Hordes of winged cicadas are coming out and turning up the music for their biggest party in 17 years, stretching from North Carolina through Virginia to New York — but experts aren't yet sure just how big the party will get.

Billions of the bugs are climbing out from the ground as the spring weather warms up and soil temperatures reach the magic turning point of 64 degrees Fahrenheit (18 degrees Celsius). The warm-up has just reached the proper level in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., according to Sutron's closely watched temperature tracker.

That assessment is confirmed by on-the-ground eyewitness reports registered on Magicicada.org and Radiolab's Cicada Tracker. John Cooley, an expert on cicadas at the University of Connecticut, took in the full cicada buzz this week during a field trip to Lynchburg, Va. "We've had some good, rip-roaring choruses," he told NBC News.

These Brood II cicadas spend most of their 17-year life cycle underground, patiently nourishing themselves on fluids from plant roots, and then arise for a frantic weeks-long cycle of crawling, flying, mating, egg-laying and dying. When the mating party really gets going, the thrum of the cicadas' call can get as loud as 90 decibels.

"It'll be as loud as a rock concert," University of Maryland entomologist Michael Raupp told NBC News, "but hey, these are teenagers. they've been underground for 17 years. They're going to get in trees, they're going to sing."

Throngs of the inch-long insects have been sighted as far north as New Jersey and New York's Staten Island — and eventually, the wave will make its way up to Cooley's neck of the woods in Connecticut. But for now, the prime territory for the party is still in Virginia, and not so much in New York.

"It's really not quite the real thing up there, but it's starting," Cooley said.

Scientists believe that periodical cicadas (sometimes erroneously labeled as "locusts") took up their pattern of long-term dormancy, followed by a brief blast of above-ground mayhem, as an evolutionary survival strategy. The masses of bugs can overwhelm their predators with sheer numbers, ensuring that they can lay enough eggs for the next generation before they end up as a crunchy carpet underfoot.

The big question for Cooley and other entomologists is whether environmental changes over the past 17 years — ranging from climate change to ground pollution and urban sprawl — will affect the breadth and scale of this year's emergence. "We're interested in those situations where these emergencies are not as extensive or as dense as they were 17 years ago," Cooley said.

Regardless of how big it gets, this party won't get too out of hand — if you're willing to endure the noise and the bother. Cicadas are mostly harmless to humans and other species. And in fact, they can be rather tasty. The cooked bugs have been compared to shrimp, or asparagus, or popcorn, or even peanut butter, depending on how they're prepared. The Washington Post's Kevin Ambrose recently conducted his own gastronomical experiment, and concluded that cicadas taste mostly like small tidbits of "mushy, squishy asparagus."

"It wasn't bad, but I don't want to try it again," he wrote.

Have you had cicadas? Have you heard cicadas? Feel free to add your own field reports as comments below — and sample these video tributes to the cicadas:

• Time-lapse video shows a cicada hatching
• From Virginia: Sights and sounds of the cicadas
• Cicada-cam and cicada show on Science Channel
• Cicada serenades at World Science Festival
• 'Sicka Cicadas,' a song by Kathy Ashworth

Slideshow: Return of the cicada

Take a closer look at the curious 17-year life of the flying bug as the East Coast prepares for an invasion.

Launch slideshow

Previously, on 'Swarmageddon' watch:

• Buggy hordes sighted in Virginia
• 'Swarmageddon' comes to North Carolina
• Bug-watchers see cicadas on the rise
• Cicada invasion generates early buzz

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA won't be printing out pizzas on Mars anytime soon, but the space agency is paying out $125,000 to study the use of 3-D printing technology for food preparation in space.

"We will be building the components for a prototype" over the grant's six-month period, David Irwin, principal investigator for the project at Texas-based Systems and Materials Research Consultancy, told NBC News.

The ideas is to use a 3-D printer to turn generic mixes of starch, protein and fat into textured foodie-type elements, and then add flavorings with an inkjet device. The result? Theoretically, you could have a warm slice of crusty-type starch material topped with fake cheese, sauce and pepperoni.

SMRC's Irwin was reluctant to discuss the project in detail, in part because the contract with NASA for a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research grant had not yet been signed. But he was optimistic about the long-term prospect: "We're going to do great things," he said.

NASA spokesman David Steitz said the contract was finally signed on Wednesday. The project is part of the space agency's effort to widen the menu options for future space travelers when they head out to Mars or a near-Earth asteroid. Right now, astronauts are eating mostly pre-packaged, pre-processed, shelf-stable foods. But that won't work for a trip to the Red Planet.

"The current food system is not adequate in nutrition or acceptability through the five-year shelf life required for a mission to Mars, or other long-duration missions," Steitz said in an email.

Steitz stressed that the Phase I study is just one small step in what's likely to be a years-long effort to build a 3-D space food printer. "There's a lot between this and a pizza," he told NBC News.

Hello, 'Star Trek'
3-D printing technology could open the way toward the kinds of food synthesizers you've seen in 45-year-old episodes of "Star Trek." Basic unflavored ingredients could be kept in long-term storage — up to 30 years, according to a report on the project published by Quartz. The 3-D printer could build up different blends of the basics with different textures. Food-specific flavorings could be sprayed onto the components of synthetic food. Thus, the same device could turn out pizzas on one day, and tacos on the next.

"It has some merit as a way to avoid some of the problems that are currently experienced with the limited shelf life of the pre-prepared foods that are used by the astronauts," said Jean Hunter, a space food researcher at Cornell University who isn't involved with the 3-D-printing project. "One of the keys to having a good food system is to have a lot of variety."

SMRC's proposal to NASA says that "the biggest advantage of 3-D printed food technology will be zero waste, which is essential in long-distance space missions."

One small step: a cookie
As an initial experiment, SMRC researcher Anjan Contractor produced a chocolate-covered cookie using a 3-D printer, and Quartz quotes him as saying a 3-D-printed pizza is his next objective. If the project turns out the way Contractor and his colleagues hope, we may be seeing a cornucopia of food printouts on Earth as well as in outer space. SMRC says the technology could offer an alternative to the current ready-to-eat meals served up by the military, and even a solution to the world's future food woes. 

"With the anticipated world population of 12 billion by the end of the century, the current infrastructure of food production and supply will not be able to meet the demand of such a large population," the company says in its NASA proposal. "The conventional technologies can only provide marginal efficiency, which is not enough in keeping food prices at affordable level for the population growth. By exploring and implementing technologies such as 3-D printing, this may avoid food shortage, inflation, starvation, famine and even food wars."

What do you think? Is 3-D printing the technology that will feed us on Mars, and on Earth? Will it become a future fast-food fad? Or will the novelty eventually go stale? Feel free to register your opinion using the informal survey above, or add your comments below.

More about the food frontier:

• Burritobot is a precision tortilla-filling machine
• The wild possibilities of printing food
• NASA builds menu for Mars mission

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Slideshow: Astronaut Sally Ride

AFP/Getty Images

See images from the life and career of astronaut Sally Ride, the first American woman to fly in space.

Launch slideshow

The White House and NASA say they will honor America's first woman in space, Sally Ride, by giving her a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom and putting her name on the camera she helped get installed on the International Space Station.

Word of the memorials came as NASA celebrated the late astronaut's life and legacy at a national tribute titled "Sally Ride: A Lifetime of Accomplishment, a Champion of Science Literacy," conducted at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.

Ride, who was trained as a physicist,  became the first American woman to go into space when she was launched on the space shuttle Challenger on June 18, 1983. She made another spaceflight on Challenger in 1984. Two years later, that shuttle and its crew were lost in an explosion shortly after launch, and Ride served as a member of the panel investigating the tragedy.

She left NASA in 1987 and went on to co-found Sally Ride Science, a company focusing on science education for girls. She died last year at the age of 61 after a 17-month struggle with pancreatic cancer.

In a statement on Monday, President Barack Obama announced that Ride would be posthumously awarded the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, during a White House ceremony later this year.

"We remember Sally Ride not just as a national hero, but as a role model to generations of young women," Obama said. "Sally inspired us to reach for the stars, and she advocated for a greater focus on the science, technology, engineering and math that would help us get there. Sally showed us that there are no limits to what we can achieve, and I look forward to welcoming her family to the White House as we celebrate her life and legacy."

Sally Ride's camera
NASA said a camera aboard the space station would be renamed the Sally Ride EarthKAM in honor of the late astronaut, who initiated the EarthKAM program in 1995. The camera was flown in space during five shuttle missions and was moved to the space station in 2001. The program makes it possible for middle-school students around the world to request pictures of specific locations on Earth. EarthKAM spawned a similar program known as MoonKAM, which was an outreach project flown as part of NASA's Grail mission to the moon.

The space agency also established a Sally Ride internship program to help students from underserved backgrounds pursue research interests at one of NASA's centers. As many as 10 internships will be available in the spring and fall semesters of each school year, NASA said in a news release.

"Sally's impact on our nation and future generations of explorers is immeasurable," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "Godspeed, Sally Ride, and thank you for reminding us to reach higher, break barriers and dream big."

Monday's tribute at the Kennedy Center highlighted Ride's contributions to space exploration and science. The presenters included Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md.; tennis legend Billie Jean King; singer Patti Austin; and journalist Maria Shriver.

"Sally Ride Science is thrilled to be presenting a national tribute to Sally to honor her lifelong commitment to space exploration, but also to improving science education and to supporting science literacy for all students," Tam O'Shaughnessy, Ride's life partner, co-founder and chair of the board of Sally Ride Science, said in NASA's news release.

More about Sally Ride:

• US Navy names research ship after Sally Ride
• Moon impact site serves as Sally Ride memorial
• How Sally Ride handled the sexuality issue

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

National Weather Service

This map shows the track of a tornado on May 3, 1999, in green; and the track of Monday's tornado in red. The similarity of the paths is coincidental, but the larger patterns of storm activity in "Tornado Alley" are due in part to the region's geography.

Do tornadoes follow well-worn tracks? Where do the deadliest twisters hit? Will climate change make such storms worse? Monday's devastating tornado in Oklahoma raises some questions for which scientists have ready answers, and others that could puzzle them for years to come:

Was this tornado a repeat of a famous twister in 1999?

For a time, Monday's storm followed a track that was similar to the path of a tornado with the fastest wind speed ever recorded, 318 mph (512 kilometers per hour), which occurred on May 3, 1999. That twister was one of 74 tornadoes that touched down in Oklahoma and Kansas in less than 21 hours, according to the National Severe Storms Laboratory. The 1999 outbreak of severe weather caused 46 deaths and nearly $1.5 billion in property damage.

The tracks weren't all that similar, however: Monday's tornado took a more southerly route as it moved east. And there's nothing unique about the area's geography to make it a magnet for super-powerful twisters, according to Bob Henson, a tornado expert with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

"If there were geographic features, that would tend to cause multiple tornadoes every few years," the meteorologist and writer told NBC News. "Well, why has this been happening only since 1999?"

The similarity in the tracks of these devastating storms is "a good example for how weather events can be clustered in ways that are striking yet ultimately coincidental," Henson said.

A classic example of this phenomenon, he noted, is Codell, Kan., which was hit by tornadoes on the same day — May 20 — in 1916, 1917, and 1918. The third tornado killed 10 people and destroyed a part of the community. "That's a good illustration of how sometimes things like this can just happen in clusters," he said.

NOAA SPC

The purple streaks on this map from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Storm Prediction Center stand for tornado tracks from 1950 to 2011. The dark blotches indicate population densities.

But isn't Tornado Alley more prone to deadly twisters?

On a wider scale, the geography of America's midsection makes it more prone to tornadoes than any other region on Earth. That's because the Rocky Mountains tend to impede the eastward flow of moist air, while the Great Plains allow frigid Arctic air to stream southward from Canada and meet up with warm, humid air from the Gulf of Mexico. It's the collision of that warm and cold air that breeds powerful twisters.

"Tornado Alley" generally refers to the region centered in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and points north, where tornadoes are most frequent — but multiple studies indicate that the deadliest twisters occur to the east, in a region that's come to be known as "Dixie Alley." The reasons for that have to do with geography and demographics as well as meteorology in the southeastern United States: Storms tend to move faster, and they're more likely to strike at night. There are more trees and other obstructions to raise havoc. Population densities are generally higher, and the region has many manufactured homes that lack basements in which to take shelter.

The United States has the highest incidence of tornadoes, with an average of more than 1,000 every year, according to the National Climatic Data Center. But other regions of the world have twisters as well. Canada is No. 2 with about 100 per year, followed by northern Europe, western Asia, Bangladesh, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, China, South Africa and Argentina. Britain has more tornadoes than any other country, relative to its land area. "Fortunately, most UK tornadoes are relatively weak," the data center says.

Why do these tornadoes seem to be hitting all of a sudden?

After a relatively quiet start to the tornado season, tornadoes have been erupting from Texas to Minnesota over the past week. A cold front advancing to the east appears to be to blame. That pocket of cold air has run into warm air from the Gulf, causing the warm air to rise and spawning powerful thunderstorms. "It's kind of like the perfect setup," Jeff Weber, a scientist with the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, told LiveScience.

The earlier calm was due to the fact that jet stream had been dipping farther south than usual for this time of year. That kept the Gulf's warm, moist air from advancing into Tornado Alley. Now that warm air is pushing northward, and the cold front has moved on to Minnesota and Wisconsin. As a result, the storm system that created Monday's big tornado should soon weaken, Weber said.

Will climate change make tornadoes worse? More frequent?

"The short answer is, we have no idea," Michael Wehner, a climate researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, told NBC News. For years, Wehner has been studying the climate models for extreme weather, and he's a lead author for the next report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as the federal government's latest national assessment on climate change.

One problem is that the observational record for tornadoes has not been uniform over time. "It has a bias to it, because more people are living where tornadoes occur, and more people are out looking for them," Wehner said. That contributes to the perception that tornadoes are happening more frequently than they used to.

The other big problem is that current climate models don't have the resolution that's needed to simulate the localized, violent activity of a tornado. Currently, global models are built up from atmospheric interactions on a scale of 100 kilometers (62 miles). Improvements in computer power could soon bring that down to a scale of 25 kilometers (16 miles). That should make it possible for scientists to simulate the weather phenomena that give rise to tornadoes, but not the tornadoes themselves, Wehner said.

On a larger scale, extreme weather events are expected to become more frequent in a warmer world, Wehner said. "The metric that I like to look at is the daily amount of rain for a storm that happens once every 20 years," he said. "That storm, in a much warmer world, would happen more frequently." For example, if the world follows a "business-as-usual" scenario, he projects that the average temperature would rise 11 degrees Fahrenheit (6 degrees Celsius) by the end of the century, and that a once-in-20-years rainstorm would come around every five to 10 years on average.

That doesn't necessarily mean tornadoes would be more frequent, however. In fact, the current projection calls for wetter spring weather in the northern U.S., and drier weather in the Southwest — with Tornado Alley right in the middle. "There's some evidence that there might not be a change" in the character of a tornado season, Wehner observed.

Wehner may sound a bit apologetic about the lack of clear answers in the short term, but in the long term, he's optimistic. "The reason I'm optimistic that we can get somewhere on this is that supercomputing technology is driving this very hard," he said. "We're just getting into the sweet spot for these kinds of issues, with the largest mainframes that money can buy."

More about tornado science:

• Why tornadoes seem as if they're on the rise
• Flash interactive: What causes tornadoes?
• Full coverage of the Oklahoma tornadoes

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with him by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding him to your Google+ circles.

John Roach is a contributing writer for NBC News. To learn more about him, visit his website. 

This story was originally published on Mon May 20, 2013 8:20 PM EDT

Alan Antczak / DVIDS

A trained Atlantic bottlenose dolphin leaps out of the water during a photo session with the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific Marine Mammal Team in San Diego.

The U.S. Navy doesn't yet exactly know how a 130-year-old brass torpedo got to the bottom of the Pacific off the coast of San Diego, but they have a couple of dolphins to thank for rediscovering the rare weapon.

The find was so unexpected that the humans didn't believe the dolphins at first.

The marine mammals have been trained by the Navy's Space and Navy Warfare Systems Center Pacific, or SSC Pacific, to hunt for underwater mines and mark their locations. Divers place mine-shaped objects on the sea bottom, and then they teach the dolphins to find them. "It's all part of training to show the dolphins what they're going to be exposed to when they're on real-world missions," SSC Pacific spokesman Jim Fallin told NBC News on Monday.

During an exercise in March, conducted not far from California's historic Hotel del Coronado, the trainers sent a dolphin down to look for the pre-positioned target objects. The dolphin dove down, came back up — and gave the trainers a signal they didn't expect. "It had found something where we knew something shouldn't be," Fallin said.

The training team dismissed that first signal as a false positive. But when the same team went back to the same place with a different dolphin, the location was flagged again, Fallin said. That's when the trainers started taking the animals seriously.

A piece of naval history
SSC Pacific worked with recovery divers and bomb disposal experts to check out what the dolphins had found. At first, they thought the object was merely an old tail section from an aerial drop mine. They quickly changed their minds.

"It was apparent in the first 15 minutes that this was something that was significant and really old," Christian Harris, operations supervisor for the SSC Pacific Biosciences Division, said in a news release. It turned out to be the tail section from one of the first self-propelled torpedoes developed and used by the U.S. Navy, known as the Howell torpedo.

U.S Navy / SSC Pacific

The fins of a Howell torpedo can be seen preserved in water after the object was recovered with the aid of dolphins.

U.S. Navy

The only other Howell torpedo known to exist today is at the Naval Undersea Museum in Keyport, Wash.

More sections were brought up and submerged in water for preservation. Eventually the torpedo will be flown to the Naval History and Heritage Command at the Washington Navy Yard for more thorough study. "What's missing at this point is the nose, and we're not sure where that is," Fallin said.

The 11-foot-long (3.4-meter-long) torpedo was developed by Lt. Cmdr. John A. Howell between 1870 and 1889. The Navy says it was driven by a 132-pound (60-kilogram) flywheel that was spun up to 10,000 rpm prior to launch. It had a range of 400 yards, a speed of 25 knots, and a warhead filled with 100 pounds of gun cotton.

"It was the first torpedo that could be released into the ocean and follow a track," Harris said. "Considering that it was made before electricity was provided to U.S. households, it was pretty sophisticated for its time."

Howell torpedoes were used on Navy battleships and torpedo boats until 1898, when they were replaced by Whitehead torpedoes. Only 50 of the Howells were ever were built. The only other Howell that exists today is sitting inert in the Naval Undersea Museum in Keyport, Wash.

How did the torpedo get there? Fallin said he "can't add any information other than that it was there," he said.

Day of the dolphins
This isn't the first unexpected object located by the Navy's mine-hunting dolphins: Previously, the mammals have detected sunken items including a submerged car and a lobster trap in a place "where a lobster trap wasn't supposed to be," Fallin said. But the Howell torpedo could well rank as the most significant archaeological find for a finny troop that's trained for war.

The dolphins' finest hour came during the Persian Gulf conflicts, when they spotted underwater hazards and served as sentries for the U.S-led coalition's vessels.

"Dolphins remain the pre-eminent capability for the Navy in counter-mine identification," Fallin said. "There's no technology that the Navy has today that replicates the dolphins' natural ability to identify mines ... although our lab is working on those futuristic technologies. We're designing those technologies around the sonar capabilities that are inherent in dolphins. Unmanned autonomous robots have been proven to be pretty capable at this point in shallow water. The technology holds promise."

It's all in a day's work for the dolphins — and for SSC Pacific, an arm of the Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command that focuses on command and control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance — a group of technologies known as C4ISR. "We represent the nation's only full-spectrum C4ISR laboratory," Fallin said.

More about dolphins intelligence:

• Dolphins appear to do nonlinear mathematics
• Are dolphins the world's second-smartest animals?
• Dolphins sought to protect against terrorists

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA / STScI

Mars looms large in a Hubble Space Telescope photo - and in the imaginations of those who have signed up for a one-way trip to the Red Planet. "It's not that I'm trying to get away," says 18-year-old Kayli McArthur, one of tens of thousands of applicants. "It's like I'm trying to strive for something more."

A one-way trip to Mars sounds like something you'd wish on your worst enemy — so why would more than 78,000 people from around the world pay up to $75 for a chance to die on another planet?

"I can say I have an ulterior motive," said David Brin, who has written more than a dozen science-fiction novels — including "The Postman," which was turned into a Kevin Costner movie in 1997. "I'd get a lot of writing done, and it might be memorable."

As a master of hard science fiction, the 62-year-old Brin knows better than most applicants what the first Red Planet settlers would face if they're sent off in 2022, as the Dutch-based Mars One venture has proposed.

The settlers would have to be sealed up in habitats, protected from harsh radiation, supplied with machine-made air and water, and nourished by whatever food can be grown on a cold, barren planet. They'd have to keep their sanity, millions of miles away from their families and Mission Control. Worst of all, they'd have to face the fact that there's no guarantee of ever going back.

Will this scheme actually work? "I give it a low probability of happening," Brin said, "and I don't consider it to be the most responsible thing I've ever seen."

Nevertheless, the venture has an attraction for Brin and tens of thousands of others, The ages of those listed in Mars One's database range from 18 to 71. All those applicants are facing a long road even before the first four-person crew gets off the planet. Mars One is accepting applicants through Aug. 31. The field of applicants would first be whittled down by panels of experts. Then they'd undergo trial by reality TV, followed by years of training.

"This may sound crazy, but it kind of reminds me of 'The Hunger Games,'" said Kayli McArthur, an 18-year-old student who's one of the youngest Mars One applicants. "It's cool that it would be televised, but that's not my whole thing."

On the other end of the age spectrum, 71-year-old psychiatrist Sanford Pomerantz is a little surprised that it's taking this long to get something like Mars One off the ground. "I thought by now we would have colonized Mars," said Pomerantz, who's currently the oldest applicant on Mars One's list.

So what's the appeal of Mars One? It's too early for Brin, McArthur and Pomerantz to give a lot of thought to their adventure on Mars, let alone their death on Mars. Instead, they're focusing on the adventure here on Earth. Here's what's behind their thinking:

Mars One

Click on the image to go to David Brin's Mars One application video.

David Brin: 'My main purpose is the conversation'
Brin sees Mars One as just one of a number of ventures aimed at expanding humanity's frontier, ranging from Virgin Galactic's suborbital space tours to Golden Spike's moon missions. "It's emblematic of the new era that we're about to enter at long last — what I call the barnstorming era," he said.

Like the daring airplane fliers of the 1920s, these 21st-century space barnstormers are willing to take bigger risks in hopes of providing bigger thrills — and eventually, earning bigger payoffs. The Mars One project is "a great way to get the discussion going," Brin said.

"You have to assume that it may not work, and that there will be a statue of you on Mars someday," he said. "I'm aware of the tradeoffs, and I'm willing to explore it further, but largely my main purpose is the conversation. We've got to be talking about how we can be a more exploratory people — a more interesting people, if you like."

Brin doesn't doubt that Mars One will find plenty of qualified (and interesting) people willing to take the risk.

"People who cannot imagine any sane person making that choice simply aren't envisioning the wide range of human diversity," said Brin, who has three children in school. "Consider what I told my family. By the very earliest date that Mars One might launch, I expect to be a spry 75-year-old whose kids are already successfully launched, and who might spend a few years doing something truly remarkable."

Even if it means dying on alien soil? Brin isn't completely sure he'd go that far, but he's willing to bet that others would.

"I think you'll find tens of thousands of people who, under those circumstances, will at least ponder it seriously," Brin said.

Mars One

Click on the image to go to Kayli McArthur's Mars One application video.

Kayli McArthur: 'I'm trying to strive for something more'
McArthur, a freshman at the University of Arizona, is one of more than three dozen 18-year-olds on Mars One's list of applicants. Ever since she applied, she's been hearing that she has her whole life ahead of her, so why would she want to leave it all behind for Mars?

"Being young doesn't make me want to do it any less because I have my whole life ahead of me," she said. "It makes it more exciting. ... I love all my friends, my guy friends, my family. It's not that I'm trying to get away. It's like I'm trying to strive for something more."

She has long dreamed of going into outer space, and she figures that her future degree in materials science would come in handy for creating the first interplanetary settlement. "Going to Mars, there are so many opportunities for that," she said. 

So far, her family hasn't stood in her way. "My family jokes, like, 'Oh, Kayli, have your fun with it,'" she said. If the selection process gets more serious, she suspects she might face more resistance from her parents. But not from her grandfather.

"My grandpa is a retired three-star [general] in the Air Force," she said. "We were talking about it. I get really worked up and excited, and he was talking about it, too, and being realistic about it. He said, 'That would be so cool if you were able to do it.' ... I know my grandpa would totally support me."

Mars One

Click on the image to go to Sanford Pomerantz's Mars One application video.

Sanford Pomerantz: 'Grandpa is going to Mars!'
Pomerantz is old enough to remember when the idea of sending people into outer space seemed as far out as the idea of sending people on a one-way trip to Mars seems now. One of the books that made an impression on him in grade school was Robert Heinlein's "Red Planet: A Colonial Boy on Mars," which was published in 1949.

"I started as a physics major in the university, but then I got accepted into med school and changed directions," he said. At the age of 71, he's still a practicing psychiatrist in Topeka, Kan. But he's also still holding onto that boyhood dream of spaceflight.

"The Mars thing is exciting, because I hope it'll stimulate people to get interested in space. ... And I hope it has the secondary effect of stimulating science education, especially in the U.S.," he said.

Just as McArthur believes that Mars will need a materials scientist, Pomerantz believes the crew will need a psychiatrist. "Psychologically, it's going to be an interesting challenge, but human beings are very adaptable," he said. "It'll be exciting to go to a whole new world. It'll be a major step in human evolution."

If Pomerantz ends up being selected for the first Mars crew, he's likely to become not only the oldest human to head for the Red Planet, but the oldest human to go on any space mission. (The current record-holder is John Glenn, who flew on the shuttle Discovery when he was 77 years old.) For now at least, that prospect doesn't faze Pomerantz's three children and two grandchildren. "The grandchildren are excited," he said. "It's like, 'Grandpa is going to Mars!'"

Pomerantz became a certified scuba diver just two years ago, and he still expects to be in good physical and mental shape for liftoff in 2022. "Remember, age is a state of mind," he said. "Chronologlcally, I may be 71. ... But psychologically and physically, I'm definitely in my 20s. I look in the mirror and say, 'Who's that old guy?'"

More about missions to Mars:

• Inspiration Mars: So crazy it just might work
• Buzz Aldrin envisions US leading way to Mars
• Cosmic Log archive on Mars

David Brin's latest science-fiction novel is "Existence," which is set in the latter part of the 21st century and involves matters way beyond Mars.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Laurent Silvani

The northern lights shine over La Baie in Quebec at 2 a.m. Saturday, in a picture taken by Laurent Silvani. To see more of Silvani's work, check out his Silvani.ca website and his Facebook page.

A slight solar storm ejected from a powerful sunspot sparked northern lights as far south as Colorado on Friday night — and there should be more to come.

The heightened aurora was sparked by a burst of electrically charged particles thrown off from an active spot on the sun known as Region 1748. That region is the one responsible for four powerful X-class flares that blasted out from the sun this week. Region 1748 is just now turning in our direction, and forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center say it has the potential to throw some hefty storms our way.

Storms from the sun have the potential to disrupt satellite communications and power grids, and in extreme cases, the radiation risk could force airlines to reroute their intercontinental flights to lower latitudes. But Joe Kunches, a spokesman for the prediction center, said experts now have much better capabilities at their command to reduce the risks. And so far, he said, the active sun has been throwing "softballs" at us — at least compared with bigger flare-ups like the Halloween storms of 2003 or the Bastille Day storm of 2000.

The most noticeable effects of recent solar disruptions have come in the form of enhanced auroral displays. SpaceWeather.com reports that faint glows were recorded Friday night in Colorado as well as Vermont, New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and Washington state.

Farther north, the fireworks show was significantly brighter. Astrophotographer Laurent Silvani captured some great images from Quebec's Saguenay region, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of Quebec City.

"Following a magnetic storm, the aurora borealis was particularly visible in the sky with its waves and colors. A particularly beautiful sight!" he wrote in an email. "Many people from the Saguenay do not know that there are auroras occasionally here. They are surprised to see my pictures every time."

Check out Silvani's website and Facebook page for more.

For additional views of auroral glories — including, yes, some photos of the southern lights as seen from Antarctica —take a spin through SpaceWeather.com's photo gallery. And who knows? You might be able to catch the show yourself over the next couple of nights. Another geomagnetic storm is expected to sweep over Earth's magnetic field on Sunday, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center.

To find out what can be seen from where, keep an eye on the center's Facebook page as well as its Ovation aurora forecast maps. If you're in the aurora zone, the best time to look is after midnight. The best places are far away from city lights, with clear, crisp skies. Got pictures? Share them with us via NBC News' FirstPerson photo upload page.

While you're waiting for those dark skies, feast your eyes on these beautiful time-lapse aurora videos, plus our slideshow: 

Slideshow: Lights in the sky

Click through stunning images of the auroral displays created by geomagnetic storms.

Launch slideshow

More auroral glories:

• Northern lights dance with a comet
• Spend a night with the lights — in a minute
• Cosmic Log's aurora archive

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log and the rest of NBCNews.com's science and space coverage, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA

An artist's conception shows NASA's Kepler space telescope observing a planetary transit.

NASA is getting plenty of advice — and sympathy — as it assesses whether its Kepler planet-hunting telescope can be revived after the failure of its reaction-control system. The reactions from scientists and engineers range from repair tips to an Audenesque elegy. Here's a sampling:

How to fix Kepler
The reason why the $600 million Kepler spacecraft can no longer search for planetary transits is that two of its four gyroscopic reaction wheels can no longer spin. Mission managers say Kepler needs at least three of those wheels in working order to hold its position still enough to stare at alien stars.

The most recent part to fail is known as reaction wheel 4. The mission's deputy project manager, Charlie Sobeck, told reporters that the Kepler team could try putting some reverse torque on that wheel in hopes of freeing it up.

Two other possibilities were raised by Scott Hubbard, who headed NASA's Ames Research Center during the development of the Kepler mission and is now a consulting professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford University.

One option would be to try turning on reaction wheel 2, which failed last July. "It was putting metal on metal, and the friction was interfering with its operation, so you could see if the lubricant that is in there, having sat quietly, has redistributed itself, and maybe it will work," Hubbard said in a Stanford Q&A.

"The other scheme, and this has never been tried, involves using thrusters and the solar pressure exerted on the solar panels to try and act as a third reaction wheel and provide additional pointing stability," he said. The mission's principal investigator, Ames' Bill Borucki, said on Wednesday the thrusters couldn't hold the spacecraft stable enough for planet-hunting. Nevertheless, it might be one of the options under consideration.

For the time being, Kepler has been put into a holding pattern that should minimize its thruster fuel consumption and give the Kepler team several months to weigh all the options, the costs and the potential scientific benefits.

Going beyond Kepler
Even if the Kepler spacecraft can't be revived, Borucki says that only half of the data collected so far have been fully analyzed. He estimates it'll take another two years or so to complete the analysis.

Meanwhile, NASA has just given the go-ahead its next planet-hunting satellite: the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS. That $200 million project would put a telescope array in space in 2017 to perform an all-sky survey, looking for exoplanets in orbit around the nearest and brightest stars. That strategy is markedly different from the one used by Kepler, which stared at a relatively small patch of sky straddling the constellations Cygnus and Vega.

This October, the European Space Agency plans to launch a space probe called Gaia to conduct a census of more than a billion stars in the Milky Way. Gaia could detect thousands of distant planetary systems, and measure their orbits and masses using a technique known as astrometry.

ESA is working on another planet hunter called the Characterizing Exoplanets Satellite, or CHEOPS, which is due for launch in 2017. CHEOPS would conduct high-resolution transit observations of stars that have already been found to host planets. 

The $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope, which NASA bills as the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, could conceivably analyze the atmospheres of alien planets. It's currently due for launch in 2018.

Paying tribute to Kepler
NASA's associate administrator for science, John Grunsfeld, said it's too early to consider Kepler "down and out." But many astronomers fear that Kepler's planet-hunting days are finished.

"I think 'The mission is not over' means 'the mission is over,'" Caltech's Mike Brown said in a Twitter update on Wednesday. "Might be other things it can do. But, kids, I think the mission is over."

Alan Boss, an astrophysicist at the Carnegie Institution for Science who's part of the Kepler team, was similarly downbeat. In an email sent to AAAS MemberCentral, he called this week's setback a "disaster":

"I am afraid that the loss of this second reaction wheel effectively means the partial loss of Kepler's main science goal: determining the frequency of Earth-sized planets orbiting their stars at distances such that liquid water could occur on the planets' surfaces. Kepler has taken an outstandingly impressive four years of data, but we still need another three or so years of outstandingly impressive data to be certain of the frequency of Earth-size planets. Right now we have enough data to make an intelligent extrapolation about what that number is, but that is not the same as actually determining that number. Kepler was planned to do that for us. There is no other mission in sight that can reproduce for us what Kepler was in the process of doing. The upcoming (2017) NASA TESS Mission will help to push the exoplanet field forward, but it is not designed to find Earthlike planets around sunlike stars, like Kepler was."

"This is one of the saddest days in my life. A crippled Kepler may be able to do other things, but it cannot do the one thing it was designed to do."

Another Kepler team member, Geoff Marcy of the University of California at Berkeley, told KQED that he felt dizzy and teary-eyed over the spacecraft's situation. "It’s a loss for our species," he said. "That sounds dramatic, but we pride ourselves as a species of exploration, seeking answers beyond the horizon, answers about our place in the universe. And Kepler was answering those questions."

Marcy went so far as to tweak W.H. Auden's poem "Funeral Blues" to pay tribute to Kepler. Here's the astronomer's elegy to a spacecraft:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the Internet,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let jet airplanes circle at night overhead
Sky-writing over Cygnus: Kepler is dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of doves,
Let the traffic officers wear black cotton gloves.

Kepler was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week, no weekend rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talks, my song;
I thought Kepler would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are still wanted now; let's honor every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing will ever be this good.

With thanks to W.H.Auden.

For a video rendition of "Funeral Blues," check out this clip from "Four Weddings and a Funeral."

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

There's been a groundswell of 17-year cicadas in Virginia and other southern states, as revealed by a fresh wave of photos and eyewitness reports. In some areas, the outbreak has been accompanied by the insects' loud chorus call. And that's music to the ears of University of Connecticut entomologist John Cooley.

"That's where I'm heading," Cooley told NBC News. The weather is still too cool in New England and the New York City area for a full-blown Brood II emergence, so Cooley is planning a field trip to watch the insects rise up in Virginia.

This is the big year for Brood II cicadas, which are expected to emerge from the ground in the billions over an area of the East Coast ranging from North Carolina up to Connecticut. The bugs are hard-wired to spend 17 years underground, feeding on the fluid from plant roots, and then pop up during the appointed spring when the soil temperature reaches 64 degrees Fahrenheit (18 degrees Celsius).

For weeks, bug-watchers have been posting their sightings (and soil temperature readings) to websites such as Cooley's Magicicada.org and RadioLab's Cicada Tracker. Another website maintained by the Sutron weather information network tracks the soil temperature in Washington, D.C. 

When the winged cicadas throng, they can cover trees and buildings — and raise a din as loud as a lawnmower or jet engine (90 decibels). Over the course of four to six weeks in May and June, the bugs mate, lay their eggs and die, setting the 17-year life cycle in motion once again. (Scientists theorize that there are evolutionary advantages to the long, odd-numbered cycle.)

Although the cicadas have been patiently waiting for 17 years, some cicada-watchers up north are getting impatient with the pace of the emergence. Cooley said the relatively slow pace may be due to this spring's cool temperatures. In order to bring the soil up to 64 degrees F, air temperatures have to get significantly higher than that on a consistent basis.

"I want 80s and 90s," he said, "and so do the cicadas."

Dave Ellis / The Free Lance-Star via AP

Brood II cicadas emerge in the Leavells Crossing neighborhood in Spotsylvania, Va., on May 16.

Carol via Twitter.com/oikwtm_

Cicadas throng near a house in Fredericksburg, Va.

Carol via Twitter.com/oikwtm_

A cat looks through a screen door as cicadas swarm outside a house in Fredericksburg, Va.

Slideshow: Return of the cicada

Take a closer look at the curious 17-year life of the flying bug as the East Coast prepares for an invasion.

Launch slideshow

More about the cicada outbreak:

• Cicadas crawling out of the ground in droves
• 'Swarmageddon' comes to North Carolina
• Bug-watchers see cicadas on the rise
• Cicada emergence sparks early buzz

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

LEOzoo.org

Archie the anteater nestles on his mom at the LEO Zoological Conservation Center in Greenwich, Conn.

Is it a case of anteater virgin birth, a hormonal quirk or just some desperate hanky-panky? Whatever it is, Armani the anteater's surprising pregnancy has sparked a debate over what animals are capable of when it comes to sex.

The story unfolded at the LEO Zoological Conservation Center in Greenwich, Conn.: Last month, Armani gave birth to a cute baby pup named Archie. The only problem was, Archie wasn't supposed to exist.

Armani already had given birth last August to a female pup named Alice, fathered by a male anteater at the center named Alf. Anteater dads have been known to kill off their progeny, so Alf was put in a separate pen for several months. Marcella Leone, the nonprofit center's founder and director, said Armani and Alf shouldn't have had the opportunity to conceive little Archie.

"It is our protocol that that should not happen, so it's a mystery," Leone told NBC News.

NBC Connecticut: Birth of anteater has zoo staff puzzled

Leone speculated that the "virgin birth" may have been a bizarre case of delayed implantation, also known as embryonic diapause. Some species are able to hold up hormonally on having their fertilized eggs attach to the uterine wall and start developing, apparently as a stress response. That's known to happen to armadillos, which are in the same scientific superorder (Xenarthra) as anteaters. "It's been presumed that giant anteaters can do this as well," Leone said.

Could that be what happened to Armani?

"Given the paucity of literature, it wouldn't surprise me," said Bruce Murphy, director of the University of Montreal's Reseau Quebecois en Reproduction (Quebec Reproduction Network).

Diapause or desire?
Murphy is no expert on anteaters, but he is an expert on diapause. A paper on the subject that he and his colleagues published in the journal Open Biology is featured this week as an "editor's choice" in the journal Science.

A cross-species study published by a different set of researchers in PLOS ONE suggests that Armani may well have been capable of adjusting the dials on the standard six-month gestation period. "Their conclusion, and I think it's a good one, is that maybe every species has a capacity for diapause, if uterine conditions are appropriate," Murphy told NBC News.

Bob Luckey / Connecticut Post

Marcella Leone, founder and director of the LEO Zoological Conservation Center, watches over Armani and her baby, Archie, clinging to her back, on May 10. For more pictures, check out the Connecticut Post's report.

However, it may not be necessary to turn to diapause, or to a different kind of "virgin birth" known as parthenogenesis, for an explanation. Despite the best efforts of the conservation center's staff, it's conceivable that Armani and Alf found a way to couple through the enclosure's high-tensile fence. They may have even indulged in a brief encounter while they were being moved around.

Just minutes to do the deed
"I have seen anteaters breed many times, but that doesn’t mean I know exactly what is going on in amongst all that hair," Marie Magnuson, a biologist at Washington's Smithsonian National Zoo, told NBC News in an email. "There is some thought that there is no actual penetration, just a lot of rubbing up together. If that is the case, then his sperm are doing all the heavy lifting on the job, and a fence would not be an insurmountable barrier — as long as it is chain-link and not solid."

It wouldn't take long for anteaters to do the deed, Magnuson said.

"If they were together, it was long enough," she said. "When doing a re-introduction between our breeding pair, we had planned on taking it slow and safe. We were going to put them together for five minutes and then separate them. At three minutes they were copulating."

Leone doesn't totally exclude the possibility that Armani and Alf had a furtive fling. "You can imagine what any man will do to get to his woman," she joked. "This is not our plan, but nature is a very strong force."

The way she sees it, the story is about much more than a couple of amorous anteaters.

"The thing to really focus on is that a plant or animal becomes extinct every 20 minutes," Leone said. "So the point is to learn as much as we can about giant anteaters out of the wild, so that we can apply that knowledge in the wild as well. Ultimately, the most important thing is to save those wild places for wildlife."

More about animal sex:

• Love and lust: Lessons from the animal kingdom
• Gallery: 10 peeks at sex in the wild
• Biologists say animal sex is sensationalized

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.