Sky Matters: Catch a glimpse of the year’s most reliable perseid meteor shower

Plus, why Olympic runners on Mars would have a very different experience to their Earth-based counterparts

Meteor and star trails during a Perseid meteor shower. Picture: PA

August 2024 can only mean one thing: the Paris Olympics. Using dexterity and strengths honed over millennia of evolution, athletes contort their bodies and fight against or with the Earth’s gravity to achieve feats that most of us can only dream of. It begs a somewhat interesting question: what would the Olympics look like on planets other the Earth?

Let’s consider this briefly by imagining a future Olympics hosted beneath the largest volcano in the solar system, the magnificent and aptly named Mons Olympus on Mars. Rising 22km above the surrounding Martian plains, it reaches more than twice the height of the largest volcano on Earth, Mauna Loa in Hawaii.