This is a potential game changer in medicine.

Over the past two decades, gene therapy has come of age, but there are different means of delivering genetic payload.

Here’s a riddle: What do the Moon, nuclear weapons, clean energy of the future, terrorism, and lung disease all have in common?

The answer is helium-3, a gas that’s extremely rare on Earth but 100 million times more abundant on the Moon.

The capability to show anatomic details of the lungs and airways, and the ability to display functional imaging as a patient breathes, makes helium-3 MRI far better than the standard method of testing lung function. Called spirometry, this method tells physicians how the lungs function overall, but does not home in on particular areas that may be causing a problem. Plus, spirometry requires patients to follow instructions and hold their breath, so it is not great for testing young children with pulmonary disease.

Over the past several years, researchers have been developing MRI for lung testing using other hyperpolarized gases. The main alternative to helium-3 is xenon-129. Over the years, researchers have learned to overcome certain disadvantages of the latter, such as its potential to put patients to sleep. Since helium-3 provides the strongest signal, though, it is still the best gas for MRI studies in many lung conditions.

But the supply of helium-3 on Earth has been decreasing in recent years, due to the declining rate of dismantling of warheads, just as the Department of Homeland Security has required more and more of the gas for neutron detection. As a result, the cost of the gas has skyrocketed. Less is available now for medical uses–unless, of course, we begin mining it on the moon.

From planet of love to scorching Hell planet—the image of Venus has changed considerably since ancient times, because it is no longer just the third brightest natural object in Earth’s skies. The ancients equated the mysterious third light with the goddess of love; in Greece that was Aphrodite, whom the Romans conflated with the goddess Venus. That’s where our closest planetary neighbor got its name and why Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus worked as a best-selling title, as recently as 1992, and still sells. But since the mid-20th century, we’ve known in detail why a paradise Venus is not. Average temperature on the surface is a scorching 462° Celsius (864° Fahrenheit) while atmospheric pressure is 90 times that of Earth at sea level, or equivalent to being at 900 meters depth in Earth’s oceans.

A handful of Russian landing probes have survived for several minutes on the planet’s surface before being cooked and crushed, but the conditions are unquestionably inhospitable for life forms. Consequently, you do not hear about astrobiologists searching for native microorganisms on the Venusian surface the way you hear about the search for microorganisms on Mars. Nevertheless, since the late 20th century, planetary scientists have speculated that Venus could have boasted a much more hospitable environment in the distant past, perhaps 2–3 billion years ago. That’s around the time that Earth was accumulating oxygen in its oceans and atmosphere. At that point in history, Venus and Earth may have had similar climates.

What’s been in the news lately is a study involving computer climate simulations in which data from NASA’s Magellan mission to Venus were found to support the idea of a once habitable Venus. The study involved researchers from NASA, Uppsala University in Sweden, Columbia University, and the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, AZ.

The Moon and Mars are remote and forbidding but it’s fairly easy to turn their soil into construction material and mine it for water to drink and oxygen to breathe.

Several astronauts have spent more than a year in zero gravity, and they experienced muscle loss, brittle bones and difficulties with vision. A space station could be spun up to ameliorate these problems, and for colonists on the Moon and Mars, gravity would be reduced, not absent. Their capillaries and cardiovascular systems would adjust, and muscle mass would be shed.

Few of us would relish living in the isolation and close confines of a bubble habitat far from home. The lack of a varied natural environment is likely to lead to weaker immune systems. However, the colonists will innovate in the activities of exercise and sex. Their space suits will be made from materials that are supple, supportive and skin-tight, and we might envy their ability to effortlessly leap and cavort across the surfaces of their new worlds.

If early colonies are restocked with new recruits from Earth, physiological changes will be modest. But subsequent waves of colonists may sever the umbilical; they might be dissidents or motivated by utopian ideals. As they live and die off-Earth, their psychological landscape will be sculpted by their new environment. Biologically, they will evolve into a new offshoot from the human tree.

At the more advanced end of things, genetic modifications and advanced medical procedures might be available in the future that can restore muscle tissue, bone density, and organ health. If such treatments are available down the road, periodic visits to the doctor could allow Loonies to live happy and healthy lives in lower gravity.

In so many ways, a permanent human presence on the Moon could open the door to the entire Solar System. With the ability to refuel and resupply missions from a lunar site, space agencies could shave billions off the cost of deep-space missions. It would also facilitate missions to Mars, Venus, the Asteroid Belt, and beyond.

In the coming years, NASA’s Project Artemis will send astronauts to the Moon for the first time in fifty years. In the years that follow, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) also hope to build a spiritual successor to the ISS – the international lunar village around the Moon’s southern pole.

With multiple space agencies looking to build bases and private aerospace companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin hoping to make lunar tourism a reality, the message is clear: We’re going back to the Moon. And this time, we plan on staying!

But what about the long-term? What about a lunar colony where us regular folk can live, work, and become the first “Selenians” (or “Lunites”, “Lunarians”, “Loonies”, etc.). It’s been explored extensively in science fiction, but how about for real? Could it be done?

“If there’s life on Mars, there’s a good chance it’s related to us.”

Scientists from SETG have developed a method to detect the tiniest traces of life on other planetary bodies.

There was nothing technical or physical stopping us from having moved on from Apollo to a permanent Moonbase, the development of industries in space and the establishment of the first human communities on Mars.

While in his time the reason “Why?” was derived from war, this time it can be born of hope.

And while in his time he could only comprehend the first small steps, we have the ability to understand what a giant leap this endeavor can offer us and our children.

It really is up to us. We cannot wait for the next Kennedy to set us on our path to the stars.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=B-Osn1gMNtw

Elon Musk has been a vocal critic of artificial intelligence, calling it an “existential threat to humanity”. He is wrong, right?

Musk is heavily invested in AI research himself through his OpenAI and NeuroLink ventures, and believes that the only safe road to AI involves planning, oversight & regulation. He recently summarized this, saying:

“My recommendation for the longest time has been consistent. I think we ought to have a government committee that starts off with insight, gaining insight… Then, based on that insight, comes up with rules in consultation with industry that give the highest probability for a safe advent of AI.”

Across dozens of media appearances, Musk’s message about AI has indeed been remarkably consistent. He says it’s dangerous, and says it needs regulation, or else “AI could turn humans into an endangered species”.

A future manned mission to Mars might require mankind not just to improve its technological capabilities but also to tweak human DNA a bit in order to help them cope with inhospitable conditions there, space.com reports.