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While we have never been closer to becoming an interplanetary species, any hopes humanity has for inhabiting planets beyond our solar system – let alone solar systems beyond it – remain a distant dream. However, as this stunningly-rendered CGI animation from the Stockholm-based director Erik Wernquist shows, while human-transporting spacecrafts that might traverse the vast distances between planets and even stars are still quite far off, they’re theoretically possible. Commissioned by the Limitless Space Institute in Texas, which seeks to ‘advance human exploration beyond our solar system’, the video features the US aerospace engineer Harold ‘Sonny’ White describing three potential modes of interstellar space travel at three different levels of speed and sophistication.
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Nature and landscape
California’s landscapes provide endless inspiration for a woodcut printmaker
10 minutes
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Love and friendship
Never marry a man you love too much, and other views on romance in Sierra Leone
5 minutes
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Engineering
Can monumental ‘ice stupas’ help remote Himalayan villages survive?
15 minutes
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History of technology
Curious singles and tech sceptics – what ‘computer dating’ looked like in 1966
6 minutes
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Cognition and intelligence
A father forgets his child’s name for the first time in this poetic reflection on memory
4 minutes
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Animals and humans
Join seabirds as they migrate, encountering human communities along the way
13 minutes
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Stories and literature
Two variants of a Hindu myth come alive in an animated ode to Indian storytelling
14 minutes
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Technology and the self
The commodified childhood – scenes from two sisters’ lives in the creator economy
14 minutes
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Fairness and equality
There’s a dirty side to clean energy in the metal-rich mountains of South Africa
10 minutes