Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars were published between 1992 and 1996 and tell the future history of our neighboring planet over a period of almost two hundred years. In those two centuries, Mars is fully terraformed: transformed from a cold, dry, lifeless desert into a living world with seas, forests and cities. Not all main characters are happy with those changes: the battle between the Reds, who prefer to keep Mars as it is and the Greens,… Read More

Artist impression of the ESA probe Huygens, landing on Titan, largest moon of the planet Saturn, in january 2005

Space art

2. December 2019

Space Quotes

This collection of space quotes, cosmic wisecracks and universal oneliners was originally tweeted from the, nowadays pretty dormant, Modified Mars Twitteraccount. I felt they deserved a more permanent location; after all, colonizing the Galaxy is a long term project. Some of these quotes are funny, others are dead serious; occasionally they’re both. They all are, sometimes very obvious, in other cases rather remotely, linked to themes like Mars, spaceflight, astronomy or the universe in general. And since I call this an image blog, I mix the quotes with some space art I’ve produced over the years. “We are all in the… Read More

Atmospheric nocturnal picture of a terraformed Moon, low above the horizon, that shines its green-yellow light on a slightly undulating water surface with a sailboat on it

Space art

10. November 2018

Getting Used to a Terraformed Moon

Could the Moon be terraformed? The spelling checker does not even know the word terraforming, but in science-fiction one can read it quite often: it’s about making other planets more friendly for lifeforms from Earth by adjusting the temperature and the atmosphere. The concept of terraforming is often conntected with Mars, sometimes with Venus, but rarely with the Moon. That’s a good reason to take a look at that improbable option. Mars and Venus The terraforming of Mars is actually not that complicated. Simply pumping CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere will start a runaway greenhouse effect that… Read More

Artist impression of Terminator, the city moving accross Mercury from the science fiction novel 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson

Space art

25. January 2018

Terminator, Urbanism on Mercury

A few days ago American writer Kim Stanley Robinson shared on his Facebook page an artist impression that I made a few years ago, featuring Terminator, the mobile city on Mercury from his science fiction novel 2312. Robinson called it a beautiful visualization; or well, actually his literary agent called it that, but of course she wouldn’t have done so if the author didn’t agree. Enthusiasm by the creator of the concept, that is of course a nice compliment for an impression artist. I made the illustration two years ago after reading 2312. For some reason Robinson’s work often inspires… Read More

Space art

16. November 2017

Alice and Goliath – two worlds out of many

How many Earth-like exoplanets are there in the universe? In other words: how many doubles does our beautiful water world have? We’ll never get anywhere near an exact answer but “very, very much” is, most likely, pretty close to the truth. Billions There are about 200 billion stars in our own galaxy. The number of galaxies in the universe is, coincidentally, also around 200 billion. So we are talking about roughly 40,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars. Even if only one in a million stars has an Earth-like planet orbiting around it, which seems like a pessimistic estimate, we still have an unimaginable number… Read More

Artist impression of the interior of a giant hollow asteroid, seen from the shore of a lake, with two men on a wooden pier, looking out towards a city and the hills, lakes and cliffs beyond

Space art

21. February 2017

Psyche Station: living in an asteroid

Recently, my attention was triggered by a sketch my Facebook friend Shaun Moss posted. A simple drawing of a fairly extensive project: the excavation of asteroid 16 Psyche for the establishment of a space colony. A spectacular idea from science fiction, but here applied to a concrete situation, to an existing piece of real estate in the solar system. The blue lines indicate a huge cylindrical space (the distances are in meters). Rotating the big rock around its central axis creates a centrifugal force on the curved walls of the cylinder. That force feels like gravity, like in a spinning washing… Read More

De auteur in een fictieve aflevering van zomergasten, met op de achtergrond een still uit de film over de Bijenkorf van Dudok, spiegelend in het water rond de caravan

Various

30. October 2016

A Summer Guest in October

Every year in July and August there’s a show, made by VPRO on Dutch television, called Zomergasten (Summer Guests). From eight till eleven PM one guest shows and talks about his favorite television clips. The guests can be anyone, from the prime minister or celebrities from the world of entertainment to scientists or designers who are largely unknown outside their own field of expertise. Whining about the program is a kind of national sport. The skills of the host, the selection of guests and the fragments they choose, the occasions in which everyone is enthousiastic are very rare. One would… Read More

A room with world map Mars 2.0, showing the planet as it may look after terraforming, as decoration on the wall, while Mars rover Sojourner is driving around between the furniture

Cartography / Space art / Visualisation

23. October 2015

Mars 2.0 – Return to the Red, Green and Blue Planet

The terraforming of Mars is a fascinating subject. Is it possible to transform that lifeless desert planet into a living world with seas and jungles? Can some other colors, especially green and blue, be added to the Red Planet? In any case, now that we are dangerously warming our own planet, terraforming is no longer a theoretical concept. Mars Society Netherlands The Red Planet and I have a long history together. In 1999 I founded, together with Arno Wielders (currently involved in Mars One) the Dutch chapter of the Mars Society in a café in Leiden. In the first years… Read More