Scientific Progress Goes ......

Hiroshima Cenotaph

Today, Japan held a peace memorial marking the 67th anniversary of the worlds first atomic bomb attack. The Hiroshima bombing claimed the lives of more than 140,000 people and destroyed 70% of the city of Hiroshima itself.  The bomb, named Little Boy, was said at the time to be 2000 times more powerful than the largest bomb ever used before. It was the equivalent of 12-15,000 tons of TNT and devastated an area of 5 square miles. The "Atomic Age/Era" was well under way.
The first nuclear device had already been tested on July 16th 1945 by the U.S. Army in the Jornada Del Muerto desert. The test of the 20 kiloton nuclear device was considered a success and less than a month later the only 2 atomic bombs ever to be used in actual warfare had been used. This was indeed a new age for science and technology. 67 year's later there is not a single element of life as we know it that is not affected by that event. Political and environmental, social and financial, biological and technological: all of these things are influenced across the globe by the single, massive event 67 year's ago today. The world was struck so hard that the reverberations are still being felt. The 67 year anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing is marked by a somewhat different technological advancement.

Curiosity Rover

NASA, today landed their "Curiosity" rover on Mars. The "Curiosity" rover is NASA's most advanced Mars rover. Curiosity rover's mission is to look for evidence that Mars may once have harboured the basic building blocks for life. It has within itself 10 different scientific instruments and is basically a remote control, mobile science lab on 6 all terrain wheels.

The rover has, at this point been travelling for more than eight months through space, covered 352 million miles at 13,000 miles per hour. The rover weighs approximately 1 ton and is the size of a small car. Due to the thin atmosphere of Mars, the size and weight of the rover that NASA had to land on a planet 54.6 million km away from earth (at it closest), the normal landing bags and thrusters will not suffice. NASA had to create the "Sky Crane".

Artist Impression of the Sky Crane

If you have seen Tim Burtons version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, you will remember Willy Wonka's flying glass elevator. The Sky Crane is not at all dissimilar!. Now, once a multi-billion dollar, ton of mobile science lab has been flown through space to a different planet, landed on the surface of the planet using technology only ever seen before in fantasy films, it then has a 2 year mission to scour the surface of an alien planet in search of evidence that there may once have been the building blocks of life. Curiosity will then send this information back through space, to earth for scientists to analyse. The landing has been a success and images are being received from Curiosity. What results this marvelous endeavor may yield is not yet known. The effects the results may have back here on earth can only be speculated upon at this point but 67 years ago science hit the world with a 15 kiloton explosion and caused devastation that lasts to this day. Today science has a soft enough touch to place 1 ton of science lab down safely, 352 million miles away.

The First Clear Pictures From Curiosity.