How a sand model helped us trace the origin of ancient water flows on Mars

Were eruptions of pressurised goundwater once commonplace on Mars? ESA, CC BY

Building our own copy of Mars in the laboratory was hard work. We had to shift 15 tonnes of sand to create a swimming-pool-sized model of the red planet. But the effort was well worth it as our experiments shed light on a much-debated issue: the origin of ancient water on the planet. The model suggests water erupted from large subsurface lakes creating enormous volcano-like eruptions.

Back in the 19th century Giovanni Schiaparelli peered through his telescope and spied networks of channels on the planet. The similarity to the watercourses on Earth is striking. Ever since this discovery, scientists suspected that Mars could have had liquid water on its surface.

Historical map of Mars based on Giovanni Schiaparelli’s observations. wikimedia

Now, it is widely accepted that Mars did have surface water once upon a time. But all the contents of those channels have long since gone. Mars’ atmosphere is now very thin (about 1% of that on Earth), which means that any exposed water essentially boils off into space. The tiny fraction that remains on modern Mars is locked away as either ice at the poles or within abundant water-rich materials, such as clay. So we can’t observe any ongoing water erosion on the red planet’s surface.

Shovel ready

I normally work on the formation of rivers and channels on our own planet. But the Martian versions are no less fascinating and it turns out that all the tools that I use to study Earth-bound rivers are pretty good for extraterrestrial ones as well.

Groundwater eruption in an experiment (left) and the resulting landscape of such event on Mars (right). Author provided

Unfortunately there are a couple of major problems with studying channels on Mars. First, and most obvious, I can’t go there yet (and I don’t think my wife would let me go even if I could). Second, there really isn’t much water on Mars any more. So to answer the question of how water channels on Mars formed, it was obvious what we had to do. We had to build Mars here. Or at least a model of it.

It is tough being a scientist.

So a team of international scientists and I grabbed our shovels and set about constructing a mock-up scaled version of the red planets surface. After shifting all the sand we had our model of Mars' sediments housed in a chamber the size of a swimming pool all within our Total Environment Simulator.

Pressurized Groundwater Eruption Experiment from Wouter Marra on Vimeo.

Let it rain!

We used the model to add water in a variety of ways. We let it rain on our model, we trickled and flooded water over our mock Martian surface and we forced water up from beneath. Then we compared the features on the Martian surface with those that we made in our simulator. The scaled experiments, that took us three months to complete, suggest that the most important water flows on ancient Mars came from massive outburst floods of pressurised groundwater.

Topography map of Kasei Valles on Mars from NASA in Google Earth. NASA, CC BY-SA

We think the water may have erupted from large subsurface lakes creating vast volcano-like eruptions with maximum flood volumes that could be over 10,000 times bigger than the Amazon River on Earth. Our results suggest that this groundwater repeatedly flowed up to the surface, albeit very sporadically and in ever-decreasing volumes over time, carving out the channels that provide us with the evidence of these mega-floods from the past.

It is quite possible that our experiments now explain the formation of these channels that caught the eye of Giovanni Schiaparelli as he peered through his 19th century telescope. Perhaps most importantly they suggest that water was not around for very long on the surface of Mars, which makes the hunt for extra-terrestrial life that bit more complicated. If water was not around in liquid form for very long then the chances that life existed on mars diminish significantly.

Iris scanners can now identify us from 40 feet away, but we don't have to accept it

Initiating iScan Shutterstock

Biometric technologies are on the rise. By electronically recording data about individual’s physical attributes such as fingerprints or iris patterns, security and law enforcement services can quickly identify people with a high degree of accuracy.

The latest development in this field is the scanning of irises from a distance of up to 40 feet (12 metres) away. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University in the US demonstrated they were able to use their iris recognition technology to identify drivers from an image of their eye captured from their vehicle’s side mirror.

The developers of this technology envisage that, as well as improving security, it will be more convenient for the individuals being identified. By using measurements of physiological characteristics, people no longer need security tokens or cumbersome passwords to identify themselves.

However, introducing such technology will come with serious challenges. There are both legal issues and public anxiety around having such sensitive data captured, stored, and accessed.

Social resistance

We have researched this area by presenting people with potential future scenarios that involved biometrics. We found that, despite the convenience of long-range identification (no queuing in front of scanners), there is a considerable reluctance to accept this technology.

On a basic level, people prefer a physical interaction when their biometrics are being read. “I feel negatively about a remote iris scan because I want there to be some kind of interaction between me and this system that’s going to be monitoring me,” said one participant in our research.

But another serious concern was that of “function creep”, whereby people slowly become accustomed to security and surveillance technologies because they are introduced gradually. This means the public may eventually be faced with much greater use of these systems than they would initially agree to.

Crowd control Shutterstock

For example, implementing biometric identification in smart phones and other everyday objects such as computers or cars could make people see the technology as useful and easy to operate, This may increase their willingness to adopt such systems. “I could imagine this becoming normalised to a point where you don’t really worry about it,“ said one research participant.

Such familiarity could lead to the introduction of more invasive long-distance recognition systems. This could ultimately produce far more widespread commercial and governmental usage of biometric identification than the average citizen might be comfortable with. As one participant put it: “[A remote scan] could be done every time we walk into a big shopping centre, they could just identify people all over the place and you’re not aware of it.”

Legal barriers

The implementation of biometric systems is not just dependent on user acceptance or resistance. Before iris-scanning technology could be introduced in the EU, major data protection and privacy considerations would have to be made.

The EU has a robust legal framework on privacy and data protection. These are recognised as fundamental rights and so related laws are among the highest ranking. Biometric data, such as iris scans, are often treated as special due to the sensitivity of the information they can contain. Our respondents also acknowledged this: “I think it’s a little too invasive and to me it sounds a bit creepy. Who knows what they can find out by scanning my irises?”

Before iris technology could be deployed, certain legal steps would need to be taken. Under EU law and the European Convention on Human Rights, authorities would need to demonstrate it was a necessary and proportionate solution to a legitimate, specific problem. They would also need to prove iris recognition was the least intrusive way to achieve that goal. And a proportionality test would have to take into account the risks the technology brings along with the benefits.

The very fact that long-range iris scanners can capture data without the collaboration of their subject also creates legal issues. EU law requires individuals to be informed when such information was being collected, by whom, for what purposes, and the existence of their rights surrounding the data.

Another issue is how the data is kept secure, particularly in the case of iris-scanning by objects such as smart phones. Scans stored on the device and/or on the cloud for purposes of future authentication would legally require robust security protection. Data stored on the cloud tends to move around between different servers and countries, which makes preventing unauthorised access more difficult.

The other issue with iris scanning is that, while the technology could be precise, it is not infallible. At its current level, the technology can still be fooled (see video above). And processing data accurately is another principle of EU data protection law.

Even if we do find ourselves subject to unwanted iris-scanning from 40 feet, safeguards for individuals should always be in place to ensure that they do not bear the burden of technological imperfections.

A handful of Bronze-Age men could have fathered two thirds of Europeans

Dads in Paris. David McSpadden/Flickr, CC BY-SA

For such a large and culturally diverse place, Europe has surprisingly little genetic variety. Learning how and when the modern gene-pool came together has been a long journey. But thanks to new technological advances a picture is slowly coming together of repeated colonisation by peoples from the east with more efficient lifestyles.

In a new study, we have added a piece to the puzzle: the Y chromosomes of the majority of European men can be traced back to just three individuals living between 3,500 and 7,300 years ago. How their lineages came to dominate Europe makes for interesting speculation. One possibility could be that their DNA rode across Europe on a wave of new culture brought by nomadic people from the Steppe known as the Yamnaya.

Stone Age Europe

The first-known people to enter Europe were the Neanderthals – and though they have left some genetic legacy, it is later waves who account for the majority of modern European ancestry. The first “anatomically modern humans” arrived in the continent around 40,000 years ago. These were the Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers sometimes called the Cro-Magnons. They populated Europe quite sparsely and lived a lifestyle not very different from that of the Neanderthals they replaced.

Then something revolutionary happened in the Middle East – farming, which allowed for enormous population growth. We know that from around 8,000 years ago a wave of farming and population growth exploded into both Europe and South Asia. But what has been much less clear is the mechanism of this spread. How much was due to the children of the farmers moving into new territories and how much was due to the neighbouring hunter-gathers adopting this new way of life?

In recent years, new technologies, including the ability to read the sequences of DNA in ancient bones, have shed much light on such questions. Researchers have found evidence in the DNA of modern Europeans for ancestry from both groups, as well as from a third fascinating people known as the Yamnaya.

The Yamnaya were nomadic herders from the steppe in what is now Ukraine and Russia. Archaeological evidence shows that they swept into Europe around 4,500 years ago, bringing with them horses, wheels, their famous “kurgan” burial mounds and quite possibly Proto-Indo-European, the ancestral tongue of most European, as well as many South Asian languages. Just like farming before it, their package of resources, technologies and behaviours gave them an advantage over the pre-existing Europeans and they seem to have left a substantial genetic legacy across Europe.

An 1899 painting by Viktor Vasnetsov imagining a kurgan burial rite. wikimedia

Now, by looking at the variability between the Y chromosomes of 334 modern European and Middle-Eastern men, my colleagues and I have discovered another interesting pattern.

Y chromosomes are pieces of DNA that are very useful when studying populations. Every male has a Y chromosome, inherited from his father. Unlike most DNA, the Y chromosome is not shuffled as it is passed down, so change happens only slowly through mutation. Tracking these mutations allows scientists to create a family tree of fathers and sons going back through time. Each man may have several sons, or none – and while some branches die out each generation, others become more common and go on to produce many more branches themselves.

Genetic revelation

The new technology of “Next-Generation Sequencing” allowed us to identify many mutations and to make a more accurate and detailed tree than ever before. Figure 1 shows such a tree generated using our European samples.

Figure 1: the Y chromosomal tree generated from our European samples, with their most recent shared ancestor at the top. Different major branches are displayed in different colours. Nature Communications

Two-thirds of modern European men are found on just three branches (called I1, R1a and R1b). Our results show that these branches each trace their paternal ancestry to a surprisingly recent individual (shown as red dots in Figure 1). By counting the number of mutations that have accumulated within each branch over the generations, we estimate that these three men lived at different times between 3,500 and 7,300 years ago. The lineages of each seem to have exploded in the centuries following their lifetimes, to dominate Europe.

Similarly, a maternal tree can be generated by looking at mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down solely from mothers to their children. However, when looking at this maternal tree, there is no similar explosion. This indicates that whatever factors were responsible for this pattern were specific to men. As the Y chromosome itself contains few genes that could give one man an evolutionary advantage over another, the explanations for this must be a mixture of chance and the cultural factors passed down alongside the genes.

It has previously been proposed that these very branches became established across Europe during the spread of the Yamnaya legacy. One might speculate that, if a male elite was established with the advantages of Yamnaya culture, along with a paternal ancestry from a very few Yamnaya and/or European Y lineages, they could have monopolised women and had children with a large number of partners. Over many generations, this could lead to those lineages becoming extremely widespread. In fact, similar inferences have previously been made for the situation when Neolithic farmers first arrived.

Then, between 2,100 and 4,200 years ago, in the Bronze Age, something else interesting started to happen. Our tree suddenly splits into many smaller branches (within the pink bar across Figure 1), meaning that the number of men reproducing was on the rise. It’s important not to fall into the trap of over-interpreting data but it is interesting to speculate as to what this might mean. Could it represent a return to a system of relatively monogamous relationships? Could it be that as the Yamnaya cultural package had become so widespread that it no longer gave anyone an advantage over anyone else?

For the moment such questions remain to be answered, but as each new study adds new evidence and the technology continues to improve, our picture becomes more complete and more fascinating.

Discovered: stone tools that go back beyond earliest humans

The oldest-known stone tool: made by a human ancestor or a chimp? MPK-WTAP

Archaeologists have discovered stone artefacts in Kenya dating back to 3.3m years ago – making them the oldest stone tools yet discovered. The finding pushes back the record of stone tools by 700,000 years. While the tools predate the earliest known representative of our own genus, Homo, it is not yet possible to pin down exactly which species created the tools.

However, the artefacts may provide a link between the kinds of stone tool used by chimpanzees and other primates for pounding and nut-cracking but which lack intentionally removed flakes and more sophisticated edged stone tools created by hominins. The findings, which add to a number of recent discoveries of the use of stone tools by early humans, could mean that time has come for us to start considering whether all hominins used tools.

Unmodified stones of a suitable size can be used as tools, for example as hammers to break open nuts. But the use of sharp-edged flakes, hammered from the edge of a large rock, shows a sophisticated understanding of how rocks break and the fine motor skills to break them usefully. That’s why sharp-edged tools are so important as markers in the archaeological record and why they mark out hominin technology as distinct to that of other primates.

The ‘Lomekwian’

Until now, the oldest stone known artefacts are from around 2.6m years ago, discovered in Gona, Ethiopia. Tools from about 2.35m years ago have also been discovered at the sites of Hadar and Omo (both in Ethiopia) and Lokalalei in Kenya. The recent discovery was made not far from there at the archaeological site Lomekwi 3, situated to the west of Lake Turkana in Kenya.

Excavation site in Kenya. MPK-WTAP

While it is currently unknown which species of hominin made the “Lomekwian” (the name the researchers have proposed for the find), the early human ancestor Kenyanthropus platyops was present in West Turkana at this time, and Australopithicus Afarensis remains have been found in east Africa from this period. Perhaps it’s now reasonable to consider that all hominin species used tools, made of either stone or other perishable material.

Given how common tool use is in other contemporary primates such as chimpanzees, we should consider that stone use might have a very deep prehistory. Perhaps back to, and maybe before, our evolutionary paths diverged. The tools from Lomekwi are significant as they provides a snapshot of early tool use.

In fact, the authors suggest that the tools could be our first glimpse of a previously unknown phase in technological evolution. This is because the tools produced at Lomekwi look different to the stone tools from the other sites, and also from the Oldowan, the early technologies from Olduvai Gorge, in Tanzania, which are about 1.9m years old.

One of the reasons Lomekwi tools are different from Oldowan technologies is that they are larger. It also seems like the Lomekwi produced their sharp flakes by pounding stones against a passive hammer or anvil, rather than through a freehand technique more often used in Oldowan technologies. The Lomekwi flakes also show more errors and indications of poorer flaking technique than that recorded for later Oldowan assemblages.

These features are compelling and provide a link between the kinds of gestures we see in the nut-cracking activities of chimpanzee stone tool-use behaviour, and the more precise and controlled freehand flaking of the later Oldowan technologies.

The authors are clear in stating that this discovery, however significant, only “marks a new beginning to the archaeological record” of stone tool use. When flaked stone tool use by primates began, or indeed how the makers of the Lomekwian might be related to our own genus Homo, are questions that remain to be answered.

Passing the test

History shows that studies that push back archaeological frontiers of knowledge are always, as they should, met with scepticism from fellow scientists. It will be interesting to see what scrutiny the Lomekwi finds come under now that they have been published. In fact, a study in 2010 reported bones exhibiting cut marks consistent with stone tools dating to 3.3m years in the Lower Awash locality of Dikika, Ethiopia. This would have pushed back the age of stone tool use at that time by 800,000 years.

Will the discovery stand up to scrutiny? MPK-WTAP

However, these claims were confronted, with critics saying that other factors, such as trampling by herbivores, could have been responsible for the observed damage to the bones. Even a small degree of uncertainty was enough to place the finds under a cloud of ambiguity. Without the stone tools themselves or supporting evidence from other localities at the time, it simply wasn’t enough to push the widely accepted archaeological record of tool use beyond 3m years.

Five years on the landscape has changed. The genus Homo has now been dated back to 2.8m years, half a million years older than previously thought. Recent work has also indicated that it would have been possible for these early hominins to makes such tools, as they could use their hands in a manner similar to modern humans.

The “Lomekwian” will no doubt come under close examination in the days and months ahead, but it arrives into a wider discipline which can accommodate it theoretically and, to a degree, expected its arrival.

In light of the finds, we might see a reassessment of the Dikika bones, and more focus on deposits of this age more generally across East Africa, and beyond. The immediate impact of this new work will be to reinvigorate research which pushes boundaries, searching in the places and in the time scales where the archaeological record is currently unknown.

Why the 'love hormone' may be less rosy and more rosé than we thought

Like alcohol, oxytocin can make certain people aggressive. Shutterstock

A decade ago, a revolutionary paper showed that a hormone called oxytocin can actually make us trust other people. This spawned a flurry of research that revealed oxytocin’s potential to boost social interactions. Now a new study has shown that the hormone is actually very similar to alcohol, a well-known social lubricant. However, just like alcohol, it has a dark side.

In the first study, published in 2005, volunteers were asked to invest money in an anonymous trustee whose honesty could not be guaranteed. People who received a dose of oxytocin chose to invest more than those given a placebo – they were more trusting. Subsequent experiments have shown that oxytocin also leads people to become more empathetic, generous and co-operative. They become better at reading social nuances and facial expressions, believe others to be more approachable and become less fearful and anxious in social situations.

Not only this, it seems that oxytocin may help to promote fidelity. Evidence for this comes most clearly in two intensively studied and closely related rodent species. One, the prairie vole, is monogamous; mated couples form close pair bonds and share nest-building and parental duties. In the other, the meadow vole, males leave the female with the babies and will try to mate again.

The two species vary in their sensitivity to oxytocin. However, experiments that increase the effective sensitivity to oxytocin by increasing hormone dosage or blocking receptors in the brain can actually change pair-bonding behaviour, making it easier for female prairie voles to choose partner and turning previously promiscuous meadow vole males into monogamous, caring dads.

You can totally take care of the kids tonight. Take another sniff and you’ll be fine! theNerdPatrol/Flickr, CC BY-SA

In our own species, oxytocin has been shown to inhibit men already in relationships from approaching other attractive women; enhance activation of the brain’s reward systems when they see their partner’s face compared to other attractive women and help couples deal positively with conflict.

Along with other functions, mainly in the formation of mother-infant bonding, the rosy glow of the “love hormone” seems to know no bounds – and its potential application for helping to cement and maintain loving relationships is clear. Its effects on facilitating social interaction have made it an appealing possible therapeutic tool in patients who struggle with social situations and communication, including in autism, schizophrenia and mood or anxiety disorders.

Even better, it is very easy to use. All the human studies on it use intranasal sprays to boost oxytocin levels. These sprays are readily available, including through the internet, and appear safe to use, at least in the short term – no one yet knows whether there is any long-term harm.

Adverse effect

In the past few years, however, concerns expressed by some researchers have begun to rein in the enthusiasm about the potential applications of oxytocin as a therapeutic tool.

Recent studies are showing that the positive effects can be much weaker – or even detrimental – in those that need it the most. In contrast to socially competent or secure individuals, exposure can reduce co-operativeness and trust in those prone to social anxiety. It also increases inclination for violence towards intimate partners. Although this is seen only in people who tend to be more aggressive in general, these would be the same people who might have most to gain from such a treatment, were it available.

These apparently paradoxical effects are hard to explain, particularly since the brain mechanisms responsible are still poorly understood. But a new study may help to provide the answer. A team from the University of Birmingham decided to tackle the issue by comparing studies on the effects of oxytocin with those of alcohol and were struck by the incredible similarities between the two compounds.

Like oxytocin, alcohol can have helpful effects in social situations. It increases generosity, fosters bonding within groups and suppresses the action of neural inhibitions on social behaviour, including fear, anxiety and stress.

But, of course, acute alcohol consumption also comes with significant down sides. Aside from the health implications of chronic use, it interferes with recognition of emotional facial expression, influences moral judgements and increases risk-taking and aggression. And as with oxytocin, the increase in aggression is limited to those who have an existing disposition to it.

The researchers argue that the striking similarities in behavioural outcome tell us something about the biological mechanisms involved. Although oxytocin and alcohol target different brain receptors, activation of these receptors appear to produce analogous physiological effects. Indeed, they also note similarities with how other compounds work, including benzodiazepines which are commonly used to treat anxiety. Our understanding of how one chemical elicits its effects might thus help us to understand the action of the others.

But, if this new interpretation is correct, it may presage further bad press for the love hormone. It may be that the darkening clouds that threaten to tarnish its reputation are only just beginning to gather. At the very least, it should give us cause for careful evaluation before we rush into using it as a remedy.

How a hacker could hijack a plane from their seat

In-flight hacking Shutterstock

Reports that a cybersecurity expert successfully hacked into an aeroplane’s control system from a passenger seat raises many worrying questions for the airline industry.

It was once believed that the cockpit network that allows the pilot to control the plane was fully insulated and separate from the passenger network running the in-flight entertainment system. This should make it impossible for a hacker in a passenger seat to interfere with the course of the flight.

But the unfolding story of this hacker’s achievement, which has prompted further investigation by authorities and rebuttals from plane manufacturers, means that this assumption needs to be revisited.

In a similar way, it was once also believed that PIN protection was sufficient for ATMs. Then it was discovered that keystroke logging software can be used to translate sound signals created when pressing the ATM numeric keypad into the PIN, greatly reducing the time needed for hackers to guess for it. This could increase the risk of an ATM security breach compared with the previously held assumption that the system is secure as long as nobody can see it.

When it comes to technology, as one person is making sure that a system is secure, another is already working to bypass the established security. That is a worrying prospect when you’re at 30,000 feet and travelling at over 500 miles an hour.

Direct connections

The hacker claims to have been able to access the cockpit network through communication with the in-flight network. Many in-flight entertainment systems now have USB ports and some airlines run Wi-Fi. Both are potential entry points for the determined hacker to access all the plane’s computer systems.

It is highly unlikely, however, that someone hacking the passenger network could take direct control of the pilot’s network because the two systems are designed to be insulated from each other. Network engineers have long been able to control what data passes between different network segments, and aircraft systems are no exception.

The FBI and other authorities may reveal that there is no evidence that the two networks are connected. But another explanation may be the hacker was equipped with a device (or a software probe) that can gather information from both networks. Is that likely? It is certainly possible.

Cockpit control. Shutterstock

Although insulated, the two networks in a plane are connected as they share common information about velocity, direction and weather. By monitoring just one network and comparing its traffic to the real world events, it would be very difficult to work out which network signals corresponded to which pieces of information. But by looking at the networks for signals that appear in both at the same time, a hacker may be more likely to infer how the data relate to physical changes.

They could then attempt to copy this traffic and send the same instructions, potentially taking control of the aircraft. Even if the messages were digitally encrypted and insulated, theoretically it should still be possible to work out which parts of the network are talking to each other. This means they could also identify the systems sending the instruction and launch an internal denial-of-service (DOS) attack, flooding the system with useless information and preventing the pilots from sending control data to the engines.

Monitoring the network

It is becoming imperative that airlines re-evaluate their internal aircraft security, particularly with the introduction of in-flight passenger Wi-Fi. They should also monitor any unusual network traffic that passes between the passenger cabin and the cockpit in order to watch out for any attempts at hacking.

The same principles that enable the hacking could be used to watch out for them by allowing two independent monitors to observe the causes and effects of unfolding events on the network via satellite. When both believe that there is an issue, the information could be reported back to the pilot as a noted risk.

Network engineers already accomplish this by looking at network traffic behaviour and inferring possible issues, without actually seeing the physical problem first hand. With the-time critical nature of airline safety, having more than one individual check for alerts, increases the possible assurance given to the pilot.

Any traffic not expected or requested should be treated as suspect and the prelude to a more detailed investigation. The aircraft could then automatically call on the services of remotely working security experts. This would allow them to warn the pilot of any attempted security breach and provide advice on how to deal with it.

Elon Musk biography portrays a brutal character driven by lofty dreams

You WILL build the world's fastest electric car for me. OnInnovation/flickr, CC BY-ND

There’s this guy that’s pretty sure the thing you’re looking at right now is one of the greatest threats to humanity. No, he’s not talking about our growing obsession with staring at sheets of digitised glass, and the unhealthy sedentary existence associated with doing so. He’s talking about the thing living inside the machine humming quietly behind that glass: artificial intelligence.

It turns out that Elon Musk, one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs, is plagued with existential worries. His new biography, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, reveals the billionaire engineer is seriously concerned about the rise of technology so intelligent it could destroy the human race in an effort to protect itself. Why should we listen to him? Well, when it comes to the future, he – more than anyone – is making it happen.

With his company Tesla, he’s transforming the automotive industry by producing the most compelling range of cars of all time – and they’re electric. With SolarCity, he’s producing the cheapest form of energy in most states of the US, and it’s through solar power. And with SpaceX, he’s building state-of-the-art rockets and spacecraft far cheaper than anyone else, that are about to become an order of magnitude cheaper through partial and full reusability.

SpaceX reusable rocket landing attempt

Why is Musk, who sold his founding stake in PayPal for more than US$150m (£97m), doing this? To increase our chances, to enable the expansion of humanity, to take one of our eggs out of this basket and place it on Mars as soon as possible. A decade ago, the vast majority of serious thinkers laughed these ideas off as ludicrous. Not now.

Musk had a difficult start in South Africa as the unassuming nerd from a broken family. He was a loner during childhood and suffered for years from bullying in the spartan Afrikaner culture he was brought up in. But now the man, sometimes known as General Musk, has risen. He has willed three recently thought impossible companies into existence, almost simultaneously, each now worth on the order of US$10 billion (£6 billion).

In the biography, Ashlee Vance level-headedly paints an insightful picture of the vehemence that is Musk, his growth into a leader, the personal sacrifice and torture he has chosen to endure, and the arduous development of his companies.

Probably not thinking ‘Where did I leave my lunch?’ OnInnovation/flickr, CC BY-ND

Any worries that the book would be a shallow money-grabbing rehash of a dozen YouTube interviews are swiftly put to bed. Vance battled to get Musk on side and eventually managed to conduct regular interview with the man himself, the people closest to him, and those that were there at pivotal points throughout his life so far.

As someone who started life in similarly difficult circumstances in post-Apartheid South Africa, with a background in aerospace and a strong affinity for the potential of Mars, I have a soft spot for big E. But Vance is not a fan-boy. His words describe a man whose unrelenting drive and genius is harrowing to those around him, who is mentally detached from what most of us pond-life think is normal – and how brutal such a combination makes this modern-day “Messiah-like” character on a personal level.

Musk is reported to have turned solid engineers into catatonic wrecks after a bad meeting, and built a culture where his employees adore him and fear him at the same time. And this aspect of Vance’s portrayal is particularly fascinating.

This guy has such lofty and inspiring ambitions for humanity. He has put everything on the line to take us forward as a species. Yet when it comes to dealing with individuals, in Vance’s book his lack of empathy appears to go beyond anything most of us have ever encountered. On the surface, Musk seems personable and easy-going. In Vance’s reality, he puts Spock to shame.

Even at 400 pages, the book could easily have spent another 100 pages delving more into the personal conversations with Musk, exploring his thoughts more deeply and speculating on the inner-workings of his mind. My wife, a psychiatrist, would have a field-day with this guy.