Up early, I creep into my office, journal and book in hand. There is homework, committee work, a presentation, two papers. Plenty to do, in other words. But here, in this warm sanctuary, at this apple-green desk, all I want to do is look out the window at the dark sky.

Is that a star? A planet? Some quick googling tells me that it’s Mars, visible in the southern sky before dawn.

As long as I’m looking, I read about the Red Planet. Though its years are almost twice as long as ours, its days are almost exactly the same.

Here on Earth, the days are long but the years are short. On Mars, perhaps we could reverse that — or at least tweak it a bit.

(Photo of Mars courtesy Wikipedia.)