WASHINGTON (ANA) – Space explorer Stamatis Krimigis is the man of NASA’s unmanned space mission – Voyager 1 and 2, and New Horizon – that travelled for the first time to Pluto.
Krimizis will describe the fascinating voyage of the space explorations that started 52 years ago from Mars in a special event on Friday at the Athens Science Festival hosted in Technopolis with media sponsor the Athens Macedonian News Agency.
Krimizis spoke to ANA for Pluton, but also for a possible settlement on Mars, science fiction movies and the extraterrestrial life. “We are now one billion km away, towards the furthest part of our solar system. What we wanted to see is whether it has the characteristics of a planet. We found an extraordinary geology, something we had not predicted,” said Krimigis to ANA.
Asked if Pluton is friendlier than Mars, Krimigis said emphatically no. Taking into consideration only the distance, 5 bln klm part us from Pluto, while Mars is in our neighbourhood. Mars, Venus and Mercury are the so-called earthlike planets because in a way they are similar to Earth but all three of them are not inhabitable.
“They are no good for vacation. On the other hand, the outer space planets are so far away that today seems uncoceivable for the man to reach them in the next 500 years, unless the science changes radically.”
Is it possible to discover, for instance, something that will make us spectacularly reduce the distances? Is it possible to discover other laws of Physics that there are more dimensions that nobody has explored yet dominated by other laws of Physics based on quantum mechanics and Einstein’s theory of relativity?
Maybe yes, maybe no, said Krimigis and explained “we should not forget that the laws of Physics applied in our solar system also exist in other systems. We have not found any indication that gives us a different picture. In other words we have a very objective knowledge on how the laws of Physics are applied in our galaxy and in space. This does not rule out the possibility of something different and new but, personally I do not see a spectacular leap, besides in the sector of technology, in the next 100 years.”
Is the settlement on Mars a possibility?
What is close is a spacecraft to land on Mars in the next 30 years. However, settlement is a totally different thing. It means you have to tranfer 2,000 people to the planet and they must find a way to produce food, fuel and whatever they need for their survival, it is not so easy. Mars does not have a magnetic field as Earth does which protect us from the cosmic radiation and the solar flares so the settlement should be formed underground.
Do you consider the science fiction movies funny? Scientifically, the last science fiction movies are very serious. For example the movie “Gravity”, its subject is totally realistic.
Some people wonder if aliens have been found and your are hiding it from us. All these things are nonsense. How can we hide something when thousands of people are aware of it. Some people say for instance that the Americans did not land on the moon.
When you have 25,000 people participating in a programme is it possible that they are all part of a conspiracy? Anyway, to return to the point of the question, until today we don’t have the slightest indication for the existence of extraterrestrial life.
The post NASA Explorer Stamatis Krimigis Describes Fascinating Voyage of Space Exploration appeared first on The National Herald.