Like billions of people around the world, Philip E. Jenks' only contact with John F. Kennedy was via the electronic flickering of a vacuum tube electron gun firing electrons on a fluorescent screen — and yet his death was a deep personal loss.
The latest news from Mars highlights a profound and deeply ironic fact: It is possible that the first life we detect from another planet will not be found here in our own Solar System.
What would happen if you could put a trillion sensors all over planet Earth, monitoring everything from weather patterns to highway traffic?
Ray Bradbury’s Mars, vividly portrayed in the short stories that grew into his 1951 book The Martian Chronicles, wasn’t the Mars we know, but it has lessons for us nonetheless.
