The Phoenix Mars Lander is equipped with instruments that could detect the signature of life on Mars - but it also carries signatures, stories and lots more for future generations. The nonprofit Planetary Society is sending along what's billed as the first library for the Red Planet: a silica-glass mini-DVD encoded with scores of stories about space exploration, audio and artwork from some of our planet's best and brightest, plus digitally encoded names submitted by thousands of Earthlings. Perhaps the coolest thing about the DVD is the label addressed to future visitors on Mars: "Attention Astronauts: Take This With You."

NASA / JPL / Lockheed Martin

The Planetary Society's mini-DVD, packed chock full of digital signatures and goodies from Earth's cultures, can be seen mounted on the Phoenix Mars Lander during preparations for launch.

It's not out of the question that some Marswalker will actually pick up and decipher that DVD someday: After all, one of the places moonwalkers have visited is the landing site for the Surveyor 3 probe, which touched down in 1966 and happened to be within walking distance of the Apollo 12 lunar module three years later.

Unfortunately, it will take humans much more than three years to get to Phoenix's intended landing site in Mars' northern highlands. Fortunately, the Planetary Society's DVD is built to last at least 500 years, and perhaps much, much longer.

What would a Martian traveler find on the disk? Assuming that he or she could figure out how to decode the DVD, the "library" would yield 80 forward-looking stories and articles - including literary classics penned by Voltaire and Jonathan Swift, science-fiction classics by Arthur C. Clarke and Kim Stanley Robinson, and many more goodies well worth adding to your reading list. Of course you'll find Orson Welles' radio retelling of "The War of the Worlds," as well as Mars-themed sci-fi art and photos of the real Mars, as seen by past space probes.

The DVD also includes audio-enhanced slideshows in which Clarke and other luminaries (including the late Carl Sagan) speak directly to future Martians. For Sagan's audio clip, go to this Web page and click on the link titled "Hear Carl Sagan's Message to the Future."

These presentations, along with many of the text/video/audio selections, were first placed on a CD-ROM titled "Visions of Mars" more than a decade ago. In an exercise much like the current project, the CD-ROM was placed on Russia's Mars 96 probe. That spacecraft, however, never got out of Earth orbit due to the failure of a booster stage. The first Martian library went down in flames, and the Planetary Society had to start from scratch.

"We were looking for several years for another ride, essentially," the Planetary Society's Susan Lendroth explained. The team behind Phoenix Mars Lander obliged, and so "Visions of Mars" project director Jon Lomberg updated the content for a fresh launch.

Meanwhile, the society put out a call for people to submit their names for digital inclusion on the disk - following up on similar "send-your-name-to-space" projects for the Mars Exploration Rovers, Selene, Stardust, and so on. About 250,000 people answered the call (including yours truly).

Bruce Betts, director of projects for the Planetary Society, said the resulting mini-DVD is made of material that should last even though it's sitting on the exposed part of the spacecraft, in full view of Martian passers-by. That's the whole point, said the society's executive director, Louis Friedman.

"Since the Planetary Society's disk should last for centuries on Mars, we hope astronauts at some future date will enjoy the visionary works we have sent in this first Martian library," Friedman said in a news release. "These tales and images have inspired generations about the wonder of space, including many men and women who are now researchers and engineers in the space program."

What would you put on a digital disk destined for another world? Are there obvious choices that Friedman, Lomberg and the other folks behind "Visions of Mars" have missed? One audio expert has wondered whether "Visions of Mars" would be playable even a few decades from now, let alone hundreds of years - and that's an interesting point. Do you have any better ideas for preserving interplanetary time capsules? Feel free to leave your suggestions as comments below.

Update for 9:30 p.m. ET Aug. 1: If you follow the Web link in the paragraph just above, you'll read that the audio quality for the original "Visions of Mars" CD might not have been up to snuff. It turns out that the audio was redone at higher quality for the Phoenix mini-DVD, addressing that concern. 

• Los Angeles Times: This is your brain on love
• The Guardian: What makes someone's speech sound 'gay'?
• New Scientist: Beer in space
• The Onion: Talking about astronauts and alcohol

There are reasons why "rocket science" is the quintessential hard thing to do. Last week's fatal explosion at Scaled Composites' desert test site, where the historic SpaceShipOne rocket plane was born, showed just how hard and tragic rocket science can be. Even SpaceShipOne's greatest successes came amid great risk - and that message comes through loud and clear in "Rocketeers," the fruit of more than three years of research, interviews and rocket tours by freelance journalist Michael Belfiore.

The book is subtitled "How a Visionary Band of Business Leaders, Engineers and Pilots Is Boldly Privatizing Space," and chronicles the work in progress on the frontiers of private-sector spaceflight. Belfiore journeys to rural Texas, where millionaire video-game developer John Carmack assembled a volunteer crew to build "vertical dragsters" from scratch … to the outskirts of Las Vegas, where real-estate billionaire Robert Bigelow has created his own factory to build inflatable spaceships … and most importantly to California's Mojave Desert, where engineers and test pilots are trying to build the future of flight.

Scaled Composites

SpaceShipOne rises during a test flight in 2004.

Three years ago, Mojave Air and Spaceport - the very place where three rocketeers died last week - provided the setting for SpaceShipOne's privately funded flights to the edge of space. The rocket plane and its swoop-winged mothership, the White Knight, were built by aerospace guru Burt Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites with backing from software billionaire Paul Allen. Those flights won the $10 million Ansari X Prize for private spaceflight, and thus it's only natural that SpaceShipOne is the center around which Belfiore's book turns.

At the time, Rutan and his team downplayed the troubles they encountered along the way to winning the X Prize. But in the "Rocketeers" retelling, the tale takes on far more drama. Belfiore touches upon the gremlins that bedeviled the development effort, the close calls that could have ended in tragedy, and the human story of a test pilot's fall from grace and ultimate redemption.

"Rocketeers" is about much more than SpaceShipOne, however. Belfiore surveys the main players as well as some of the wild cards in the entrepreneurial space game. Rocketplane Kistler and SpaceX, two companies that are sharing $500 million in NASA funding for low-cost spaceships, each get their turn in the spotlight. So do Carmack and Bigelow. A host of other ventures – including the Rocket Racing League and XCOR Aerospace, Masten Space Systems and t/Space – come in for at least a mention. There's even a chapter about the DaVinci Project's Brian Feeney and Advent Launch Services' Jim Akkerman, rocketeers who were in the X Prize race early but have (so far) failed to achieve launch.

Smithsonian Books

"Rocketeers" highlights the Rocket Racing League and other privately backed rocket ventures.

It's ironic that "Rocketeers," which tells how Rutan and others reached the high points in their push to space, is coming out just as the private spaceflight industry is facing its first true low point. But the timing may well add to the book's instructive value. "Rocketeers" makes clear that the race to put regular people into space is just getting started, and no one can yet predict who will succeed - if anyone.

Who knows which entrepreneurs will be worthy of having their stories told when paying passengers are at last able to board suborbital spaceships, in 2009, 2010 or whenever? The winners could well be among the rocketeers profiled in "Rocketeers," but they might include someone else altogether.

Even in a 320-page book, it's hard to touch all the bases. For example, Space Adventures, arguably the world's only profitable space tourism venture to date, goes virtually unmentioned – most likely because it currently depends on Russia's government-backed space program to provide the ride.

Belfiore addresses the unfinished nature of the spaceflight saga by providing updates in an epilogue, as well as including a chapter that looks ahead to the year 2034 – a vision in which commercial ventures dominate the final frontier while NASA is still stuck with space station duty.

Even if that vision comes to pass, will "Rocketeers" stand up as a classic history text in 2034? That's not likely, just because there will be so many more high points (and low points) between now and then. But for 2007, Belfiore's book is as good as it gets.

Update on the Scaled Composites explosion: Scaled's Web site includes this notice:

"The outpouring of support from around the world has been incredible, and we can't thank you enough for all the support you have given us.

"As of this morning (Saturday), three that were injured remain hospitalized: Keith Fritsinger (critical), Gene Gisin (critical), and Jason Kramb (serious).

"Glen May's family has advised us that his funeral is Friday, August 3, in Collierville, TN. They have requested that anyone at Scaled that has special memories of Glen that they would like to share with the family to please email aprildmay@aol.com. Other arrangements are pending, and will be posted when we have them. We're trying to do what we can to support the families during this tragic time. We will plan to show our respects as a company at the appropriate time, as well.

"Several Scaled folks have spent time with Eric Blackwell's family over the last two days, and will continue to support them in these difficult days. Todd Ivens' family is enroute to California.

"A fund is being established to help the families. We will post the information on our website as soon as it's available.

"The accident investigation has begun. We spent several hours at the site on Friday morning. Late Friday afternoon, California OSHA arrived and has sealed the site for their own investigation. We are working closely with them.

"This is an incredibly hard time for all of us. We continue to ask you to keep those people and families who were hurt or have died in your thoughts and prayers."

Later, Scaled provided the same information on the fund for the families that we saw from the National Space Society over the weekend. Here's the information again:

"Please send your donation for those involved in the accident on July 26, 2007, to:

Scaled Family Support Fund
c/o Scaled Composites,
1624 Flight Line,
Mojave, CA. 93501

Acct # 04157-66832
Wire transfer ABA Routing #0260-0959-3 (Bank of America)

"This is not a tax deductible contribution."

Rocketeer Tim Pickens, who was part of the SpaceShipOne team at Scaled and now runs Orion Propulsion in Alabama, wrote a not-to-be-missed eulogy to May that was published today by The Space Review. Editor Jeff Foust also recaps a recent discussion on how rocketeers have been preparing for the worst. As always, keep an eye on RLV and Space Transport News for further updates.

• BBC: How does a human calculator do it?
• Science News: Not-so-elementary bee mystery
• Aviation Week: Target Mars, not the moon, Apollo vet says
• The Space Review: Can't space nerds all just get along? 

They all knew it would happen someday, but they probably didn't think it would happen so soon: For many of those who count themselves in the vanguard of the "personal spaceflight revolution," the three rocketeers who died Thursday in an explosion at Scaled Composites' rocket test site near Mojave, Calif., represent the first fatalities recorded in the service of that revolution.

Spaceflight pioneers have been saying for years that deaths were virtually certain to occur during the development of a new crop of privately funded spaceships. Most people thought the first deaths would come during the actual spaceflights, with test pilots and perhaps even passengers falling victim. But the history of rocketry shows that death strikes on the ground as well as in the air: Launch-pad disasters in the United States, the Soviet Union and Brazil easily come to mind.

Thursday's accident took place as Scaled Composites was testing components for the hybrid rocket engine that would be used on the next-generation rocket plane the company is building for Virgin Galactic.

The engine is designed to use a solid fuel and nitrous oxide. Nitrous oxide, which earned the nickname "laughing gas" when it was used as a recreational drug and an anesthetic, is considered a relatively safe, non-toxic oxidizer. It caused no problems during the development and flight testing of the SpaceShipOne rocket plane, climaxing in 2004 with the first private-sector spaceflights and the capture of the $10 million Ansari X Prize.

But something went wrong with the tanks of nitrous oxide being used to test SpaceShipTwo's motor - and the blast of pressurized gas went off like a bomb at Scaled Composites' remote test site. The dead included Charles Glen May, 45; Eric Blackwell, 38; and Todd Ivens, 33. Three others were injured, and two were still in critical condition Friday. (You can rely on Clark Lindsey's RLV and Space Transport News for updates.)

Family members said May had worked on SpaceShipOne, left the company, and returned to work at Scaled just this Monday. He left a wide trail on the Internet: Eulogies took note of May's rocket-bike experiments and his involvement with other pioneering rocket efforts.

Blackwell and Ivens will receive their own eulogies as well, in public or in private. My condolences and prayers go out to the families of the three who died, as well as to the injured and their families, and the extended families of Scaled employees and Mojave rocketeers.

What will this mean for the spaceflight revolution in general, and SpaceShipTwo in particular? In a first-impressions posting, rocket engineer Rand Simberg, the proprietor of Transterrestrial Musings, suspected that the accident could represent "a major setback" for Virgin Galactic.

In truth, it's hard to judge exactly how much of a setback it will be - because Scaled Composites founder Burt Rutan has been so reticent to talk about future schedules.

"We have for a year and a half here been not answering any questions at all about the program," he told journalists at a news conference Thursday.

The Los Angeles Times quoted Rutan as saying the accident would not change Scaled's insistence on secrecy. In the past, Virgin Galactic has hinted that SpaceShipTwo would be unveiled by the end of this year and would begin flight testing next year - but on Thursday, Rutan would say only that SpaceShipTwo "won't be unveiled until it's ready to fly."

Michael Belfiore, whose brand-new book "Rocketeers" focuses on Rutan and other private-space pioneers, told me that it's way too early to judge how much Thursday's explosion will set back Virgin Galactic's plans. And it's too early to judge whether this will take any steam out of the push toward suborbital space tourism.

"Since it wasn't actually in flight, it's hard to see it as a strike against space technology as a whole," Belfiore said. "It's tragic and very sad, but I don't know if it's going to have a chilling effect on the industry."

In comments to The Associated Press, X Prize founder Peter Diamandis took a similar tack. "This was an industrial accident. This has nothing to do with spaceflight," he was quoted as saying. "I have complete confidence that they are building a safe and robust spaceship."

On a technical level, Diamandis is totally correct: The accident is outside the jurisdiction of the Federal Aviation Administration, and is being handled as an occupational safety matter by Scaled, the Mojave Air and Space Port, and the state of California. But when you set aside the technicalities, the cause that brought Glen May, Eric Blackwell and Todd Ivens to Mojave has everything to do with spaceflight.

"Some of us think of space heroes as only those who strap themselves into a rocket ship," Rick Tumlinson, a co-founder of the Space Frontier Foundation and a space revolutionary if ever there was one, said in a statement issued today. "But people like these, who give their sweat and lives to build those ships, who take their families out to live in the desert and work incredible hours on tedious tasks to make those rockets fly, and who do so because they share the dream of an open frontier in space, they too are true heroes."

Amen. And Godspeed.

Update for 3:28 p.m. July 28: Late Friday, the members of the Personal Spaceflight Federation drew up this statement on Thursday's accident and its implications:

STATEMENT BY THE MEMBERS
Regarding the Recent Incident in Mojave

"This is a sad day for the personal spaceflight industry.  Tragedy has struck our small community and our deepest sympathies and thoughts are with those involved and their families.

"We are engaged in a demanding endeavor - opening the space frontier.  It is not easy, but it is a goal worthy of our highest efforts.  We are aware of the risks and every day we take the highest precautions.  It is too early to comment on the specifics of yesterday's events, but we can state publicly our commitments going forward:

"As individuals and as an industry, we pledge that:

• We will always be open and honest to the public and our customers about the risks of our activities and about any incidents that may occur.
• If there is an incident, a proper and methodical investigation will be conducted to determine the cause.
• We will apply the lessons of the investigation now underway and work to prevent this from happening again.
• We will persevere - we believe that we can best honor those pioneers who were involved by carrying on their work.

"After the work and sacrifice of many, the space frontier is now being opened by private enterprise.  As leaders of companies and organizations who are engaged in this undertaking, we are committed to striving for the highest level of safety for the public, our customers and our employees.  We can do no less."

The statement was signed by Gary Hudson of AirLaunch; Stu Witt of Mojave Air and Space Port; Eric Anderson of Space Adventures; John Carmack of Armadillo Aerospace; George French of Rocketplane-Kistler; David Gump of Transformational Space; Jim Benson of Benson Space Company; Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites; Alex Tai of Virgin Galactic; Robert Bigelow of Bigelow Aerospace; Mark Sirangelo of SpaceDev, Inc.; Jeff Greason of XCOR Aerospace; Art Dula of Excalibur Almaz; Kelly O'Donnell of Spaceport America; Peter Diamandis of the X Prize Foundation; and Elon Musk of SpaceX.

Update for 4 p.m. ET July 29: The National Space Society sent out this statement about the Scaled Family Support Fund:

"As many of you have heard, there was a serious accident last week at Scaled Composites, Burt Rutan's pioneering company. Three lives were lost, including Charles 'Glen' May, an NSS member who was a leader within NSS's Huntsville HAL5 Chapter. In addition, three employees suffered serious injuries.

"Scaled has announced information on a fund for those wishing to support the families of the deceased as well as the injured and their families. The National Space Society urges all of its members to give generously to support these heroes.

"Please send contributions to Scaled Family Support Fund, c/o Scaled Composites, 1624 Flight Line, Mojave, CA. 93501.

Acct # 04157-66832
Wire transfer ABA Routing #0260-0959-3 (Bank of America)

"Please make checks payable to the account number or to the name of the fund."

NSS Statement on Accident at Scaled Composites

"America was built on the courage of those who dared to explore new frontiers. From Lewis and Clark to the Apollo astronauts, great men and women have tested themselves against the frontiers of their age.

"In the course of their efforts, these heroes may pay the ultimate cost, as they did yesterday in Mojave. When that happens, it is the highest duty of all of us to care for the injured, to mourn the departed, and to care for the families. An honest investigation must be conducted to learn what went wrong, and to fix the cause so that it does not happen again.

"But when the investigation finished, our duty is to carry on the work of those heroes, to redouble our efforts to scale the peaks that they were climbing. That is what we learned from Apollo 1. That is what they would want.

"The frontier of space is far from tamed. The men and women of Scaled Composites are engaged in one of the great efforts of our time: opening space for all humanity. That is a noble pursuit, perhaps the most noble of all, and we must all be thankful for their work, and for their sacrifice.

"Let us not shirk from what happened yesterday. Professionals will find the cause. The program will continue. The effort to open space cannot be stopped. Now is the time to honor those men by honoring the cause that they were engaged in. Those of us who are part of this great endeavor, whether as participants or as supporters, let us carry forward this message of perseverance to our own communities, to our elected leaders and to the media. Now more than ever, the nation needs to hear your voices."

• The New Yorker: The truth about the 'hippie chimps' 
• Discovery.com: Will tourism threaten first moon steps?
• Scientific American: In 12 million years, we're dead
• Statetris is Tetris with U.S. states (via GeekPress)

The million-dollar Space Elevator Games, scheduled for Oct. 19-21 in Utah, is due to hit new heights this year, in more ways than one. Last year, the total purse was $400,000 - and one of the teams came oh-so-close to winning a prize. This year, NASA's Centennial Challenge program has more than doubled the money being offered ... more teams are getting more serious about chasing those bigger prizes ... the speed and height requirements have been doubled as well ... and a kid-friendly competition has been added to the games.

The Space Elevator Games' marquee event is the Beam Power Challenge, in which clattering contraptions covered with photoelectric cells compete to climb up a long ribbon. The idea is that this technology will be required if anyone ever were to build a real space elevator to send robotic climbers up tens of thousands of miles, to orbital heights. But beam-power systems could have other, less ambitious applications as well - for example, laser-powered spaceships or rovers - and that's why NASA is putting up the $500,000 prize money.

The same goes for the second NASA-backed event: the Tether Challenge. This competition rewards folks who come up with stronger ribbon materials - perhaps carbon nanotube fabrics that could be used in those future space elevators, or in the next generation of lightweight composites.

This is the third year for the Space Elevator Games - which were conducted in California in 2005, and in conjunction with the X Prize Cup in New Mexico last year. In each of last year's challenges, one team stood out from the crowd but didn't end up in the winner's circle. For the robo-climbers, it was the University of Saskatchewan for the robo-climbers; for the tethers, the standout was Astroaraneae.

This year, the two favorites will be back, joined by 20 other registered teams.

Some of the teams already are deeply into testing their rigs, said Ben Shelef, chief executive officer of the California-based Spaceward Foundation, which is managing the games on NASA's behalf. "From what we've seen of the teams so far, we're looking forward to an exciting race to the finish this year," Shelef said in a news release issued Wednesday.

Ted Semon, a spokesman for Spaceward as well as the proprietor of the Space Elevator Blog, said this year's competitions at the Davis County Event Center outside Salt Lake City could mark a major milestone for the games.

"We've got a pretty good shot at awarding some money this year," Semon told me today.

It will take much more than last year's best effort to win the prize, however: The beam-powered climbers must rise an average of 2 meters per second for 50 seconds, compared with last year's 1-meter-per-second requirement. The test tethers will have to take at least 50 percent more stress than a "house tether" that represents the state of the art.

If there's one winner in a competition, the successful team gets the full $500,000 for that particular contest. But if multiple teams make the final cut, the performances will be ranked, and the purse will be divvied up among up to three teams.

NASA's Centennial Challenges program paid its first prize money earlier this year, in the $200,000 Astronaut Glove Challenge, and program manager Ken Davidian said he's looking forward to awarding another check.

"I am excited and impressed with the evolution and level of technical maturity demonstrated by the teams in both the Tether and Beam Power Challenges," he said in the news release. "Over the past 24 months, individual teams started from scratch, have grown continually, have coalesced into communities and are on the verge of accomplishing substantial achievements worthy of a Centennial Challenges prize."

Spaceward Foundation

The "Light Racers" contest is a drag race for beam-powered model cars.

But wait ... there's more: This year Spaceward is adding a "Light Racers" contest that will be within the price range of kids as well as grown-ups. Competitors will have to build remote-control cars that get their power via a spotlight and photoelectric cells. The cars that set the best times on a 100-foot drag-racing course could earn prizes of up to $500.

Spaceward hopes that schools will take on the "Light Racers" challenge for classroom projects. "We are thrilled to have added an educational component where kids can take part in the competition," Spaceward's president, Meekk Shelef, said in the news release. "Reaching out to the scientists and engineers of the future is the most important thing we do."

Will all this tinkering really lead to a real space elevator? Even if it doesn't, NASA says the innovations that result will push the frontiers of earthly technology and space exploration. But Bradley Edwards, one of the pioneers of the space elevator concept and a Spaceward adviser, says the games are definitely on the right track:

"The Space Elevator Games, with their emphasis on strong tethers and power beaming, represent the road to building the space elevator," he said in the news release. "We hope their cumulative effort on the engineering community will enable further effort in this direction."  

• New Scientist: Human skin to replace animal tests
• Improbable Research: Why you should hire a psychopath
• The Onion: Earthquake sets Japan back to 2147 
• Boing Boing: Control a dead frog over the Web

The results are in from the great "Man vs. Machine" computer poker showdown in Vancouver, with the humans coming out on top by a narrow margin. But the main result of the exercise was mutual respect, on the part of the computer programmers as well as the poker pros.

The final 500-hand playoff went until past 11 p.m. PT Tuesday, and when the takes were totaled up, high-ranked poker players Phil "The Unabomber" Laak and Ali Eslami came out $570 ahead. Those results were combined with a too-close-to-call draw and a win for the University of Alberta's Polaris computer program on Monday, plus a win for the humans earlier Tuesday. That led Rutgers computer scientist Michael Littman, the showdown's arbiter, to declare Laak and Eslami the "clear winners."

Univ. of Alberta

Poker pro Phil Laak considers his hand during the "Man vs. Machine" playoff in Vancouver.

For Laak, however, the outcome is more ambiguous. "The subtlety to the whole thing is, we won, not by a significant amount, and the bots are closing in," he told me today. "That's the true summary."

The $50,000 two-day showdown, conducted at the annual meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, brought the kind of media hype that attended chess champion Garry Kasparov's faceoffs against IBM's Deep Blue in 1996 and 1997. Play-by-play commentaries were provided by Weblogs offered by the University of Alberta as well as the Poker Academy.

To minimize the luck of the draw, this week's games were set up so that cards were dealt to the computer vs. human in one match (say, Laak's), and the same cards were dealt to the human vs. the computer in the other match (Eslami's). Thus, the human in one game was playing the same cards that the computer was dealt in the other game.

The profits from each 500-hand match were combined to figure out who came out on top. Thus, in the final match, Laak ended the game up $110, and Eslami was up $460. There was a bonus system in place that earned the humans an extra $12,500 (U.S.) over the course of the four-match playoff. That comes on top of the $5,000 honorarium plus expenses that each player received for showing up.

"I want to emphasize that this is peanuts," said University of Alberta computer scientist Jonathan Schaeffer, a leader of the Polaris team. "These guys usually play for a helluva lot more money."

Schaeffer said Laak (a tournament player who has a celebrity connection to actress Jennifer Tilly) and Eslami (who ranks among the world's top high-stakes cash players) fully deserved the win.

"This was an incredible win-win situation," he told me today. "It's the first time we validated that we were competitive with them. I'm not going to say that we're in their league - that would be silly."

Laak was similarly sportsmanlike toward the Polaris team. "Kudos to those guys," he said.  "They solved checkers in the last month, now they're trying to solve poker. The University of Alberta must be very proud."

Both players said they felt exhausted at the finish. "It was an emotionally draining match," Eslami told me. They also felt fortunate to leave Vancouver with the win.

"I literally felt the same feeling that you would have if you beat 500 people in a tournament and won a million dollars," Laak said.

In a way, poker is a tougher challenge than chess because competitors have to make decisions based on incomplete information about the state of the play - and often pretend they know more than they do.

The humans actually played several variants of the Polaris program in the course of the match. The first and the last of the four sets were played against a variant dubbed Mr. Pink, which Laak described as a "careful, reasonable, disciplined, thoughtful player."

Then there was Agent Orange, the humans' opponent in the second set, the one that beat them so badly.

"Agent Orange was like a crazed, cocaine-driven maniac with an ax," Laak said.

Univ. of Alberta

Ali Eslami looks at a laptop screen displaying his cards in the "Man vs. Machine" poker playoff.

Eslami had a more scientifically couched description of the differences: Mr. Pink, he said, was programmed to come close to playing the Nash equilibrium for the game of poker - that is, the strategy most likely to settle into a draw. In contrast, Agent Orange was programmed to adapt its strategy to the play of its opponents as the game went on.

Laak said Agent Orange was also tweaked for more aggressive play, essentially by "thinking" that each pot was 7 percent bigger than it really was. "This strategy puzzled us," Laak said.

After their shellacking, Laak and Eslami got their heads together and decided to take an even more focused, deliberate approach to the third set on Tuesday afternoon. The programmers, meanwhile, went to a mixed strategy, selecting three software variants as tag teams for each of the human opponents.

In the end, it was the humans who were able to adapt to the bots. The humans won the third faceoff against the tag-team bots, and went on to beat Mr. Pink in the fourth and final round.

"The computer program is tricky," Schaeffer said. "It's hard to model. Its roots are in deep algorithms. Either consciously or subconsciously, [the humans] were able to figure out something and win."

The Polaris team as well as Laak and Eslami are all looking forward to a rematch in the next few months. By that time, Polaris may well become unbeatable - at least when it comes to Heads Up Limit Hold 'Em. "If it's not done, it's so close to done it's not even funny," Laak said. (As more than one commenter has noted below, no-limit games against multiple opponents are an entirely different proposition.)

Laak said he and Eslami gave Polaris' programmers some suggestions for making the bots better. "We actually told them the way you can beat us," he said. "If you could take Agent Orange, crank him down 50 percent, then have that guy play us randomly, so that each hand would be the new Agent Orange or Mr. Pink ... that might be the thing we can't beat."

Eslami said he encouraged the programmers to focus on the adaptive approach used by Agent Orange. "I think that's going to have application in broader society," he said.

After all, the whole point of this exercise is to create more intelligent software, not just craftier poker-playing bots. Eslami said artificial adaptive behavior could lead to "software that better understands the way humans think ... instead of being competitive and trying to oppose the person's next move, being cooperative and trying to help the person's next move."

The University of Alberta's Schaeffer echoed that view: "The challenge to us is how to get computers to reason and act intelligently in the absence of complete information. Poker is a game of what we call partial information. In this case, you don't know the opponent's cards. That doesn't sound like a big deal, but since you don't know what they have, you have to deal with probabilities."

The same challenges apply to making money in the stock market, where you have only partial information about the prospects for all the companies you could invest in ... or to buying a used car, where you have to sort through incomplete and sometimes misleading information as you negotiate a deal.

"What you're doing is, you're playing a game of poker," Schaeffer said. Next-generation software could help humans play those real-life games better - and, one can hope, more fairly.

So is Schaeffer disappointed to see Polaris lose? Not at all. "I'm personally pleased that we did not win the match," he said. If the computer had won, he said there would have been all sorts of unwarranted hand-wringing about human inadequacy. In Schaeffer's view, this really is a win-win situation.

"Even if we had won the match, nobody would have claimed victory," he told me. "Not winning the match avoided a lot of misrepresentation."

For more on the world of poker, check out MSNBC's special report, "Going All In."

NCSU

CLICK IMAGE FOR VIDEO North Carolina State University's Mary Schweitzer explains why we will probably never see a real-life "Jurassic Park."

A couple of years ago, paleontologists were stunned to find that the soft tissue of a 70 million-year-old dinosaur was preserved within a fossil from a Tyrannosaurus rex. Such a thing had never been seen before. The discovery opened the door to all sorts of speculation about reconstructing dinosaur DNA, just as it was in the fictional "Jurassic Park" tales.

Today, paleontologists are still stunned - not only to find material that looks like dinosaur cartilage, blood vessels, blood cells and bone cells, but to see the stuff in so many different specimens. "It's very scary, I guess, to find this stuff so widely distributed when nobody has ever seen it before," said North Carolina State University's Mary Schweitzer, a pioneer in the field. Although scientists don't plan to create dino-DNA anytime soon, Schweitzer and her colleagues say the growing number of tissue samples are opening the way to a scientific realm almost as exotic as Jurassic Park.

The latest installment of "Nova ScienceNow," premiering on PBS tonight, provides a taste of that new realm. The show's lead segment highlights Schweitzer's work as well as research by Ray Rogers and Kristi Curry Rogers, a husband-and-wife, geologist-and-paleontologist team at Macalester College.

For years, the Rogerses have been unearthing fossil riches in Madagascar, prime territory for paleontologists. Seventy million years ago, a killing drought was followed by torrential rains, which sent waves of mud and wet sand to cover up dead and dying dinosaurs. "You can imagine it's like a milkshake rolling down the mountain," Kristi Rogers told me.

She suspected that Madagascar's quick-preserved dinosaur remains could yield lots of promising specimens to send to Schweitzer, her longtime colleague. And she was right.

"What Mary found was exactly the same stuff that she found in the T. rex," said Rogers, whose work focuses on long-necked dinos known as titanosaurs. "It really helps show that Mary's method works. It's not just a fluke occurrence. ... It's something that's more pervasive in the fossil record."

Schweitzer, meanwhile, is making more finds in the field. She was particularly bowled over by a hadrosaur specimen her team found last year in Montana's Judith River Formation.

"What we're finding is absolutely incredible, amazing preservation," she told me today from Montana State University, the headquarters for this summer's expedition. "It's the 'freshest,' if you will, dinosaur bone that has ever had this analysis conducted on it."

By "freshest," she means that the fossil was excavated specifically for the purposes of demineralizing and analyzing its insides. Schweitzer has found that once a fossil's interior is exposed to the air, it degrades very quickly. In fact, the T. rex fossil that started it all is becoming less and less useful for soft-tissue research with the passage of time, she said.

Fortunately, the rapidly rising number of samples is giving Schweitzer hope that she and her colleagues will be able to unravel the complex biochemical story behind a dinosaur's soft spots. "We're getting specimens that have been collected specifically to do these kinds of tests, and that has never happened before," she said.

So far, Schweitzer is reluctant to say that what she's seeing are actual dinosaur blood vessels, blood cells, bone cells and bone matrix. That's what they look like under a microscope, all right, but Schweitzer is still working on the chemical analysis. "Until the chemistry is done, we can't really say at the molecular level what's going on with these," she said.

Just this year, she and other experts reported the first chemical results for T. rex collagen. The protein analysis appeared to confirm that birds are the closest living relatives of T. rex and his ilk. And that's only a start for the field of paleobiochemistry. If you take the T. rex findings, then add Rogers' titanosaurs from Madagascar ... and Schweitzer's hadrosaur ... and more samples that fossil-hunter Jack Horner is finding in Mongolia as well as Montana ... well, you can start figuring out the relationships among groups of dinosaurs, as well as the dinosaurs' links to other extinct and modern-day species, on the molecular level.

"All of these things are really creating a new world for paleontologists to inhabit," Rogers said.

That means breaking a few fossilized bones - but Rogers said more scientists are coming around to the view that the fresh scientific insights will be worth making a fresh break. "There are a number of paleontologists out there these days who realize that if you don't open that book, you'll never read the story inside," she said.

So what about dinosaur DNA? In a video from North Carolina State University, Schweitzer explained why it's unlikely anyone will be opening a real-life Jurassic Park anytime soon. Today she told me she expects to stick to proteins rather than going in search of a giant reptile's genome. Even if ancient DNA could be recovered, her lab isn't geared up to deal with it.

"You'd need a Class 3 or Class 4 or Class 5 lab, which is the same lab you'd be working with for hantavirus or Ebola," she said. (Here's a PDF file explaining the classes of biohazards.)

Schweitzer isn't ruling out the possibility that fragments of dino-DNA could someday be available. "We're not at the point where we can really say one way or the other," she told me. "I probably am not going to be the one doing the investigation. Maybe I'll have a student who's doing it."

Dinosaur lore is just one of the subjects covered on the latest "Nova ScienceNow." Here are the other topics:

• Epigenetics: Here's a strange twist in the nature-vs.-nurture debate: What you eat and how you live may actually affect the way your genes work. Chemical switches inside your cells selectively turn genes on and off, in response to substances coming into your system. That process is called epigenetics, and it appears to explain how the harm done by toxins can be passed on from mother to child, even though the mother's DNA is unaffected. Epigenetics may also explain why identical twins don't stay identical.
• Kryptos code-breaking: One of the most mysterious sculptures out there is Kryptos, a granite-and-copper monument placed in the courtyard of CIA headquarters in Virginia in 1990. The sculpture, created by James Sanborn, is covered with strings of seemingly nonsensical characters that actually stand for four coded messages. Three of the codes have been broken, yielding allusions to a buried object and the discovery of King Tut's tomb, but one has still eluded decryption. What's the solution? Em ksa t'nod!
• From Belize to black holes: "Nova ScienceNow" profiles Duke University's Arlie Petters, who is one of the world's top researchers in the field of gravitational lensing (and other subjects on the frontiers of cosmology, such as black holes and extra dimensions). Petters is a native of Belize, the Caribbean country nestled alongside Mexico, and his contributions to science education and inspiration back home are a big part of the story.

If you miss the show on TV, you can still watch it on your computer screen: All of the "Nova ScienceNow" segments will show up as video clips in the online archive on Wednesday.

• Nature: Mastodon DNA sequenced
• BBC: Scientists map elephant evolution 
• National Geographic: Rise and fall of the Maya
• N.Y. Times (reg. req.): The race is on for the 'God Particle'

Three months ago, the Liftport Group was sinking fast. The company's founder, Michael Laine, lost his headquarters and was talking about shutting down and ending his dream of building the elements for a space elevator. Laine still isn't out of the woods, but today he says he's on the verge of a business deal that could revive the dream, based on Liftport's work with balloon-borne platforms for communications and surveillance. Could the balloon business keep LiftPort aloft long enough to get to space by 2031?

LiftPort has certainly had its ups and downers: In April, Laine was saying that he was running out of cash and had to start bringing in $25,000 a month by Sept. 1 to keep the doors open.

Laine's eventual goal is to develop the technologies for constructing the first space elevator - a ribbon of super-strong material extending from Earth's surface thousands of miles into space. Robotic crawlers would rise on that highway to the sky, bringing payloads into orbit for a fraction of the current cost.

The technology for actually doing that isn't nearly ready for prime time. Who knows, maybe it never will be. But LiftPort plans to capitalize on the intermediate technological steps - by building the crawlers and tethered aerial platforms for more terrestrial-minded applications, and by perfecting the process for manufacturing carbon nanotube ribbons.

The plan hasn't always gone the way Laine hoped. In fact, LiftPort is facing legal action in New Jersey over a promised nanotube factory, and in Washington state over alleged lapses in financial disclosures (PDF file). And then there was that running-out-of-money issue.

Looking back, Laine sees his troubles in April as the low point in LiftPort's saga. He soldiered on, however, in hopes of making the aerial platform commercially viable and digging himself out of his financial hole. Laine has said more than once that a sister company called Tethered Towers could take the balloon-based system to the next leve. 

With the Federal Aviation Administration's go-ahead, Laine and his team staged a tethered balloon test on June 28 near Bremerton, Wash., where the company is still based.

"We definitely had the worst weather we've ever experienced," Laine recalled. He said winds gusted to around 25 or 30 mph - which is never a good thing for balloons. The tethers holding the balloons down bent into the wind at a scary angle.

"We deployed [the tethers] out to 1,000 feet, but we were probably only about 600 feet high in the air," Laine said. "We were supposed to go up to 2,000 feet."

Even though Laine wasn't happy with the demonstration, his potential clients seemed impressed that the system could take the stress. "Actually, having the really bad weather wasn't much fun for my team and me, but it went a long way toward building the credibility of our system," he said. "In a way, I guess it turned out to be a good day."

So good that Laine thinks at least one of the clients will come to the rescue.

"I've got four people I'm talking to right now as potential customers," he said. "Any one of them will be good. Two or three of them will put us in great shape. And I think that's just the beginning. I think we're going to be OK."

Laine declined to go into the detailed applications envisioned by his potential customers - or, more accurately, his potential strategic partners. But he said the business model called for balloon-borne platforms capable of staying up for three to 10 days. Such platforms could be used for aerial wireless communications during an emergency, or for aerial monitoring of a particular area.

"For example, if you want to monitor bison migration in Wyoming, you put a balloon up there and you can watch what's going on," he said. "We've talked about border security, things like that. ... We can't tackle all of [the potential applications], so what we're trying to do is find partners. Each of them have their own markets, they're not overlapping."

Laine pointed to Tokyo's planned 2,001-foot-high communications tower as the kind of job LiftPort's platforms could handle on a backup basis. "This should not be your primary system, but it augments your current system," he explained. "It should be part of your bag of tricks."

But even if LiftPort brings in new partners, the legal problems still have to be settled. The lawsuit filed by the city of Millville, N.J., is "definitely a serious concern," Laine told me.

As part of an urban development deal, Millville went in on a $100,000 loan to LiftPort that was meant to fund the carbon nanotube factory. Although LiftPort did start manufacturing nanotubes, "we were just not able to make them in the quantities that we expected to," Laine said.

"We didn't complete our end of the deal," he acknowledged. "They have an obligation to file suit. We have an obligation to pay back the money or put a factory out there. We're not in a position to do either one right now. ... There's no question [the factory] is going to be there, it just isn't there yet."

So Laine is waiting for the wheels to turn on the New Jersey lawsuit - and the same could be said about the fines he's facing in Washington state ($10,000 for himself, and $10,000 for LiftPort) for failing to disclose enough information about LiftPort's investment risks. "Ultimately, what it comes down to is that I did the paperwork wrong ... It's not like you can avoid paying this stuff. If you screw up, you've got to pay for it," he said.

Sometimes it sounds as if the criticism Laine has been facing - on Slashdot and from some quarters of the space elevator community - stings more than the prospect of fines. "Those guys really vilified me, which wasn't fun," he said today. (Slashdot later posted an item providing Laine's side of the story.)

For the most part, Laine is focused on what's ahead, and he promises that things will soon be looking way, way up. In the meantime, here are a few other blips on the radar screen for fans of space elevators and high-flying balloons:

• Is a space elevator worth its weight in diamonds?
• Blogging the buildup to the Space Elevator Games
• Wanted: Organizers for next year's space elevator meet
• Military tests near-space balloons for red alerts
• JP Aerospace makes progress on its airship 
• Ham-radio balloon set for launch

• Science News: Genome scans shed light on AIDS immunity
• Georgia Tech: Research boosts wireless data transfer
• Slashdot: Nanogenerator powered by blood flow
• Technology Review: Building a better brain scanner

NASA

CLICK IMAGE FOR VIDEO A 1994 NBC retrospective looks at the Apollo 11 mission and its legacy.

If you look hard enough, the calendar provides several opportunities to celebrate humanity's push to the final frontier. There's Yuri's Night in April, Space Day in May, and World Space Week in October. But many argue that July 20 – the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing – should be the biggest space day of the year, since that marks the first time humans ever set foot on another celestial body. Some have even cast it as a holy day with almost religious undertones. Now there's a petition calling on the president to declare this day an official Space Exploration Day.

The push to create a permanent, non-paid national holiday - something on the order of, say, Flag Day - goes back to 1971, just two years after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made the historic landing. Since then, various presidents have commemorated the achievement periodically, on a year-to-year basis - but it's not yet found a permanent home on the federal calendar (or in the greeting-card shop, for that matter, even though Earth Day has its own category).

Today, the National Space Society made a renewed pitch for the petition. "As NASA turns its efforts back towards the Moon and Mars, it is very appropriate that the nation establishes an official day of celebration for space exploration," the society said in a statement.

It's worth noting that the space-themed observances in April and October highlight Soviet achievements (although April 12 also marks the first flight of the space shuttle). May's Space Day, meanwhile, had its genesis in the timing of President Kennedy's 1961 speech that set America on a path to the moon. July 20 marks the day that America finally followed through on that ambitious goal - and thus has an edge over the other dates, at least as far as the U.S. space effort is concerned.

If you can't send a Space Day card, hold an Evoloterra seder or attend this weekend's NewSpace 2007 conference (with Aldrin in the spotlight tonight), there are still plenty of ways to celebrate Apollo 11's achievements:

• Online: My personal favorite is our own "Voyage of the Millennium" audio slide show. You can click through historic images of the space effort, climaxing with Apollo 11 and moving on to the legacy of humanity's greatest voyage. Your guide is astrophotographer Roger Ressmeyer, who personally went through NASA's archive and selected the images that tell the story best. NASA's own 35-year commemoration, which includes a library of documents, still holds up pretty well three years later. And the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal is about as authoritative as it gets.
• In print: Andrew Chaikin's "A Man on the Moon" is the best popular chronicle of the Apollo missions. For a more writerly approach, you can turn to Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff" or Norman Mailer's "Of a Fire on the Moon." But if it's pictures you want, "Orbit" and "Full Moon" have you covered. 
• On video: If you're looking for a fictional re-creation of the great adventure, could check out "From the Earth to the Moon," the 12-hour HBO docudrama series that touches upon the early days of the space program, the Apollo 1 tragedy and the moon missions that followed. For a skillful blend of actual Apollo footage, you can turn to "For All Mankind," Al Reinert's 80-minute documentary. That 1989 film inspired what is arguably the best-known dramatic film about the moon effort, "Apollo 13."
• At the movies: The marquee event is "In the Shadow of the Moon," a new documentary about the Apollo moon effort due for release in September. For those who remember the glory days, the trailer for the film alone just might bring a tear to your eye. The National Space Society is planning a series of promotional screenings, so now might be a good time to buddy up with the local chapter. If you can get to an Imax 3-D theater, you shouldn't miss "Magnificent Desolation." For filmgoers, it's the next best thing to being there. And NBC's James Oberg had good things to say about "The Wonder of It All," a documentary that is scheduled for special-engagement screenings in August.

What are your own favorite real-life space sagas, in print or on the screen? Pass along your recommendations in the comments section below ... and have a great Evoloterra weekend! 

• New Scientist: NASA asks Apollo engineers for moon help
• NASA: Rovers practice for moon duty in the Arctic
• Wired: Scratch a space nut, find a starry-eyed hippie
• Las Vegas Now: Top-secret construction at Area 51

NASA / JPL / SSI

This image from the Cassini spacecraft highlights several moons of Saturn, including the new moon known as S/2007 S4, seen as a speck within the red box.

The scientists behind the Cassini orbiter have announced the discovery of Saturn's 60th moon, a little thing that showed up in time-lapse photography of the ringed planet. Jupiter still leads this moon race with 63 known satellites - but Saturn could soon pull ahead, at least temporarily.

Of course, astronomers don't focus on the mere numbers, which shift around every time a new batch of observations is made. They say they're more interested in what even the tiniest moons can tell us about the universe's biggest questions.

"The big questions are always about the formation," the University of Hawaii's David Jewitt, one of the leaders of the Hawaii Irregular Satellites Survey, told me today. "If you're not just butterfly-collecting, then you're answering questions about the way the solar system came to be."

This 60th Saturnian moon currently has the prosaic designation S/2007 S4, although the Cassini imaging team has nicknamed it "Frank" for the time being. It's up to the International Astronomical Union to approve an official name - traditionally, a figure from Greek mythology. (The Planetary Society's Emily Lakdawalla explains how names from Greek, Norse and Inuit lore are divvied up among Saturnian satellites. The mix also includes Gallic  mythological figures.)

Frank first showed up May 30 as a speck on a series of images from Cassini's wide-angle camera - in a region near the moons Methone and Pallene, which were discovered by the Cassini team back in 2004.

When the Cassini scientists looked back through their image database, they could track the tiny dot as it orbited the planet between the other two moonlets. This Web page includes an animated GIF image and a QuickTime video that flips through the most recent imagery.

"With these new data sets we were able to establish a good orbit for the new moon," Carl Murray, a member of the imaging team from Queen Mary, University of London, said in a NASA feature on the find. "Knowing where the moons are at all times is important to the Cassini mission for several reasons."

First of all, the scientists now know that there's another object they have to avoid as they plot Cassini's future trajectory. They estimate that Frank is about 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) wide and made of ice and rock.

But beyond that, studying Frank's course could shed additional light on the dynamics of the Saturnian system. "We've gone from two to three tiny little bodies all in a row," Carolyn Porco of the Space Science Institute, leader of the Cassini imaging team, told me today. "That's starting to suggest there may be more."

There could be a band of Frank-sized moonlets circling Saturn, and scientists might even be able to trace them back to a common origin - say, a protosatellite that broke into pieces long, long ago.

Those are the sorts of insights that raise the satellite search above the level of butterfly-collecting, Jewitt told me. Although Cassini is in a good location for spotting more Saturnian moons, Jewitt pointed out that ground-based programs such as HISS are even more prolific in the moon-spotting department.

In May, HISS reported three new irregular moons of Saturn (PDF file). Jewitt hinted that still more Saturnian satellites may be added to the list, if the HISS astronomers are able to verify what their observations seem to be telling them.

HISS is concentrating on irregular satellites, not only around Saturn but around the solar system's other giant planets as well. Unlike Frank and other regular satellites (including the solar system's marquee moons), irregular satellites tend to have wide, eccentric orbits. Most of them move in a retrograde fashion, opposite to their mother planet's direction of rotation. That's a tip-off that they weren't born in place when the planets coalesced, but were captured in orbit at a later time.

Thanks to advances in imaging technology, astronomers are getting much better at sizing up the solar system's irregular army. "The first irregular satellite was found about 100 years ago," Jewitt said. "In the whole of the 20th century, only eight were found, but now we have over a hundred."

So far, these multitudes of moons have raised more questions than they've answered. For example, how were the satellites captured in the first place? At one time, astronomers thought that an asteroid typically became a satellite when it passed through the upper layers of a planet's atmosphere and experienced drag, but Jewitt said that explanation is now falling out of favor.

"The one that looks most promising now is that capture might occur because two protosatellites either collide or scatter from each other in the vicinity of a planet," Jewitt said.

As more moons are added to the list, Jewitt and other planetary scientists could well close in on the answers to those big questions about the formation of planets and their satellites. "Each and every new discovery adds another piece to the puzzle and becomes another new world to explore," Murray said.

In coming years, Cassini could get an even closer look at Frank (or whatever it's eventually called): The spacecraft's current trajectory would put it within 7,300 miles (11,700 kilometers) of the moonlet in December 2009.

For now, Porco is tickled to think that Cassini is right in the middle of a bustling celestial neighborhood. "I like the idea that we're at 60 natural satellites and one artificial satellite," she said. "That is a great indication of where we are in the exploration of the solar system. We've come this far."

• National Geographic: Saturn's 'walnut moon' mystery solved
• Universe Today: Laboring for a Mars landing (via Slashdot)
• Scientific American: Race in a bottle
• Popular Science: Future of the Environment

Two years' worth of top scientists and technologists will be getting their medals this month during a White House ceremony. The 27 recipients of the National Medals of Science and Technology include the co-inventors of modern-day microphones and atomic clocks, a Nobel laureate, one scientist who has put in her share of government service and another who is just starting a government job.

President Bush will present the awards to the honorees for 2005 and 2006 during a ceremony at the White House on July 27. Congress established the National Medal of Science in 1959, with the National Science Foundation administering the program. The National Media of Technology came later, thanks to a 1980 congressional mandate, and the Commerce Department's Techonology Administration is in charge of that program.

Back in May, we listed the eight 2005 National Medal of Science winners, including Nobel laureate Torsten Wiesel. Here are the science laureates for 2006, as announced this week:

• Hyman Bass, mathematician at the University of Michigan: Bass' fields of interest include  algebraic K-theory, number theory, group theory and algebraic geometry, according to his biography. He's also played an influential role in developing teaching materials for math education.
• Marvin Caruthers, biochemist at the University of Colorado: The methods currently used for chemically synthesizing DNA were developed at Caruthers' laboratory. These procedures have been incorporated into so-called "gene machines" for research. More recently, Caruthers pioneered new approaches for preparing DNA chips and synthesizing RNA.
• Rita Colwell, biologist at the University of Maryland and former director of the National Science Foundation: Colwell headed the NSF between 1998 and 2004, after which she returned to biotech research at the University of Maryland. Her research focuses on global infectious diseases, water and health. She is currently developing an international network to address emerging infectious diseases and water issues, including safe drinking water for both the developed and developing world.
• Peter Dervan, chemist at the California Institute of Technology: Dervan has created a new field of bio-organic chemistry, focusing on the chemical principles for the sequence-specific recognition of DNA coding, according to his biography.
• Nina Fedoroff, genetic researcher at Penn State University and newly named science and technology adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: Fedoroff produced one of the first complete gene sequences as a postdoctoral fellow. She turned to plant research in 1978 and pioneered the application of molecular techniques to plants by cloning some of the first plant genes.
• Daniel Kleppner, physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Kleppner is credited along with Nobel laureate Norman Ramsay for developing the hydrogen maser, an atomic clock that is widely used in navigation and timekeeping. He's also considered a pioneer in the study of Bose-Einstein condensates, which are weirdly behaving clusters of ultra-cold atoms.
• Robert Langer, a chemical engineer at MIT: According to his biography, Langer's work focuses on the interface of biotechnology and materials science. A major focus is the study and development of polymers to deliver drugs, particularly genetically engineered proteins, continuously at controlled rates for prolonged periods of time.
• Lubert Stryer, a physician and biochemist at Stanford University: Stryer's specialty is the study of how our vision system works on the molecular level. As part of his research, Stryer discovered the light-triggered amplification cycle in vision and developed new fluorescence techniques for studying biomolecules and cells.

Now we turn to the National Medals of Technology. These awards can be given to individuals, teams or whole companies. Here are the Technology Administration's citations for 2006 laureates, announced this week:

• Leslie Geddes, professor emeritus of bioengineering at Purdue University: Geddes will be recognized "for contributions to electrode design and tissue restoration that have led to the widespread use of numerous clinical devices. His discoveries and inventions have saved and enriched thousands of lives and have formed the cornerstone of much of the modern implantable medical device field."
• Paul Kaminski, chairman and chief executive officer of Virginia-based Technovation: Kaminski will be recognized "for contributions to the national security through the development of advanced, unconventional imaging from space, and for developing and fielding advanced systems with greatly enhanced survivability. As a result he has made a profound difference in the national security posture and the global leadership of the United States."
• Herwig Kogelnik, adjunct photonics systems research vice president at Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs in New Jersey: Kogelnik will be honored "for pioneering contributions and leadership in the development of the technology of lasers, optoelectronics, integrated optics, and lightwave communication systems that have been instrumental in driving the tremendous capacity growth of fiber optic transmission systems for our national communications infrastructure."
• Charles Vest, former president of MIT: Vest is being recognized "for his visionary leadership in advancing America's technological workforce and capacity for innovation through revitalizing the national partnership among academia, government and industry."
• James Edward West, research professor of electrical and computer engineering at Johns Hopkins University: West will be recognized "for co-inventing the electret microphone while working with Gerhard Sessler at Bell Labs in 1962. Ninety percent of the 2 billion microphones produced annually and used in everyday items such as telephones, hearing aids, camcorders, and multimedia computers employ electret technology."

Here are the 2005 technology laureates, announced in June:

• Alfred Cho, adjunct vice president of semiconductor research at Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs: Cho is being recognized for his contributions to the invention of molecular beam epitaxy and its commercial development over the course of three decades into an advanced production tool for electronic and photonic devices, with applications to cellular phones, CD players, and high-speed communications.
• Dean Sicking, professor of civil engineering at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln: Sicking is being recognized for innovative design and development of roadside and racetrack safety technologies that dissipate the energy of high-speed crashes, preventing approximately 150 fatalities and countless injuries each year, and contributing to the safety and well being of every American who travels the nation's highways.
• Wyeth Pharmaceuticals Team: Ronald Eby, Velupillai Puvanesarajah, Dace Madore and Maya Koster are being recognized for their work in the discovery, development, and manufacture of Prevnar, the first-ever vaccine to prevent the deadly and disabling consequences of Streptococcus pneumoniae infections in children. It has been described as the single most important advance in pediatric medicine in the last decade.
• Genzyme Corp.: A biotech leader based in Massachusetts, Genzyme is being recognized for pioneering a business that has led to dramatic improvements in the health of thousands of patients with rare diseases and harnessing the promise of biotechnology to develop innovative new therapies.
• Semiconductor Research Corp.: Based in North Carolina, SRC is being recognized for building the world's largest and most successful university research force to support the rapid growth of the semiconductor industry; for proving the concept of collaborative research as the first high-tech research consortium; and for creating the concept and methodology that evolved into the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors.
• Xerox Corp.: Based in Connecticut, Xerox is being recognized for over 50 years of innovation in marking, materials, electronics, communications and software that created the modern reprographics, digital printing and print-on-demand industries.

Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention this month's most famous scientific honoree, agricultural scientist (and fellow Iowan) Norman Borlaug. The 93-year-old "father of the Green Revolution" received the Congressional Gold Medal on Tuesday.

Borlaug received accolades on the order of those given to Thomas Edison and Martin Luther King - who are among the past winners of the Gold Medal, Congress' highest civilian honor. He's credited with saving up to a billion lives by developing agricultural innovations to head off widespread hunger in the 1960s - a feat that earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970.

"The name Norman Borlaug may not be known in many households on earth, but his life's work has reached almost every kitchen table on earth," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid noted during the ceremony.

President Bush was in attendance as well, and said the greatest tribute to Borlaug would be to launch a "second Green Revolution." Borlaug agreed that much more had to be done - and said solving the hunger problem could address the world's other ills as well.

"We need better and more technology, for hunger and poverty and misery are very fertile soils into which to plant all kinds of 'isms,' including terrorism," The Associated Press quoted Borlaug as saying.

• EurekAlert: Harry Potter and the terrorist attacks
• Nature: Beyond the standard model with the LHC 
• RLV & Space Transport News: Blogging the Overview Effect
• BBC: Will 'rain magic' wash away Homer Simpson? (via Daily Grail)

University of Washington physicist (and science-fiction author) John Cramer is moving forward with his experiment in backward causality, thanks in part to tens of thousands of dollars in contributions sent in by his fans. Although Cramer emphasizes that his lab is looking at "nonlocal quantum communication" rather than backward time travel per se, the gadgetry he's assembling could settle a controversy surrounding a seemingly faster-than-light effect that Albert Einstein thought was downright spooky.

Boiled down to its basics, the experiment involves splitting laser light into two beams, so that characteristics of one beam are reflected in the other beam as well. That's an example of what physicists call quantum entanglement. Specifically, Cramer has been planning to fiddle with one of the entangled laser beams such that it takes on the property of waves or particles. If one beam behaves like particles, the entangled photons of light in the other beam should behave like particles, too.

So what happens when the beams go their separate ways, and you conduct a wave-vs.-particle measurement on one beam? When someone else checks the other beam, the same measurement should yield the same result. In fact, you could visualize using the wave-vs.-particle toggle as a means for communicating information, sort of like Morse code. Theoretically, you could check one beam to receive a message instantaneously from whoever is fiddling with the other beam - even if you're separated from the receiver by millions of light-years.

That's what Einstein considered "spooky action at a distance." Such an effect could send information faster than light beams could travel, running counter to special relativity - and thus Einstein thought the effect was impossible to achieve. However, the evidence is mounting that quantum entanglement actually happens.

Cramer planned to start out by testing this kind of communication through quantum entanglement - that's the "nonlocal communication" part of the experiment. If that worked, Cramer would go even further: He would send one of the entangled beams (call it Signal A) through a circuitous detour - say, a few miles of fiber-optic cable - then fiddle with it when it came out of the cable. If the principles behind nonlocal communication held true, the evidence of that fiddling should be detected at a corresponding place in the other entangled beam (call it Signal B).

Now brace yourself for the backward-causality part: Because Signal B followed a shorter route to its detector, the fiddling in Signal A could theoretically show up in Signal B before Cramer actually fiddles with Signal A. It would be as if Cramer's actions had an effect that worked backward in time.

If Cramer detected that effect, the findings would raise the kinds of paradoxes you might see in science-fiction novels or "The Twilight Zone." What if you detected a signal from the future, but then decided not to send the signal? (That's called the "bilking paradox"). What if you received the text of a best-selling manuscript from yourself in the future, had it published, then saved a copy so you could send it to yourself in the past? (Cramer calls that the "immaculate conception paradox.")

"Perhaps the fact that there are such paradoxes is nature's way of telling us that our experiment isn't going to work," Cramer said.

Nevertheless, Cramer is anxious to find out whether it might work - and if not, why not. He suggested the framework for the experiment a year ago, and no one could come up with a reason why it should fail. Except for the money problem. ...

For months, Cramer struggled to find the funding he needed to buy the equipment for the experiment, to no avail. Then an article about his plight came out in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer - and within weeks, thousands of dollars flowed in from foundations and private donors who, for one reason or another, wanted to find out what kind of answers Cramer could come up with.

Cramer said the fund now amounts to $40,000, and now that he's back from a tour of duty at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, he's moving forward with the laser experiment. "If that laser holds out, then I think we're in pretty good shape," he told me today.

He's hoping to complete the experiment by September, when the equipment he's using will have to be moved someplace else to make room for remodeling. "It would be very nice if we could finish up by the 15th of September, but I don't know if we'll be able to do that or not," he said.

Cramer is grateful for all the donations, but he admitted that he's "a little uncomfortable" about the way things have gone so far. Usually, physicists work in obscurity, get some funding, conduct an experiment, publish the results - and only then does the publicity come, if the results are spectacular enough. The way Cramer sees it, there's been a heck of a lot of publicity already about an experiment that has yet to be done.

"We seem to be doing it sort of backwards, in a sense," he said. Then, realizing that he's been talking about backward causality, he added with a chuckle that "it may be relevant to the experiment we're trying to do."

Cramer, who is the author of two science-fiction novels and a regular columnist for Analog magazine, said the experiment represents "a rare opportunity to push the envelope of quantum mechanics." No matter how it turns out, the results will be put to good use, he said.

"If this experiment we're doing works, then I will follow up and push it as hard as possible. And if it doesn't work, I will write a science-fiction novel where it does work," he said. "It's a win-win situation."

Feel free to add your thoughts about backward causality and time travel in the comments section below, or visit our discussion board. And if you've already come up with a solution for backward time travel, fill me in on the secret ... yesterday.

Update for 8:52 p.m. ET Jan. 9, 2008: Here's an example of future developments affecting past postings: It turns out that Cramer was given more time to do his backward-time experiment, and as of early January he was still setting up the apparatus.

Update for 11:50 a.m. ET May 21, 2009: Another example of Internet time travel ... Cramer is gearing up for "phase 3" of the experiment, but still no results.

• Gruber Foundation: Dark-energy teams win $500,000 prize
• Lifehack: Brain quirks you didn't know you had (via GeekPress)
• The Universe As: How technologically useful are you?
• Improbable Research: How to pour ketchup
• ONN: Multiple stab wounds may be harmful to monkeys

After years of work, MIT researcher Dava Newman is showing off the ultralight, ultratight spacesuit she and her colleagues have been developing for future missions to the moon and Mars.

Newman's team is just one of several groups working on future spacesuit concepts  - groups that include the companies that currently supply NASA's suits. In the coming months, NASA is due to select one team to provide the suit that astronauts will wear for the next series of giant leaps.

Currently, NASA astronauts use one type of suit during the space shuttle's launch and re-entry (the orange-colored get-up nicknamed the "pumpkin suit") and another type of suit for spacewalks (the Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or EMU). The spacewalking suit is loaded with so much life-support and communications gear that it weighs about 225 pounds (102 kilograms) when it's not in zero-G. That's right: The suit could conceivably be heavier than the astronaut inside.

Donna Coveney / MIT

Dava Newman, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems, models her Biosuit on Henry Moore's sculpture "Reclining Figure" on the MIT campus.

For the Constellation Program, NASA's effort to return to the moon by 2020, the space agency expects to have one basic suit that can be adapted for launch and re-entry as well as spacewalks and surface operations. It's also looking for a suit that's more lightweight and easier to move in. That's where Newman's Biosuit concept, pioneered using funds from the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, could make a big difference: Astronauts would look less like the Michelin Man and more like Spider-Man.

Spacesuits are built to protect the body from the near-vacuum of space - and the traditional spacewalking suit does that through internal air pressurization. The multilayered suit balloons up to put the proper pressure on the body - but that also forces the astronaut inside to work harder. Newman estimates that 70 to 80 percent of the energy expended by a spacewalker goes to bending the suit's joints against that pressure.

In contrast, the Biosuit does the same job through mechanical counterpressure. As detailed in today's news release from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, tight bands of spandex and nylon are woven into the suit, providing tension along the "lines of non-extension" - that is, the circles running around the skin that don't expand when you move a joint. The result is a garment that provides a stiff skeleton while preserving much more of a person's mobility.

Donna Coveney / MIT

MIT's Dava Newman shows off the Biosuit's flexibility at the joints.

To keep the body safe in space, a spacesuit should exert about 30 kilopascals of pressure against the skin - which is roughly one-third of normal atmospheric pressure. MIT says the Biosuit is getting close to that standard, reaching levels of 20 to 30 kilopascals.

You could imagine using the skintight approach in combination with a gas-pressurized torso section and helmet, or perhaps incorporating the super-tough fabric that Bigelow Aerospace is currently using on its inflatable space modules. Newman even suggests that the spacesuit could be spun onto your skin like a Spidey web.

Newman figures that the Biosuit could be ready for prime time in 10 years - just about the time NASA might be turning its attention to manned Mars missions. In the nearer term, the Biosuit team is talking about incorporating the technology into athletic wear, or perhaps even sleeker-looking braces for folks who have trouble walking.

The Biosuit may represent the future far frontier of space fashion, but there are plenty of people more focused on what's just ahead. For months, NASA has been talking about the kind of spacesuit it will need for the post-shuttle era, and the agency is expected to issue its first draft request for proposals any day now. A conference for would-be contractors is tentatively scheduled for July 30, the project's contracting officer at NASA, James Gips, told me today. The winner is due to be start work next June.

Among those likely to vie for the contract are Hamilton Sundstrand and ILC Dover, two companies that currently work together to build NASA's EMU spacesuit. For years, Hamilton Sundstrand has been sending spacesuit prototypes up to the Canadian Arctic for tryouts during the NASA-backed Haughton Mars Project, and yet another spacesuit test is scheduled to take place this summer.

Other groups, such as Orbital Outfitters, are designing togs for suborbital space tourists - who wouldn't need the level of protection required for spacewalks or lunar surface operations. The front-runner in the suborbital space race, Virgin Galactic, is said to be aiming for a stylish unisuit with a pull-on hood. And then there's Rocketplane Kistler, which plans to offer tourists a rack of high-fashion duds for suborbital trips.

Fashion on the final frontier? Will spacewear someday become as sexy as it looked in, say, "Star Trek" or (gasp) "Barbarella"? Would that be a good thing or a bad thing? Feel free to add your take on spacesuit technology or even space fashion in the comment section below.

Update for 2 p.m. ET July 18: NASA has now posted the draft request for proposals for the next-generation spacesuit, laying out a development process that runs through September 2018. The documents are loaded with bureaucratese, as is usually the case with these things. If you really want to sell NASA a spacesuit, you should sign up for the July 30 "pre-proposal conference." You've got until next Wednesday to RSVP.

• LiveScience: NASA ponders human mission to Martian moons
• Archaeology Magazine: When TV goes mummy-hunting
• New Scientist: Is dark energy lurking in hidden dimensions
• Science News: Peekaboo planets

Summer is prime time for escapist fiction - but as long as you're escaping, why not head for some science, speculation and social commentary as well? Here are a few suggestions for sci-fi escapism in print and on TV:

• Just last week, we talked about Britain's video surveillance system and the role such systems could play in combating terrorism. Of course, there's a flip side, in the form of a little thing called loss of privacy and freedom. John Twelve Hawks' "Fourth Realm" saga takes that issue head-on, proposing that throughout history, underground cells of mystics and martial-arts types have been doing battle with an Illuminati-style global conspiracy as it labors to build security-cams and computer databases into an all-seeing, all-knowing "Vast Machine." The first novel in Twelve Hawks' planned trilogy, "The Traveler," came out a couple of years ago, and I found it to be a thought-provoking page-turner. Kind of like "The Matrix" meets "The Da Vinci Code." So I'm passing the title along as this month's Cosmic Log Used-Book Club selection.
• The trilogy's second novel, "The Dark River," went on sale this week, and if you blazed your way through "The Traveler," you'll want to pick this one up to keep the momentum going. The plot plays off pop-culture conceptions about altered states of consciousness as well as the biblical Ark of the Covenant. There's not a whole lot of real neuroscience or archaeology to the tale - but if you want to learn more about those subjects, you can refer to two recently published books: Douglas Hofstadter's long-awaited "I Am a Strange Loop," which delves into the roots of consciousness; and "From Eden to Exile," Eric H. Cline's concise roundup of biblical mysteries ranging from the location of the Garden of Eden to the fate of the Lost Tribes of Israel. It's the opposite of escapist literature: serious scholarship that adds weight to the flimsy foundations of Hollywood's far-out tales. (Yes, even "Raiders of the Lost Ark.")
• Last weekend, admirers of the late sci-fi great Robert Heinlein marked what would have been his 100th birthday with reflections on his vision for space settlement and exploration - and speculations on how the next 100 years could bring that vision even closer to reality. If you're looking for great sci-fi escapes, Heinlein's works could be just the ticket. Two of his tales - "The Man Who Sold the Moon" and "Stranger in a Strange Land" - have ended up on the CLUB Club list. But let the reader beware: His works resonate with counterculture/libertarian themes that might set your brain working even though it's supposed to be on summer break.
• Heinlein also plays a part in this summer's TV escapism. One of his short stories, "Jerry Was a Man," has been adapted for an episode in "Masters of Science Fiction," a summer series airing on ABC in August. This episode stars Malcolm McDowell and Anne Heche, and the casts for the other three teleplays are just as stellar. The series' host happens to be a star of a different sort: one of the world's most revered scientists, Cambridge cosmologist Stephen Hawking.

On that note, I think I'll escape for a few days myself and finish reading "The Dark River" as I sit in Seattle's bright summer sun. Do you have your own suggestions for summer sci-fi escapism? Leave your comments right here, and if your favorite becomes a future selection for the Cosmic Log Used-Book Club, I'll send you my copy of "The Dark River" - in the grandest tradition of the CLUB Club.

Regular postings to the Log will resume on Monday.

• Space Prizes: Covering the Heinlein Centennial
• Social Computing: Why Facebook succeeds (via Slashdot)
• New Scientist: Countdown to a synthetic lifeform
• ABC (Australia): Math shows the silliness of 'silly walks'