HONG KONG: The possibility of travelling to Mars and the benefits of eating bugs have been on show at a festival in Hobart aimed at getting more young people involved in science.
The two-day Festival of Bright Ideas, presented as part of National Science Week, exposed thousands of school students and members of the public to quirky, practical and seemingly impossible scientific quests with 40 hands-on exhibitions and talks.
One key attraction was Josh Richards, the 29-year-old Melbourne man who has been shortlisted to travel to the red planet in 2026.
There were initially 200,000 expressions of interest in the Mars One project, that proposes to send four people on a one-way trip to Mars.
Mr Richards made a shortlist of 100, that will be cut to 24 next September.
The idea came from an unlikely place.
“I was originally working as a stand-up comic, I’m a physicist originally but I was working in stand-up comedy for five years,” he said.
“I started writing a comedy show about sending people one way to Mars, and then I found an organisation that wanted to do it so I put my hand up.”
If he makes the final 24 he will begin a lengthy 12 years of training.
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