Space

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The weird idea that Earth could be getting a second sun, at least temporarily, if Betelgeuse, one of the night sky's brightest stars, goes supernova, recalls a dream, many years ago, of climbing a ridge in the desert and seeing a dawn uncannily like this photo...

Please see below a range of 2021 outlooks and forecasts, grouped across the following 21 topics.

• Business, Climate, Conflict, Demographics, Economics, Energy, Food, Freedom, Health, Innovation, Nature, Politics, Purpose, Risk, Space, Sustainability, Technology, Travel, Trust, Values and Work.

There is also a bonus list of additional 2021 forecasts in appendix.

See also:

• What changed in 2020?

BUSINESS

I realised that the essential book, the one true book, is one that the great writer does not need to invent, in the current sense of the word, since it already exists in every one of us — he has only to translate it. The task and the duty of a writer are those of a translator - Marcel Proust

After the BBC opened up its archives of In Our Time, I came to the episode about Marcel Proust.

The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff - Carl Sagan, Cosmos

While the saying “we are stardust” seems poetic but vague, it is literally true. The atoms of our bodies were created in the cores of stars billions of years ago. 

Imagine our universe as only one of an infinite number of possible universes - be they "Quilted", "Brane" or, most strangely of all, "Ultimate". Brian Green tackled this almost mystical idea head-on in The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos. Greene discussed his ideas further during a March 2011 edition of Start the Week.

Imagine too flying through the universe. This animated flight through the universe shows close to 400,000 galaxies, and was derived at John Hopkins University from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

Another video meanwhile takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang.

The Forum looked at "home" from a number of thought-provoking angles, by asking:

• What role does legend play in shaping our sense of a homeland?
• Does it matter that rural regions are shrinking as villagers leave their homes to seek their fortune in new cities?
• Are we alone in the universe, or are there other planets we could inhabit? (Some scientists believe there could be 10,000 civilisations in our galaxy alone.)

Ownership and interior decorations and garden designs may change over 30 years, but if location and bricks and mortar and dreams and memories remain the same, is somewhere still home?

Reading Fathers, Sons and Motorcycles stirred memories of having read Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for the first time, many, many years ago.