Bas Lansdorp has big plans for Mars, not to mention the human race. By 2023, the Dutch entrepreneur intends to colonize the Red Planet in the first of a series of one-way human missions. It's all a part of Mars One, a project he founded, and one that he hopes will soon become a "global media spectacle."

Jill Tarter is the holder of the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI, and the inspiration for Jodi Foster's character in the movie Contact. When we asked her what turned her towards the sciences, she gave us one of the most epic answers we've ever received.

Zander Cannon is best known for his stellar artwork for Alan Moore's Top 10, the story of a superhero police force handling day to day problems in Neopolis, where everyone has super powers.

Evolutionary neurobiologist Mark Changizi is obsessed with asking the question, "why?" — and as a scientist, it's served him well. His questioning of virtually everything has led him to investigate why it is that we think, feel, and see the way we do — a set of inquiries that has led to important discoveries on why we…

When Charles Bolden enrolled in the U.S. Naval Academy for college, he was absolutely sure of two things. The first was that he was never, ever going to fly airplanes. The second was that he was definitely not joining the Marine Corps when he graduated.

You don't become president of one of the greatest institutions for scientific research and education on Earth without harboring a serious passion for science and education, so where did Ellen V. Futter — who practiced law and served as president of Barnard College before taking over the American Museum of Natural…

Last night at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, I had the pleasure of chatting on stage with Neil deGrasse Tyson about what inspired him to become a scientist. He told a packed crowd about how he fell in love with the stars — in the Hayden Planetarium that he now runs. Here's a video of Tyson…

In 2008, a team of Japanese researchers developed a way to extract vanilla flavoring from cow dung. In 2003, scientists at the Cornell Food Lab investigated the limits of human appetites, by feeding people with self-refilling, bottomless bowls of soup. And in 2010, investigators from the Zoological Society of London…

Today the art department at image and VFX design studio Framestore has shared with us some of their original illustrations of a mission into interstellar space. Here you can see what future explorers might see as they encounter a new planetary system, and survey the planets and moons there. There are some bizarre…

Most people know Nick Denton as the founder of io9's parent company, Gawker Media. Today he's a notorious media entrepreneur, but his inspiration began with science fiction. My first conversation with him was about the Syfy series Battlestar Galactica. Later, he revealed that he'd read Isaac Asimov's celebrated…