2041 will be a pivotal year for our planet. That year will mark the end of a 50-year agreement to keep Antarctica, the Earth’s last pristine continent, free of exploitation. Explorer Robert Swan — the first person to walk both the North and South Poles — is on a mission to ensure that we extend that treaty. With passion and vigor, he pleads with us to choose the preservation of the Antarctic for our own survival.

Stephen Hawking always starts his lectures with the same quip: “Can you hear me?” His characteristic delivery, a blend of humor and complicated theoretical physics, is the kind of performance that Hawking, 72, is now well known for, even as he has become a celebrity ambassador for science, a physicist whose office is adorned with portraits taken with Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Steven Spielberg (twice) as well as stills from his many appearances in Star Trek and The Simpsons. The post Stephen Hawking on Black Holes and Why He’d Be a Good Bond Villain appeared first on WIRED.

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