Good afternoon everyone, and congratulations on making it to the end of yet another day, here on Planet Earth.
But realistically who cares about Earth these days? On Monday, after a seven month long journey hurtling through space at unfathomable speeds, Nasa’s InSight mission landed on Mars. The first pictures from this lander have now been released, revealing the eery desolate landscape of the red planets surface.
The lava plain pictured above is also where InSight landed, and we can expect more pictures from Mars over the coming days.
So when can we expect the first human mission to Mars? Former U.S. President Barack Obama predicted a crewed Mars mission to orbit the planet by the mid-2030’s, so it looks like our relationship with the planet will only grow stronger over time.
Until then, why not check out InSight’s Twitter account, where someone from Nasa writes captions in the first person so we can all get emotionally attached to the lander’s antics. Despite knowing that, it’s still working on me..
Awh, bless.
Back to Earth related news, childhood star Amanda Bynes has spoken out about how her drug addiction ruined her acting career, and life.
Famous to us (or maybe just me) for presenting and starring in Nickelodeon’s The Amanda Show from 1999 until 2002, modern audiences will recognise Bynes from her impressive acting back-catalogue. But just incase you’ve never seen The Amanda Show, this clip pretty much sums up my childhood:
Speaking to Paper Magazine, Bynes said “I can’t turn back time but if I could, I would. And I’m so sorry to whoever I hurt and whoever I lied about because it truly eats away at me
“It makes me feel so horrible and sick to my stomach and sad. Everything I worked my whole life to achieve, I kind of ruined it all through Twitter.
“It’s definitely not Twitter’s fault – it’s my own fault”.
What Bynes is referencing there, is her very public Twitter rants that got her in a whole host of trouble. The turbulent life of Amanda between 2012 and 2015 saw her hospitalised in psychiatric hospitals on more than one occasion.
Bynes says she has now been clean for four years, crediting her parents with helping her “get back on track”.
She is now a merchandise product development student at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles and will graduate in November, before embarking on a new degree there in January.
The star says she would eventually like to create her own fashion line one day – but says for now getting back into acting is her first priority.
In exciting news from our cousins ‘down under’, The Great Barrier Reef is set to be restored via ‘Coral IVF’.
Tiny corals will be grown and when the larvae are ready they will be reintroduced to the most damaged parts of the reef.
Scientists in Australia are attempting to restore the Great Barrier Reef by using IVF-style techniques on coral.
Experts will try to capture millions of coral eggs and sperm during the annual coral spawning in the Larval Restoration Project, dubbed “IVF for the Great Barrier Reef”.
The tiny corals will then be grown in floating booms for around a week and when the larvae are ready they will be reintroduced to the most damaged parts of the reef.
Professor Peter Harrison, from Southern Cross University in New South Wales, one of the project leaders, called it “the largest larval restoration project that’s ever been attempted not only on the Great Barrier Reef but anywhere in the world”.
He said: “For the first time we are going to try on a large scale to capture literally millions of eggs and sperm during the coral spawning event. We’re building spawn catchers floating off Moore Reef off Cairns.
“Our team will be restoring hundreds of square metres with the goal of getting to square kilometres in the future, a scale not attempted previously.”
The annual coral spawning reportedly began earlier this week and lasts between 48 and 72 hours as many millions of coral eggs and sperm are released into the waters off Cairns, northern Queensland.
Professor Harrison said their aim was to fix the damage done by the coral bleaching in 2016 and 2017, which some fear may be irreparable.
“On the Great Barrier Reef we’ve lost more than half of the corals in those recent two bleaching events,” he said.
“We’ve lost so many corals that fewer corals are able to spawn and rates of fertilisation are going to be lower and the billions of larvae the reef needs to be replenished naturally [won’t be produced].”
So what happens if all the coral gives up and disappears on us? Take a look below:
Doesn’t seem like the best option now does it?
That’s all from us, different planets, revived actresses and the coral reef. What more could you ask for?
Until next time, goodnight.