Someone at the Independent is worried that SETI could be a risky business – what if looking for alien civilisations is an open invitation for them to wipe us out? George Dvorsky takes a more rational viewpoint, namely that if aliens wanted to destroy us, they would have done so already, ergo SETI is safe (if pointless).

At least we’re a little closer to dicovering the truth behind the Tunguska event, as an Italian team have discovered what they believe to be the impact crater of the asteroid that caused it – as opposed to the crashed flying saucer that has been posited by others. But who knows – maybe we really were visited, or even created, by an alien race – one that saw fit to scribble graffiti in our DNA?

NASA has laid out its plans for making the ISS available to governmental and commercial research, once the station is completed (hopefully) in 2010. The trouble is, no one is in a great rush to sign up – the incredible cost of getting equipment and researchers to orbit and back is acting as a serious deterrent. It’s a given that we could do with finding a way to make the weight-to-orbit cost of space missions come down – which is why it is to be hoped that Liftport manage to stay in business and start work on their dream of the space elevator. If you think that’s too science fictional to work, then the Mach-Lorentz Thruster will really flip you out – it could theoretically fly four round-trips to the Moon in a day, provided the theory it’s based on isn’t completely wrong. Maybe we’d be better off sticking to Armadillo Aerospace’s modular launch vehicles.

I’ll bet you all know one – someone who reads just as many books as you, but who sticks to the high-brow literary authors and disdains that pulpy science fiction stuff you like, no matter how many times you try to explain that it’s not all Star Trek and Buck Rogers. David Louis Edelman asks which science fiction novel should you give to a literary reader, if they give you one chance to convert them? I have a few titles that have worked in the past, but Dave’s got a whole list of them – as well as ones to definitely avoid.

It’s not just scientists at the cutting edge of technological development who get to have big conferences and get-togethers, you know. The UK’s own Nottingham University is playing host to a symposium for scholars who specialise in researching health issues as they were seen in medieval Europe. In related news, the UK government has ruled that ‘intelligent design’ is not science and must not be taught as such in schools – hopefully reducing the chances of us returning to the attitudes the aforementioned scholars are discussing.

More Martian handwaving, yippee! Physicist Lowell Wood presented his ‘Mars Manifesto’ at the Aspen Institute, suggesting we experiment on a planet that we’re not living on, and that the terraforming of the red planet could be essentially complete by the end on the 21st Century. And before you raise the usual objections, he thinks that “It is not technology, nor money […] the pacing ingredient is marshaled will.” Maybe he’s right; the space geek in me would love to see it. But I can’t help but side with Bruce Sterling’s comments back in 2004, when he stated he’d “believe in people settling Mars at about the same time [he sees] people setting the Gobi Desert.”