Mars (Planet)

Bobak Ferdowsi: The JPL Mohawk Guy

One of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2013 issue. Check out our entire People 2013 issue here. Last year's Mars landing by the NASA rover Curiosity was a nail-biter broadcast live from the control room at the Jet Propulsion Lab in La Cañada Flintridge. Yet as the r ... More >>

Fake Food Detection: Scientists Use Lasers to Detect Counterfeit Food

It turns out that the everyday appearance of lasers in our lives isn't limited to corporate boardroom meetings and -- to our great annoyance -- on movie theater screens. If all goes according to plan for Dr. Damien Weidmann the head of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (a.k.a. RAL Space) in England ... More >>

Living on Mars Time: What If Your Day Lasted 24 Hours, 39 Minutes and 35 Seconds?

Kirsten Siebach didn't want to go to the party. "There's just no way I can make it at 10 p.m.," she found herself thinking, "because that's breakfast time." For weeks Siebach had been falling asleep in church and calling her mother daily to check her own sanity. But it was her friend's birthday, so ... More >>

Pasadena's Cheeseburger Week: Where to Go The Mars Rover Cheeseburger

If you like cheeseburgers, and I mean really like cheeseburgers, you should probably just get a hotel room in Pasadena next week. Assuming you don't live here already, which you might if you're a true cheeseburger fanatic, simply because the dish was reportedly invented here (1920s, Lionel Sternber ... More >>

Ray Bradbury-Themed Art Exhibit Opens in a Gallery Located Where the Sci-Fi Master Once Lived

Ray Bradbury, the fantasy-fiction mastermind who wrote Fahrenheit 451 and really did believe man would make it to Mars sooner than later, moved to L.A. from Illinois in 1934 as a teenager. His family first lived around Western Avenue. Then, in 1942, they moved into a Craftsman bungalow at 670 South ... More >>

Underground Life Below Earth? USC Researcher Jan Amend Digs For It

Are there creatures underground we don't know about? If you remember the 1990 film Tremors, starring one Kevin Bacon, then you know they exist, and they're out to get us, at least on-screen. Now USC professor Jan Amend and his team have set out to prove or disprove the existence of "subsurface" li ... More >>

Curiosity Aside, Mars Could Experience Earthquake, UCLA Researcher Finds

If you think space is the final frontier, you might be in for a disappointment. While NASA's Curiosity rover is snapping shots of a crater and hoping to find earth-like life on the Red Planet, UCLA scientists have discovered it has a lot in common with Southern California. It turns out Mars has te ... More >>

VIDEO: Obama Calls Mars Rover Team at JPL, Talks Martians and Mohawk Guy

As is tradition after big American achievements or tragedies (such as, earlier this month, Michael Phelps' 19th Olympic medal and the Sikh community's tragic loss), President Obama reached out to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory this morning over telephone. You'd think the big White House phone cal ... More >>

Total Recall: A Look Back at the Older, Better One

Just because it made loads of money, stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, and features a three-titted mutant doesn't mean Total Recall isn't ruggedly individualistic art. Just look at its outsider pedigree: Total Recall was loosely based on a 1966 short story from the flushed mind of Philip K. Dick, produce ... More >>

Bobak Ferdowsi: Meet The NASA Curiosity Mission's 'Mohawk Guy'

As live shots of Mars rover Curiosity's Pasadena-area control room went viral, America was in awe ... over one guy's mohawk or, maybe, fauxhawk, depending on your point of view. Yes, as NASA and Jet Propulsion Laboratory celebrated the unprecedented move of setting a car-sized rover on the red plan ... More >>

Curiosity Rover Lands on Mars

The NASA rover Curiosity landed on Mars tonight, setting off cheers at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, which guided the car-sized traveler 154 miles to the red planet in search of signs of life. The landing was confirmed shortly at 10:31 p.m., according to NASA: NASA's Curiosity rover has ... More >>

Total Recall Is a Retread of Blade Runner, Brazil, Minority Report...Oh, and Total Recall

By Chris Packham Total Recall, directed by Len Wiseman, aspires to be less stupid than its 1990 predecessor and kind of succeeds for the first third of the film. If you subtract all the metaphysical illusion-versus-reality nonsense, Philip K. Dick's Walter Mitty story "We Can Remember It for You W ... More >>

The Next Generation of Space Food: Vegan Thai Pizza, Hydroponic Gardens Chefs on Mars

Despite what those freeze-dried ice cream sandwiches from the museum gift shop might lead you to believe, designing astronaut food is a lot more complex than it might appear. Nobody understands this better than the NASA food scientists who are currently planning a menu for the prospective 3-year mi ... More >>

Food News Roundup: NASA's Plans To Feed Astronauts, Mario Batali's Favorite Restaurants Peach Pie With Duck and Cherries

Zester Daily: A view into the life of a farmer for a better understanding of our food production system. Grub Street: An article exploring gazpacho with basil-lime granite -- and the rest of the menu at West Hollywood's new restaurant Duplex. Eater L.A.: Ramen from Tsujita, pork ribs from Ham Ji ... More >>

Josh Nelson Is On Another Planet

This summer, the Mars rover Curiosity will finally reach its destination after a nine month journey. Tomorrow, while the space module prepares to roam the red planet looking for dust, signs of life and a perhaps a good place to put our stuff once the Earth is destroyed, pianist Josh Nelson will be a ... More >>

Where the Stars Are

Meet Mark Wallace, NASA's Interplanetary Travel Agent

"Thank you for having me!" he says at the end. "Any questions?" In a tiny, hole-in-the-wall art gallery in central L.A., a rocket scientist is wrapping up a talk titled "Getting There: Science Fiction ... and Fact." The gallery founder, wanting to add a bit of oomph to a space-related exhibit, had r ... More >>

Silicon Beach: 5 People Making L.A. a New Tech Industry Capital

Los Angeles may be 350 miles south of Silicon Valley, but it's making strides to close the distance between the two in terms of sheer brain power and inventiveness (with a little bit of entertainment thrown in for good measure). Here are five people from our People issue helping to make that happen.

Dan Goods: Thinking Outside the Lab

One of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2012 issue. Check out our entire People 2012 issue here. Standing in his studio at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Dan Goods places a small cube of gel in a visitor's hand. He looks the visitor in the eye. Then he gets o ... More >>

'Caine's Arcade' Star Visits NASA Scientist Who Built Cardboard Rockets When He Was a Kid

And here we thought the story of Caine Monroy, the 9-year-old who built a full-scale cardboard arcade in his dad's Los Angeles auto shop, couldn't get any more adorable. How wrong we were! "Caine's Arcade" filmmaker Nirvan Mullick, who's now a member of the kid's staff, just posted a photo to Faceb ... More >>

Hey You "Homo Superiors" — Go to This!

NASA Seeks Volunteers for Astronaut Cooking Challenge

Are you unemployed? Hungry? Have you always wanted to be an astronaut? NASA may have just the job for you. The space agency is seeking six volunteers to live on a simulated Mars base on a Hawaiian lava flow for four months to test meals that could be served on an eventual mission to Mars, Sci-Tech ... More >>

Shuttle Atlantis Launches with Yeast Onboard

NASAThe launch of space shuttle Atlantis on the morning of July 8, 2011. It will be NASA's final space shuttle mission.​When NASA's final space shuttle mission successfully launched this morning, along with four astronauts and thousands of pounds of jet fuel Atlantis was carrying some unusual ... More >>

Jonathan Gold Reviews Mo-Chica

Ask Mr. Gold: What's The Big Deal With Quinoa?

Anne Fishbeinthe invisible restaurant critic​ Dear Mr. Gold: What's the big deal with quinoa? I couldn't even pronounce it right when I first saw it on the menu at Hugo's in Studio City. Then I saw it at Trader Joe's and then I saw it everywhere. It has probably been around forever, but has on ... More >>

Nightranger: Star Bright

Pasadena, We Have A Problem: NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander Kaput

NASA​NASA officials in Pasadena this week officially gave up on the Phoenix Mars Lander after the little tyke went incommunicado and appeared to be damaged by ice as it succumbed to winter conditions on the red planet. The spacecraft had already collected images of Mars and successfully compl ... More >>

Dr. Andrew E. Johnson: The Visionary

Rockie Ascendent: A Farewell to Our Favorite Stargazer

A farewell to our favorite stargazer