Question: Why does cloning different planets help the way we live in the 21st century and why does it take so long for rockets to land on comets. Also why is there no oxygen in space? THANK YOU !

Stefan Lines answered on 17 Nov 2014:

Hi Anastassia. Thank you for your questions. Firstly, my work might help other Astrophysicists find habitable planets around other stars. In the 21st century, that isn’t very useful as we are a long way off being able to move to other planets. A more useful side-effect of my work is that is pushes the technology barrier. What I mean is, our work demands very fast computers. My work brings in money which helps to design and build much faster computers which are in turn used for project which you might consider more useful and necessary in todays world – such as curing cancer and other diseases.

As for the comet questions, it really depends on where the comet is. The one in the news, 67P is quite far away and required some really clever manoeuvring. The rocket uses the gravitational pull of the planets to propel itself towards to comet. Sometimes it doesn’t take so long to reach a comet or planets, but it takes ages to put that rocket into a stable orbit, so it doesn’t crash!

Not only is there no oxygen in space, but pretty much hardly anything else. That’s because matter is pulled onto objects through gravity. The most common element in the universe is Hydrogen, but even with that you’ll only find about 1 atom of it in every 1cm^3 (which is about the size of a sugar cube).