David Whitehouse

Terry Tao is the most famous and award-laden mathematician working today. He is known for his groundbreaking work in many areas of mathematics and when he speaks, people listen. A few weeks ago he took to the stage at the International Congress of Mathematics, held every four years, to give his lecture, “Mathematics in the Age of AI.” He voiced concern about what he called an unprecedented threat. “AI has created a crisis in our mathematical values and practices,” he said, and his words resonated because, just days before, Anthropic’s Claude Fable AI program had solved the so-called Jacobian conjecture which has puzzled mathematicians since 1939. It was a devastating achievement, all the more so because the solution fitted into a single tweet.

Most of us say we instinctively understand what time is, but struggle to describe it. We clearly live our lives in the flow of time, with the past gone and our perception of the present moving toward an undetermined future. It’s been described as the fire in which we burn.  But what actually is it? This occupies the minds of cosmologists and philosophers, and recent research, far from clarifying the concept, makes it even stranger. Time, it seems, may not be fundamental but a by-product of the base structure of the cosmos. For Isaac Newton, time was set in motion by God and was the universal backdrop in which all events occur. It was unchanging and ever-present; it regulated and set the pace for the clockwork universe, living out the laws of science.

Last Thursday's explosion of the New Glenn rocket, on its launch pad during a test, could hardly be worse news for America’s return to the Moon. Just two days earlier, NASA had unveiled its plans for a Moon Base, which relied heavily on Jeff Bezos’s rocket and his Blue Origin series of lunar landers. As investigators, safety and clean-up crews inspect the wreckage, NASA will be contemplating a major rethink. The options aren’t good. Explosions on the pad are among the worst things that can happen because of how long repairs can take. If a rocket is to explode, engineers pray that it takes place in the air.

Elon Musk, already the richest person who ever lived, is at the center of the biggest share offering of all time. A valuation of $1.75 trillion at IPO would hand $75 billion to his company, SpaceX. Musk is being allocated two sets of shares, with performance-based conditions. They will materialize if SpaceX reaches a market capitalization of $7.5 trillion, and if a colony of a million people is established on Mars. The first of these is possible, the second is not. On the face of it, you wouldn’t bet against SpaceX. By 2024, it was launching more rockets than the rest of the world combined. Its Starlink internet service generates oodles of cash. It has more than 9,600 satellites in orbit that require constant replenishment, so the market is firm.

If ever there was an exercise in futility, and a demonstration in intentional stupidity, it was the just dropped UFO files from the US Department of War. The release comes after President Trump ordered in February that the Pentagon and other agencies identify and publish governmental files related to “alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena, and unidentified flying objects.” “These files, hidden behind classifications, have long fueled justified speculation – and it’s time the American people see it for themselves,” said Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, in a statement posted to social media. “This release of declassified documents demonstrates the Trump Administration’s earnest commitment to unprecedented transparency.

The key event in the return of the Artemis II crew was the moment of real drama during what mission controllers call Entry Interface. The capsule is 400,000 feet above the Earth and still traveling at 25,000 miles an hour. They were among the fastest humans even though they did not break the incoming speed of the Apollo 10 mission. It is only fourteen minutes until splashdown in the Pacific, there is no turning back, no second chance, re-entry will happen no matter what. A few hours earlier the crew donned their orange so-called crew survival suits and lowered their visors. In essence these are personal spacecraft providing everything they need to survive for up to six days. Their water-cooled inner suit was keeping them cool even though the cabin temperature was normal.

Operation Epic Fury marks a turning point in the art of war. The key to 20th-century battles was air power. In the past, space and cyber activities have traditionally played supporting roles as so-called force multipliers. But this is no longer the case. In this conflict they have become mainstream, carving out new fronts for the wars of the future. The use of space is no longer something that is just nice to have, because everything from comms to intel to navigation uses space and cyber assets. Along with the National Reconnaissance Office, which manages US spy satellites, the US Space Force uses a global sensor network of ground-based telescopes and radar on every continent except Antarctica.

We have all wondered if we are alone in the cosmos; if beings born under the light of another star embark on fabulous voyages between the stars to reach us – their cosmic cousins. Those who believe the Earth has been visited by aliens must think all their dreams are coming true. The recent rumors are that Donald Trump will break the “truth embargo” and make an alien disclosure speech on May 1. Then there is Steven Spielberg’s film about aliens, Disclosure Day, due out in the summer. This is surely no coincidence. The UFO community is a money-making juggernaut that cannot change direction YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen recently interviewed Barack Obama and asked what many people want to know from a US President, current or former: are aliens real? All presidents are asked this.

Even Elon Musk has to face a dose of reality every once in a while. Technology and politics have forced him to turn his gaze away from Mars, for the moment at least, to put Americans back on the surface of the Moon before China gets there. But it might already be too late. If America has any chance of beating China, it now seems inevitable that the next American human landing on the Moon will not be by Musk’s Starship but using a craft being developed by his rival Jeff Bezos. Announcing the pivot, Musk wrote on X: “For those unaware, SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years.

When the Artemis II mission eventually blasts off, it will take humans back to the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years. Americans Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian Jeremy Hansen will travel further out into space than anyone before when they loop 4,700 miles beyond the Moon, seeing parts of it never before glimpsed by human eyes. The flight is designed to put the powerful Space Launch System rocket and the Orion capsule, with its European-made Service Module, through their paces. Three hours after launch, the crew will monitor a procedure not performed since 1972, so-called TLI – Trans-Lunar Injection. Only five of the 24 astronauts who have experienced that are still with us.

Donald Trump’s desire for Greenland is not just about access to oil, minerals and control of the new strategic and commercial corridors opening in the region. It’s also about data. Specifically, the most important data in the world. For decades, Pituffik Space Base – formerly Thule – in Greenland has been central to US space defense and Arctic strategy. It’s the US military’s only base above the Arctic Circle and their most northerly deep-water port and airstrip. It’s home to the 12th Space Warning Squadron. Its massive AN/FPS-132 radar has 240 degrees of coverage surveying the Arctic Ocean and Russia’s northern coast, especially the Kola peninsula where it has concentrated its strategic nuclear weapons.

Our latest visitor from interstellar space is leaving us. It reached its closest point to the Sun on October 29 and is now heading back toward the stars at great speed, having spent a few months traversing our region of space. This visitor – a comet called 3I/Atlas – scared some, fascinated astronomers and thrilled us all as we marveled at its strange journey. 3I/Atlas, which Michael P. Gibson introduced Spectator readers to in the last issue of this magazine, got its name because it is the third object ever found to have entered our solar system from interstellar space – and Atlas is the name of the sky survey that found it as a point of light moving against the distant stars.

Russia is playing a dangerous game in space. Despite its history it’s a declining space power, having abandoned many of its long-term projects due to lack of money and technology. It effectively crippled much of its space activity when it attacked Ukraine, which was the source of many of its high-tech components. This year has seen its lowest launch rate since 1961 – the year Yuri Gagarin became the first person to go into space. Yet significantly, three of Russia’s eight orbital launches this year (the US has launched more than 100) could be potential anti-satellite weapons. On May 23, Russia launched the Cosmos 2588 satellite from the Plesetsk launch site situated 500 miles north of Moscow. The Cosmos designation is a general term used to obscure the satellites’ purpose.