It Is Hard To Resist The Impression

In Time, [a Martian] Colony Would Grow To The Point Of Being Self- Sustaining. When This Stage Was Reached, Humanity Would Have A Precious Insurance Policy Against Catastrophe At Home. During The Next Millennium There Is A Significant Chance That Civilization On Earth Will Be Destroyed By An Asteroid, A Killer Plague Or A Global War. A Martian Colony Could Keep The Flame Of Civilization And Culture Alive Until Earth Could Be Reverse-colonized From Mars.

Scientists Are Slowly Waking Up To An Inconvenient Truth - The Universe Looks Suspiciously Like A Fix. The Issue Concerns The Very Laws Of Nature Themselves.

General Relativity Is The Cornerstone Of Cosmology And Astrophysics. It Has Also Provided The Conceptual Basis For String Theory And Other Attempts To Unify All The Forces Of Nature In Terms Of Geometrical Structures.

Things Changed With The Discovery Of Neutron Stars And Black Holes - Objects With Gravitational Fields So Intense That Dramatic Space And Time-warping Effects Occur.

Cancer Cells Come Pre-programmed To Execute A Well-defined Cascade Of Changes, Seemingly Designed To Facilitate Both Their Enhanced Survival And Their Dissemination Through The Bloodstream. There Is Even An Air Of Conspiracy In The Way That Tumours Use Chemical Signals To Create Cancer-friendly Niches In Remote Organs.