In February Nature reported on the rediscovery of a long-lost article which Winston Churchill sent to his publisher on 16 October, 1939, just six weeks into WWII. Rather than addressing the conflict in Europe, the eleven-page essay, which remains unpublished, asked Are We Alone in Space?
In Churchill’s words: ‘I am not sufficiently conceited to think that my sun is the only one with a family of planets. I, for one, am not so immensely impressed by the success we are making of our civilisation here that I am prepared to think we are the only spot in this immense universe which contains living, thinking creatures, or that we are the highest type of mental and physical development which has ever appeared in the vast compass of space and time.’
He also notes that: ‘One day, possibly even in the not very distant future, it may be possible to travel to the moon, or even to Venus or Mars.’