Inverse Daily: The people who would build a Mars city are training in Hawaii
Northern lights, NASA bike tires, and bitcoin billionaires.
It’s that time of year when the northern lights (aurora borealis) wash skylines in the far north in incredible color.
Before we get to today’s big story — all about training for life on Mars — we want to share this incredible explanation and video of a remarkable event that should be seen by everyone at least once.
Here’s how aurora borealis are formed — “As the particles collide with our atmosphere, a cacophonous array of color appears in our skies, emanating from the poles. Blues, greens, purples, and pinks flash, flow, and ripple across the night sky,” explains Kate S. Petersen for Inverse in this article last year about what causes the northern lights. She continues: “They can appear and disappear quickly, or linger for hours. Either way, the aurora is a treasured sight to behold.”
Here’s the video — Justin Patchin, who lives in Wisconsin, captured this stunning video of the phenomenon on Friday.
I’m Nick Lucchesi, editor-in-chief at Inverse. Here are a few stories we hope will expand your world a little wider.
This is an adapted version of the Inverse Daily newsletter for March 23, 2021. Subscribe for free and earn rewards for reading every day in your inbox.
The HI-SEAS habitat in Hawaii simulates what life on Mars is like.
What Elon Musk is still missing — Innovation writer Mike Brown reports on the remote HI-SEAS station in Hawaii, which is a Mars simulation habitat:
Elon Musk wants to build a city on Mars by 2050 — but a simulated mission shows he may need to make some much-needed tweaks.
The SpaceX CEO aims to send the first humans to Mars by the mid-2020s, using the Starship rocket currently under development at the firm’s Texas facility. It’s uncharted territory for humans, and researchers warn there could be unforeseen problems in Mars habitats like cabin fever and isolation.
NASA has undertaken a series of “analog missions” here on Earth to try to simulate these Mars missions, with the goal of uncovering problems before humanity actually reaches the planet.
MaryLiz Bender attended one such mission hosted by NASA Goddard. She’s a musician and co-founder of media studio Cosmic Perspective, and she spent 15 days in January 2021 at the remote HI-SEAS station in Hawaii. She tells Inverse the mission revealed a number of issues that designers would have to resolve to make life on Mars more tolerable. One big one was a need to re-envision the communal space, a place she found essential to life on “Mars.”
“Let's not redo cities the way that we do them now,” Bender says.
More about life on Mars:
- Terraform Mars: Elon Musk says a Mars city of “glass domes” comes first
- NASA scientists prove people skills will trump the “right stuff” on Mars
- HI-SEAS astronauts reveal what living on simulated Mars for a year is like
Your weight lifting schedule need not be like the Copacabana shot in Goodfellas — one new engagement after another, lined up ahead of you.
Can you lift weights too much? In his latest Leg Day Observer column on the world of weights, Sam Reiss explores a question that’s more common than you might guess:
Some well-ordered lifting programs can feel like the Copacabana arrangement in Goodfellas. Responsibilities, be they paying Paulie or squatting, must get met on a schedule, whether you want to or not. But good programs schedule this overload at a rate lifters can manage, provided their sleep and diet are prioritized. It might feel like too much, but it usually isn’t.
Continue reading Sam’s full column.
More from the Leg Day Observer:
- A beginner’s guide to weight lifting
- Intermittent fasting: Powerlifting's longest-lasting diet, explained
- Leg Day Observer archives
If the future of cars is electric, here’s where BMW may fit.
Is BMW ready to compete with Tesla? Here’s transportation writer Jordan Golson: After a few years away, BMW is ready to return to the electric vehicle (EV) game with a sleek four-door that’s ready to take on the Audi, Jaguar, and Mercedes-Benz luxury EVs already on the market — and, of course, those pesky Teslas.
BMW was one of the first major brands to launch an electric car with its rather odd i3 back in 2013, but the company has stayed away from offering any other fully electric vehicles. Instead, the German automaker has preferred to invest heavily in plug-in hybrid “Ultimate Driving Machines,” including a number of different SUVs and sedans.
All that is about to change, though, as BMW this week revealed the all-electric BMW i4, a “Gran Coupé” (a four-door vehicle with coupe-esque proportions) that will go on sale later this year.
More car headlines:
- Ford F-150 Raptor release: Inside the truck's specs, size, and speed
- The $750K Rolls-Royce Phantom Tempus is a cosmic work of art
- Freightliner customers have driven electric semis 700,000 miles
One of the reasons that India’s crypto millionaires aren’t flaunting their wealth may also be that many of them are making long-term bets.
India’s bitcoin billionaires — The Indian government is sending mixed signals about how it plans to regulate cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, writes Leigh Cuen in her latest Crypto-Savvy column:
Government officials say they are still figuring out how to regulate cryptocurrency. At worst, some reports suggest India might criminalize bitcoin ownership and use of the currency entirely. Either way, the Indian bitcoin community offers a stark contrast to stereotypes about bitcoin as the preserve of criminals and tech bros.
Before the pandemic, American bitcoin circles were known for the same frat party culture that once dominated Wall Street and Silicon Valley. There’s even a stereotype that the crypto rich all drive Lamborghinis, but anyone looking to India for bitcoin playboys with lambos will be disappointed. Unocoin crypto-exchange investor Arpit Agarwal of Blume Ventures still drives a Maruti Suzuki Swift. Plus, he’s been married for nine years.
One of the reasons that India’s crypto millionaires aren’t flaunting their wealth may also be that many of them are making long-term bets, rather than speculating for short-term profits, on how this technology will increase India’s prominence in global markets.
More on bitcoin:
- The Crypto-Savvy archives
- What are NFTs? Why blockchain might save the music industry
- Is bitcoin mining bad for the planet?
That wraps up this edition of Inverse Daily. You can follow me on Twitter @nicklucchesi, where I share some of my favorite stories from Inverse, Input, and Mic every day.
Randall Park as Jimmy Woo in WandaVision. “Actually, a magician taught me that and I actually worked really hard on it before that scene because I had to get it right,” Park told Insider about the card trick he pulled off in the series.
One more thing ... Happy birthday, Randall Park. The American actor recently starred in WandaVision on Disney+ as FBI Agent Jimmy Woo.
As the unassuming fan of close-up magic who goes on several coffee runs in Wandavision, Agent Woo may not seem it from outward appearances, but he’s one of the most important characters in the Marvel Universe.
You’ll have to read Eric Francisco’s excellent essay to find out the reasons why.
We’ll see you on Wednesday.
