NASA

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's William Pickering, University of Iowa physicist James Van Allen and rocket scientist Wernher von Braun hold up a model of Explorer 1 at a news conference after hearing the satellite had reached orbit on Jan. 31, 1958. Click on the image to watch a newsreel report on the launch.

Carl Raggio still remembers how tense he felt exactly 50 years ago, on the night America entered the Space Age.

He and his fellow engineers were playing gin rummy at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. - but their minds weren't fully on the game. They were waiting for the beep-beep-beep that would tell them the satellite they had slaved over for months had actually reached orbit. "That's an anxious time," he told me this week. "That's the gut time."

Then the definitive signal came. It came later than expected, but nevertheless it came, at 9:45 p.m. PT on Jan. 31, 1958. Explorer 1 was circling Earth for the first time - and proving that America could match the Soviets on the Cold War's orbital frontier.

At a Washington news conference, the rocket pioneer who came to America from Nazi Germany rejoiced. "We have firmly established our foothold in space," Wernher von Braun declared. "We will never give it up again."

Meanwhile, back in Pasadena, Raggio could finally tell his wife about the project he had to keep secret. "I called her up at about 11 o'clock at night and asked her, 'Guess what we're doing?'" he recalled.

What Raggio and his co-workers were doing was getting America into the space game.

The achievement is being celebrated this week with special vigor at JPL at Pasadena - as well as at Cape Canaveral, Fla., where the rocket was launched, and in Huntsville, Ala., where von Braun and his cadre of German engineers were based.

Military origins
Fifty years ago, the operations in Pasadena, Huntsville and Cape Canaveral were mostly military in nature. Long before 1958, several U.S. teams were working to develop missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons to another continent - just as the Soviets were.

In fact, the traditional wisdom is that von Braun's Army-led effort could have put a satellite in space in 1956, but higher-ups worried that an Army launch might send too warlike a signal to Moscow. Instead, President Eisenhower favored the Navy's Project Vanguard, which had more civilian participation.

Then came Sputnik's history-making launch in October 1957, followed less than a month later by Sputnik 2 and the first dog in orbit. Eisenhower pressed his rocketeers to come up with an answering volley within 90 days.

The Vanguard rocket failed spectacularly in December, earning the nickname "Flopnik." Then it was the Army's turn. Von Braun's team readied the Army's Juno 1 rocket, a modified Redstone ballistic missile. JPL built the satellite, which would carry scientific experiments designed under the direction of the University of Iowa's James Van Allen.

Raggio, now 79, said there were long days at the lab, working on the spacecraft's design. There were also long stretches of tedium as the designers waited for the launch. "We played cards, and that was mostly gin," he said. "Gin was a short game."

Cards loomed large in the Explorer 1 team's mind-set. JPL's project manager for the satellite, Jack Froehlich, saw the effort as an opportunity for America to deal itself into the space game after Sputnik's winning hand. He was quoted as saying: "When a big pot is won, the winner sits around and cracks bad jokes, and the loser cries, 'Deal!'"

Froehlich even had decks of cards printed up and passed them out to team members, Raggio recalled. "I happened to have the joker," he said.

Up until the night of the launch, JPL's engineers called the satellite "Project Deal" - but in the end, Eisenhower decided on a different name. "We didn't know until we heard it come over the radio that it was named 'Explorer,'" Raggio said.

Scientific payoff
Explorer 1 gave America a chance to recover some of its confidence and prestige after the Sputnik shock, but there was a scientific payoff as well: The data returned by the satellite showed that Earth was not surrounded by a swarm of killer pebbles, as some scientists had feared. However, the cosmic-ray readings hinted at the existence of bands of radiation surrounding the planet - an unexpected result that led to the discovery of the Van Allen Belts.

"It established the first scientific discovery of the Space Age," JPL historian Erik Conway said.

The rise of space science in 1958 also established a new Space Age role for JPL: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration was founded that October, and just a couple of months afterward, JPL was taken from the Army and put under NASA's wing.

Soon von Braun and the other top rocketeers from Huntsville and Cape Canaveral joined JPL's engineers on the civilian space effort. And the rest is history.

Robots vs. humans
Even then, there was a split between robotic and human space exploration. "Eisenhower was not keen on spending a lot of money on 'Man in Space,' precisely because he viewed it as nothing more than a stunt," Conway said. "Kennedy reversed all that."

A lot of that was also von Braun's doing, he said.

"Von Braun was never interested in the possibilities sparked by robots," Conway told me. "That colored everything he did. He didn't foresee what you could do with robotics. The only people who really did were the space scientists of the '50s who were advising Eisenhower."

JPL helped set the stage for lunar exploration with the robotic Ranger and Surveyor missions, but the astronauts were the stars of the show. Explorer 1, meanwhile, fell out of orbit and burned up over the Pacific Ocean in 1970 amid little fanfare.

Maybe that's as it should be. After all, no one ever threw a ticker-tape parade for a robot. But when it comes to exploration beyond the moon, the robotic probes - Mariner, Pioneer, Mars Viking, Voyager, Galileo, Hubble, Mars Pathfinder, Cassini, the Mars rovers and more - have been and still are the only deal in town, in the solar system and beyond. And there's something to be said for that as well.

Raggio, who retired in 1990, stays active and serves on a variety of community boards, but he still looks upon his 39 years at JPL as the best years of his life.

"What could be better?" he asked. "You get to take a picture of the Maker, and you realize how profound this universe is. Well, you can tell that I'm still turned on. Just going through the gates every day was a turn-on for me."

Conway said that all started with Explorer 1, exactly 50 years ago.

"The big scientific legacy of Explorer 1 was the discovery of the unexpected," he told me. "We did not expect to find belts of radiation surrounding the earth. A lot of scientists always have some idea of what they're looking for, and instead they're often very wrong. We've found some strange things as we've gone out into the solar system. And I expect that will continue."

Check out these retrospectives from JPL, the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times. You can find a list of resources about Wernher von Braun online, courtesy of Marshall Space Flight Center's History Office. This online book is a biography of William Pickering, the JPL director behind Explorer 1.  Here's an online autobiography of space scientist James Van Allen. CollectSpace's Robert Pearlman has an interesting tale about Explorer 1 souvenirs. Finally, feel free to add your comments reflecting on the 50th anniversary of America's space age.

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Ten years after supernovae provided the first evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, a survey of more than 10,000 galaxies has provided independent confirmation that the cosmic speed-up factor known as dark energy is for real.

Scientists say the resolution of the data isn't yet good enough to determine exactly what's behind dark energy, but they say a finer-scale survey could tell whether it's an exotic characteristic of the space-time continuum – or whether it's just that everything we know about gravity is wrong.

Klaus Dolag / ESO

This computer simulation shows a large-scale intergalactic structure in our universe's cosmic web. The color scale represents mass density, and yellow lines describe the intensity and direction of individual galaxies. The lines map how gravity and dark energy are balanced. Click on the image for a bigger view.

The survey, conducted using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile, tracked the distribution and motions of galaxies out to a distance of about 7 billion light-years - yielding a time-lapse view of the cosmos going back to when it was half its current age. Astronomers made more than 13,000 spectral observations to figure out the relative motions of galaxies based on their redshifts.

The results, published in this week's issue of the journal Nature, indicate that at the largest scales, our universe is indeed expanding at a faster rate today than it was billions of years ago. That's pretty much what the supernova readings suggested. But the technique promises to yield additional data about the local motions of galaxies - gravitationally governed motions that pull nearby galaxies into cosmic web patterns (or is that cosmic taffy?).

A close analysis of those local motions could reveal new secrets about the nature of dark energy, said Olivier LeFevre of the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille, one of the 51 scientists behind the research. In today's news release from the ESO, he said the local motions "introduce small but significant distortions in the reconstructed maps of the universe."

"We have shown that measuring this distortion at different epochs of the universe's history is a way to test the nature of dark energy," LeFevre said.

The most straightforward explanation is that dark energy is merely an extra ingredient in the space-time continuum, a cosmic "fudge factor" that Albert Einstein at first built into the equations for relativity, then later eliminated. He called the extra factor, known as the cosmological constant, the "greatest blunder of my life" - but if it turns out the cosmological constant actually exists, then his real blunder was disavowing the idea.

ESO

Maps show the distribution of galaxies in the Very Large Telescope's survey between 1.3 billion and 8.5 billion light-years away, with the data divided into three "cones." Colors indicate density of galaxies, going from green (less dense) to red and blue (more dense). Click on the image for a larger view.

The latest results are consistent with what would be predicted by the cosmological constant, but because the margins of error are so large, they are also consistent with other possible explanations for dark energy - for example, that some quality called quintessence that varies over time, or that gravity is leaking into extra dimensions, or that some completely different theory of gravity is needed.

Today, astronomers can't determine which explanation is the right one. But astronomers should be able to nail down which scenario is at work if the measurements made by the Very Large Telescope could be extended over a volume of the cosmos about 10 times larger than the current survey, said Luigi Guzzo of Italy's Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, the lead author of the research in Nature.

"Explaining why the expansion of the universe is currently accelerating is certainly the most fascinating question in modern cosmology," Guzzo said. "We have been able to show that large surveys that measure the positions and velocities of distant galaxies provide us with a new powerful way to solve this mystery."

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President Bush delivers his State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol on Monday night.

President Bush's final State of the Union address broke new rhetorical ground on the scientific front, marking the first time he uttered the words "stem cells" and "carbon emissions" in his annual summing-up speech. He also received a standing ovation when he called on Congress to double the funding for basic research – and that applause should come as music to the ears of physicists facing layoffs.

But rhetoric doesn't dictate reality: The key indicators will be what happens to federal spending on research and development once Congress gets its hands on the budget proposal due for release Monday – and what the next president will do to restore America's scientific and technological leadership.

On that latter point, there just might be some progress: Organizers of an effort aimed at drawing out the presidential candidates on science and technology issues say they're planning for a bipartisan forum in mid-April.

Back to big science
By that time, the research outlook should be better than it was a month ago, when Congress took a big bite out of this year's budget for big science. The months-overdue omnibus spending plan pulled back hundreds of millions of dollars that research facilities were counting on, and sparked plans to lay off hundreds of federally supported scientists - particularly at high-energy physics labs such as the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and Fermilab.

Bush, who isn't usually thought of as the most science-savvy president, scolded Congress for failing to come through with funding for the administration's American Competitiveness Initiative last year. "This funding is essential to keeping our scientific edge," he said. "So I ask Congress to double federal support for critical basic research in the physical sciences and ensure America remains the most dynamic nation on Earth."

That's when the lawmakers stood up and clapped - and Michael Lubell, who is the director of public affairs at the American Physical Society as well as a physics professor at the City College of New York, took notice.

"It really did generate what I thought was an extremely positive response," Lubell told me today. "At least maybe some of the members of Congress realize what they did was extremely damaging, and maybe they'll even repair some of it."

Lubell calls attention to three things Congress did that, "if left unchanged, would have such long-term impact that we will never recover in my lifetime":

• Reneging on a $160 million contribution to ITER, the international fusion energy project now taking shape in France. Lubell said bowing out of ITER would leave the United States at a disadvantage in fusion research, deal a blow to the U.S. companies that were planning to build components for the reactor, and reinforce the view abroad that America is not a reliable partner on international projects. Washington might even have to pay a hefty kill fee. "If we pull out, we are on the line for a withdrawal penalty of 500 million euros," Lubell said. "This is not chump change."
• Cutting back on high-energy physics projects, including preliminary studies looking ahead to the International Linear Collider. Again, that reinforces the "unreliable-partner" reputation, but the cutbacks bigger repercussions as well, Lubell said. "It's a field that generates all the accelerator technology used in radiation therapy and in X-ray light source facilities," he said.
• Reducing operations at federally funded X-ray and neutron source facilities. Such installations may sound like ultra-geeky places with no real-world applications, but Lubell pointed out that they actually play a huge role in materials testing, microchip development and pharmaceuticals. "If you want to develop a new drug, you can't say, 'We'll wait another year,'" he said.

Lubell said he is still hoping that some science funding will be restored in a supplemental appropriation - perhaps slipped into war-funding legislation in late March or so. "The hope I have is based on conversations with a number of people," he said. The stopgap might involve, say, $100 million for ITER, $50 million for high-energy physics, and $100 million to $150 million for the X-ray and neutron sources.

That extra funding would help hard-hit researchers get through the next few months - and Congress may be in a position to provide further relief in the next fiscal year's budget. Cutting back on congressional "earmarks," as Bush suggested, might also change the equation, considering that the rapid growth in earmarks was thought to be a factor behind this year's R&D woes.

Debatable science
On other science and technology issues, Bush hailed the recent development of stem cell-like cells from skin cells and said funding "for this type of ethical medical research" would be expanded. He backed a variety of energy initiatives, ranging from a "new international clean-technology fund" to clean-coal technologies to nuclear power to renewables to better batteries. And he called for reaching agreement on international measures "to slow, stop and eventually reverse the growth of greenhouse gases."

That all sounds great, although Bush's renewed call for a ban on human cloning might not sit well with some researchers. In any case, we're not likely to see dramatic action on those fronts until the next president makes his or her mark. We've already touched on how the campaign is shaping up on scientific grounds, and ScienceDebate2008 has been working to raise the profile of sci-tech issues.

Last week, the American Association for the Advancement of Science joined the call for a debate, and today the Council on Competitiveness became a co-sponsor. Shawn Lawrence Otto, a member of ScienceDebate2008's steering committee, said organizers are working to arrange an event in mid-April and invite the viable candidates, Democrats as well as Republicans, to participate.

"We think that science and technology are really nonpartisan issues, and we'd like to see what all the candidates have to say," Otto told me.

Would anyone show up? Just how important are science and technology issues to voters, and to the candidates? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

Update for 8:20 p.m. ET: Here are some extra comments that Otto sent via e-mail:

"We do notice that the president spoke about science and technology, competitiveness, health and global warming in his State of the Union speech last night, and several candidates have also begun to talk about these issues, so we feel that we and other organizations making similar efforts to elevate the issues in our national political dialogue are beginning to have an effect. Our supporters collectively represent millions of Americans of all parties, and serious treatment of these issues by the candidates and their government is a top priority for these voters."

Amen.

Update for 2:40 a.m. ET Jan. 31: Space is an issue that Bush has never addressed during a State of the Union speech, although he devoted a whole talk to America's future space vision back in 2004. Nevertheless, space advocate Jeff Krukin argues in a blog post that many of Bush's State of the Union themes - from the environment to energy to education - touch upon the importance of space activities. Or at least they should.

Meanwhile, Kei Koizumi, who handles science policy issues for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, got back to me and noted that Bush's reference to doubling federal support for the physical sciences appears to be telegraphing what will be in next week's budget proposal. But what will Congress do to the administration's plans for research and development, now that we're getting into the heart of campaign season? "That is the big unanswerable question," Koizumi said.

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Thierry Boccon-Gibod / Virgin Galactic

With SpaceShipTwo in the background, aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan (second from left) chats with design team leaders Luke Colby, Jim Tighe and Matt Stinemetze.

When it comes to visions of future spaceships, Virgin Galactic certainly knows how to pour on the glitz – as evidenced by last week's gossip-worthy unveiling of the design for the SpaceShipTwo launch system. But there's a lot of hard work to be done behind the scenes, and far more people are involved in the effort besides British billionaire Richard Branson and aerospace guru Burt Rutan, the stars of last week's show. Some of the unsung rocketeers in the commercial space race are just now getting their shot at the spotlight - while others stay out of the spotlight entirely.

Rutan himself tried to shift the spotlight when he brought up five of SpaceShipTwo's top designers, who had flown in for the New York unveiling from Rutan's home base at Scaled Composites in Mojave, Calif.

"I am not a sole designer - in fact, I have not been well lately," Rutan told the audience. "These guys here are the ones who are running our design program, our development program."

The five next-generation engineers on the stage were:

• Matt Stinemetze, project engineer at Scaled Composites.
• Bob Morgan, design team leader developing the launch airplane.
• Jim Tighe, project engineer for the spaceship, and chief aerodynamicist at Scaled.
• Pete Siebold, specializing in avionics and development of the SpaceShipTwo simulator.
• Luke Colby, designer for rocket propulsion.

"Burt has this unique knack to pull together the best designers on the planet, and drag them out to the middle of nowhere with nothing to do but design really cool spaceships," Stinemetze joked.

Stinemetze and Tighe were actually the first ones to lay out the main features of the SpaceShipTwo rocket plane and its WhiteKnightTwo mothership. "Expect in the future to see a fleet of these," Tighe told reporters. 

Afterward, I asked Rutan via e-mail about the reference to the team - as well as the reference to his health. Was there any reason to think he would have to step out of his starring role? Here's his reply:

"For a long time the press has always given me sole credit for design of the 39 aircraft developed by my two companies. While the creative aerodynamic content has been mine for most of them, the current crop of new stuff is done by a large team of engineers. I brought the top five of them for the SS2 program to the press conference, introduced them and their roles in the program and had them discuss the detailed design rationale for the two ships on the Virgin team.

"The goal was to give them the deserved credit for design of these aircraft/spaceships. However, in all the stories I have read about the unveil press event, every writer has ignored what he saw and gives me credit for the designs. I would have thought that at least a few of them were awake?

"I have not been mute about the health problems I have had since early September, but I would not be happy to see stories about it in the press. Since there are always flaws in the stuff published I would not welcome having to correct personal info that is not relevant to our space story. A better place for that would be in a biography book."

Just as Rutan isn't the sole designer on the SpaceShipTwo team, SpaceShipTwo is not the sole entrant in the private-sector space race - though I admit that might have been hard to figure out on the basis of last week's news reports, including mine.

Branson, who founded Virgin Galactic as the final-frontier wing of his Virgin empire back in 1999, has a unique knack for generating consumer buzz about his ventures, and that has brought in an estimated $30 million in deposits for future flights. The other players may be taking a lower profile - but they're just as serious about keeping up with Branson's pace in what most of them think will be a marathon with more than one winner. Here's a sampling that hits upon the variations in business strategies:

Inch by inch, step by step
XCOR Aerospace is Rutan's lesser-known aerospace neighbor in Mojave, although the company builds up a little more celebrity every time it wins a rocket contract or gets featured in a magazine. Company spokesman Doug Graham compares Rutan to a space-age Christopher Columbus, who is able to attract funding from some of the deepest pockets of the day. In a sense, Richard Branson and SpaceShipOne's backer, software billionaire Paul Allen, play the same roles that Ferdinand and Isabella filled back in 1492.

"Queen Isabella hasn't shown up for us, so we're doing it the hard way," Graham said. "We've had to get it one jewel at a time."

Those jewels have been earned for developing the flying machines for the Rocket Racing League as well as for doing rocket-engine work for NASA, DARPA and the U.S. Air Force. In addition to paying the rent, such projects advance XCOR's efforts to create a rocket-powered, two-seat suborbital space plane

XCOR has been mum about when it hopes to get that plane off the ground and into space, and it seems unlikely that the two-seater will be ready before SpaceShipTwo's eight-seater. But Graham said some things are more important than being first to market. "It would be great to be the first to enter, but you want to be the first to enter with the right vehicle," he said.

Giving NASA a lift
Several spaceship companies are banking on NASA to give them a boost, through a demonstration program known as the Commercial Orbital Transportation System, or COTS, as well as future payload deals for the international space station.

California-based SpaceX is already in the midst of a NASA-supported development program for its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon cargo/crew capsule. Four other companies - Andrews Space, Orbital Sciences, PlanetSpace and Spacehab - are heading up teams looking for more NASA funding. What's more, PlanetSpace and t/Space, as well as Spacehab, Constellation Services International and SpaceDev, are already getting advice from NASA (but no money) on spaceship development.

The key milestones to come include NASA's Feb. 7 decision on the next round of funding, as well as SpaceX demonstration flights planned this year for the Falcon 9 as well as its smaller-scale Falcon 1 rocket. Just this month, SpaceX conducted its first multi-engine firing test for the Falcon 9.

If you build it, they will come
Nevada-based Bigelow Aerospace and Washington-based Blue Origin are both funded by billionaires (hotel magnate Robert Bigelow and Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, respectively), and they both tend to play their cards a bit closer to the vest.

Bigelow is riding on a wave of two high-profile successes for its inflatable orbital space modules, and is reportedly looking for an affordable launch vehicle as it prepares to put up the first private-sector space station capable of accommodating visitors.

Blue Origin, meanwhile, trumpeted a successful test flight a year ago but has since reverted to its secretive ways. By my tally, there were at least three opportunities for flight testing over the past year, based on Federal Aviation Administration records, and in November Bezos said a new test rocketship was being built. The reports emanating from Blue Origin's spaceport in Texas hint that the launch facilities there are also in the midst of an upgrade - and that a new round of tests is expected in the coming months.

Spaceflight sponsors
Oklahoma-based Rocketplane Global recently unveiled its own XP spaceship design, and chief executive officer George French noted Virgin Galactic's new look with special interest.

"If you look at their new design, you'll see three Rocketplanes," he told me today. Of course, Rocketplane's hybrid jet-rocketship doesn't sport SpaceShipTwo's movable fins - which Rutan considers the key to the plane's eventual success - but French voiced confidence that his six-seat plane will hold its own.

While Virgin Galactic has been courting customers well-heeled enough to pay $200,000 for a flight to the edge of space, Rocketplane has been focusing on corporate sponsors. One of the latest to sponsor a future free suborbital spaceflight is the Nestle candy company, which is promoting its KitKat bar in France. (Here's a report about the contest - in French, of course.)

"Virgin's a marketing machine, and we can't compete with them on public PR, but when the designs go head to head, and corporations do due diligence, they pick us," French said.

Rocketplane has been aiming to get its XP craft into operation by the end of 2010, although French told me that date is squishy. "Everybody who's out there has found out that it's taking longer than they thought," he said.

But wait ... there's more
So far, the two-year rule appears to be holding - that is, the first flights are two years away, no matter who you're talking about. Next year, they still may be two years away. But at least some players in the space game will continue moving ahead, often blending strategies in the process.

For example, Armadillo Aerospace's John Carmack is paying his own way as he and his team work on modular rocketships, but he also wants to get in on NASA prizes, suborbital joyrides, military contracts and corporate deals down the road.

Space Adventures is sending high-rolling travelers on orbital trips, and the company is even selling a backup seat for $3 million. (As expected, Australian entrepreneur Nik Halik was named today as backup for space-bound game guru Richard Garriott.) At the same time, Space Adventures is making deals for lower-rolling suborbital giveaways.

Zero Gravity Corp. is flying private passengers on weightless airplane flights, but is also doing corporate sponsorships and giving NASA a zero-G lift. Then there's the Google Lunar X Prize, which is attracting a new set of players hoping to send a robot to the moon and win $20 million or more. (Word is that more X Prize competitors may surface next month.)

I'm sure I've left off some worthy players, and I apologize in advance for that. For a good overview of the entire field, check out our private-sector space archive as well as our clickable survey of the "New Space Landscape."

Elsewhere on the Web, you can visit Clark Lindsey's RLV and Space Transport News, Jeff Foust's Personal Spaceflight, Michael Belfiore's Dispatches from the Final Frontier and Rob Coppinger's Hyperbola.  And as always, feel free to add your reflections on the rocketeers - sung or unsung - as comments below.

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NASA / JHUAPL / CIW

An enhanced-color view of Mercury brings out subtle hues. Click on the image for a bigger version.

It's been a big week for interplanetary vistas: We've already dealt with the flap over the "Mermaid on Mars," of course, but NASA has also put out a new panorama of the Opportunity rover's surroundings to mark this week's fourth anniversary of its landing. We have the first color image from the Messenger mission to Mercury, the first radar image of an asteroid heading for a close encounter with Earth next week, and the first "high-definition" view of Pluto (sorry, it still looks like a dot). The next week should bring even more cool stuff, including the first full-scale science briefing following the Mercury flyby. Here's a quick look at the latest from our solar system:

Mercury
The team behind NASA's Messenger probe has been churning out pictures from the closest-in planet on a daily basis - including Tuesday's offering, which is arguably the best color picture of Mercury released so far. The Mariner 10 spacecraft sent back color views in 1974 and 1975, but Messenger's camera captures a wider spectrum.

The picture above was taken during Messenger's Jan. 14 flyby from a distance of about 17,000 miles (27,000 kilometers). The hues are a bit more colorful than what the human eye can see, because the image has been color-coded to indicate infrared wavelengths as well as far red and violet. Scientists can analyze those color variations to figure out the planet's surface composition - and piece together a better picture of Mercury's formation and evolution.

You can expect to hear much more about Mercury at 1 p.m. ET Wednesday, when NASA is due to present a news briefing about the Messenger flyby.

Venus
The European Space Agency's Venus Express orbiter is still on the job, and the latest burst of scientific findings was published in the journal Nature back in November. This week, Voice of America provided an audio update (read in "special English"), including an explanation of why the planet is so dry.

NASA / JPL-Caltech

These are several views of asteroid 2007 TU24, captured by the Goldstone Solar System Radar Telescope in California's Mojave Desert.

Near-Earth asteroid
Asteroid 2007 TU24 is due to come within 334,000 miles (538,000 kilometers) of Earth next Tuesday, and astronomers are gearing up to watch the space rock as it passes by. The asteroid should be visible through backyard telescopes with apertures of at least 3 inches. This Web page has a sky chart that can help you find it in the night sky.

When it comes to determining the asteroid's actual shape, pointing a huge radar antenna at the darn thing is the best way to go.

That's exactly what scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory did, using the 230-foot (70-meter) Goldstone antenna in California's Mojave Desert. The radar readings reveal that 2007 TU24 is asymmetrical, with a diameter of about 800 feet (250 meters), JPL said today.

The highly pixellated views remind me of a smaller version of asteroid Itokawa, which was visited by Japan's Hayabusa probe a couple of years ago.

"With these first radar observations finished, we can guarantee that next week's 1.4-lunar-distance approach is the closest until at least the end of the next century," JPL's Steve Ostro, principal investigator for the asteroid-watching project, said in today's image advisory. "It is also the asteroid's closest Earth approach for more than 2,000 years."

Ostro and other astronomers will be watching the asteroid using an even bigger dish, the 1,000-foot-wide (305-meter-wide) Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, just before and after next week's close approach.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / Cornell

A Martian panorama shows Victoria Crater and other features surrounding NASA's Opportunity rover. The picture includes a distorted view of the rover's solar panels. Click on the image for a larger view from NASA.

Mars
The latest color picture from the twin rover missions to Mars shows Opportunity's surroundings inside an alcove called Duck Bay, in the western portion of Victoria Crater. The panorama, assembled from imagery captured between Oct. 23 and Dec. 11, shows the promontory known as Cape Verde on the left, and Cabo Frio on the right.

The image was released on Thursday, exactly four years after Opportunity landed in Mars' Meridiani Planum region (if you're on Pacific Time, that is). Back then, mission managers would have counted themselves lucky if the rovers lasted for three months and drove four-tenths of a mile (600 meters). To date, Opportunity has driven about 20 times that far - and both rovers are still in good shape.

Jupiter
The latest news about our solar system's biggest planet comes from researchers who studied Jupiter's weather patterns, using imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope. They focused on an outburst of atmospheric jet plumes, and said the jets appeared to be powered by Jupiter's internal heat. Check out the full story.

Saturn
The hits just keep on coming from the Cassini orbiter: Visit the home page for the Cassini imaging team, or NASA's Saturn Web site, for fresh black-and-white views of the planet's rings and moons.

NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI

A negative image from New Horizons highlights Pluto amid stars in the constellation Serpens.

Pluto
We'll skip over Uranus and Neptune and end today's tour with Pluto, the solar system's best-known and most controversial dwarf planet. NASA's New Horizons probe won't pass by Pluto until 2015, but it already has the icy world in its sights. On Thursday, the New Horizons team released the first picture of Pluto taken using the high-resolution mode on the spacecraft's Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager.

The picture was taken on Oct. 6, from a distance of 2.2 billion miles (3.6 billion kilometers), and Pluto still looks like nothing more than a dot. If you're looking for a better view, you'll just have to wait: New Horizons won't be able to see Pluto and its satellite Charon as separate objects until the summer of 2010, and it will be 2014 before the camera will be able to resolve any details on the plan ... er, dwarf planet's surface.

• Flight International: Designs on space
• The Economist: Starship Enterprise ... the next generation
• Wired Danger Room: Blackswift swoops in for $750 million
• Sorting Out Science: Carnival of Space 38

NASA via MSNBC

CLICK FOR VIDEO  MSNBC's Willie Geist  reports on the latest  enigma from Mars.

Now there's a "Mermaid on Mars" to go along with the time-honored Face on Mars: Some Red Planet fans see the sculpture of a seated woman in one of the panoramas sent back to Earth by NASA's Spirit rover.

Is this suppressed evidence of alien artistry? Does the picture actually show a creature of some sort? Based on analysis of the stereo imagery, the best explanation is that the feature was indeed sculpted - not by a Martian hand, but by the Martian wind.

Some folks make a habit of looking for strange features in the pictures that have come from the Mars rovers over the past four years - features like "bunny ears" (bits of fabric left behind by the rovers), or the "Martian footprint" (the imprint of a wheel tread), or "rover rotini" (a mysterious curlicue that might be a mark left behind by a drill).

The Martian Mermaid has taken its place as one of those enigmas, elevated to prominence by a Daily Mail article headlined "Life on Mars?" The Telegraph wondered whether the sculpture was the Martian equivalent of Denmark's Little Mermaid. Even the TODAY show's blog joined in the fun.

NASA / JPL / Cornell The "Mermaid" is hard to see in the original pictures from NASA, so this picture helps you get oriented. The enigmatic feature is within the red circle in this picture. Click on the image to see a larger version.

Some people take this seriously, however - hinting darkly that NASA is covering up evidence of alien life. So it's a good idea to try to figure out just what the feature is. As usual, Emily Lakdawalla does a great job of collecting the evidence on the Planetary Society blog.

The key step is to go back to the original images that were collected by Spirit last November. If you take out your red-blue 3-D glasses (you do keep a pair with you at all times, right?), a look at the high-resolution stereo imagery will be instructive: The "sculpture" appears to have some depth to it, and the more you look, the more it appears to be a spiky spire of rock stretching out from wind-eroded formations.

Cornell astronomer Jim Bell, who heads the scientific team behind the Mars rovers' panoramic cameras, confirmed my impression when I contacted him today. By now he's quite familiar with the image and the controversy, in large part because he's been getting dozens of phone calls from reporters asking about the Mermaid (or is that Bigfoot?).

"It's a funky little bizarre wind-carved rock formation," Bell told me. "It's not unusual at all."

NASA / JPL / Cornell

Get out your 3-D glasses: The "Mermaid" is a dark point toward the upper left of this stereo image. You can see how erosion has sculpted nearby rocks as well.

Bell figures that the feature is about 2 inches (5 centimeters) high. He said his team has come across a variety of curious-looking shapes like this one as they've sorted through the more than 200,000 images returned by the Mars rovers over the past four years. To date, none has provided clues worth following in the search for traces of ancient life on Mars, he said.

"Believe me, I would be leading the parade if there were really pictures of little men or fossils," Bell told me.

Although he's a little nonplussed about the conspiracy angle, Bell said he welcomes any opportunity to draw attention to the fantastic pictures sent back by Spirit and Opportunity - pictures that can be seen at NASA's Web site at Cornell's Pancam Web site. Bell also highlights the best images in his recently published coffee-table book, "Postcards From Mars." We also have a nice selection of images in our space gallery, including this rover retrospective.

"I think it's great that people are interested in the rovers and that they're still generating news - even if it's bizarre," Bell said.

Case closed? You decide - then add your comments below.

Chip East / Reuters

SpaceShipTwo designer Burt Rutan meets the press.

One big question was left hanging over today's fresh revelations about Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo design: Exactly when will the company begin commercial passenger service?

The answer seems hazier today than it was a year ago - primarily because of last July's fatal accident during early tests of the SpaceShipTwo rocket plane's propulsion system.

"We don't know yet exactly what caused it," the craft's designer, Burt Rutan, told me.

Yes, California safety officials issued their citations - and levied more than $25,000 in fines - just a few days ago. But those citations had to do more with what the officials saw as inadequate training for handling nitrous oxide at Scaled Composites, the company behind SpaceShipTwo as well as its predecessor, SpaceShipOne.

Scaled's executive vice president, Doug Shane, said last week that the company was cooperating with state officials to resolve the workplace issues. Today, Rutan emphasized that last July's accident did not involve an engine firing - but a "cold flow" test that had repeatedly been done before without incident.

"We were doing something that we thought was extremely safe," said Rutan, Scaled's founder and chief executive officer.

During SpaceShipOne's successful run for the $10 million Ansari X Prize, Rutan had praised the craft's hybrid rocket system - which used solid rubber-based fuel and pressurized nitrous oxide - as the safest alternative. Last year's accident threw that into question, and sparked rumblings that the propulsion system's design might have to be reviewed.

Today, Rutan said the design of SpaceShipTwo's rocket engine was still up in the air.

"We are having delays in development of the rocket engine," he acknowledged. "We just don't know how long those delays will be yet."

He was confident, however, that any problems will be worked out - in consultation not only with the state but also with experts from elsewhere in the rocket industry.

Rutan has always been reluctant to talk about his future development schedule, to avoid tipping off competitors as well as to head off questions about development delays. But he's not reluctant to declare that air-launch systems like WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo are the wave of the future.

Rutan said his agreement with Virgin Galactic calls for building five SpaceShipTwo planes, with an option for seven more. Over the first 12 years or so, Rutan said he envisions building 40 to 45 SpaceShipTwos, and 15 WhiteKnightTwo motherships. That could bring 100,000 passengers to the edge of space, adding new volumes to the current list of less than 200 astronauts.

Of course, Virgin Galactic would love to see the service start sooner rather than later - either in Mojave, Calif., where Rutan's team is currently working, or at the yet-to-be-built Spaceport America in New Mexico. But Virgin Galactic officials say it will be Rutan rather than Richard Branson, the company's billionaire founder, who will set the development schedule. That means an end, at least for the time being, to the predictions about 2009, 2010 or 2011.

"We're not in a race with anyone," Virgin Galactic's president, Will Whitehorn, said this afternoon. "We're in a race for safety, for our own sake and the sake of our customers."

Check out our slide show about SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo, and get the full background from our special report on commercial spaceflight, titled "The New Space Race."

Genetic researchers in China, Britain and the United States are teaming up to unravel the full genetic code of at least 1,000 people around the world - an unprecedented scientific project that could cost tens of millions of dollars and eventually reveal the roots of hundreds of diseases.

"The 1000 Genomes Project will examine the human genome at a level of detail that no one has done before," Richard Durbin of Britain's Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, who is the project consortium's co chair, said in today's announcement. "Such a project would have been unthinkable two years ago. Today, thanks to amazing strides in sequencing technology, bioinformatics and population genomics, it is now within our grasp."

The project will build on the foundation created for HapMap, a similarly international gene-decoding effort. HapMap charted genetic differences between various geographical populations by looking at variations in "letters" of genetic code, known as single nucleotide polymorphism or SNPs. This time, researchers will analyze the full volume of human genetic information - which runs to a length of 3 billion letters, or roughly the entire English-language content of Wikipedia.

Using HapMap and other genetic databases, researchers already have identified about 100 regions of the genome that are associated with increased risk for diseases ranging from cancer and diabetes to cystic fibrosis and Huntington's disease. But in order to track down exactly what goes wrong and how to fix it, researchers generally have to go through another circuitous round of genetic sequencing.

Taking the shortcut
The 1000 Genomes Project is aimed at providing a shortcut: The organizers of the effort figure that by mapping at least 1,000 full human genomes, they should be able to catalog the variants that appear in 1 percent or more of the global population across most of the genome. Within specific genes, the precision should be even better, catching variations down to the 0.5 percent level.

That would improve the sensitivity of disease discovery efforts by a factor of five for the full genome, and by a factor of 10 or more within gene regions, said Francis Collins, who headed the Human Genome Project and is now director of the federally funded National Human Genome Research Institute.

Once the project's database is filled out, researchers could use genome-wide association studies to narrow down an area that appeared to be associated with a disease. Then they could consult the catalog for the assorted variations within that region. Finally, they could run studies to figure out whether - and exactly how - particular variations contribute to the disease in question.

The data will be made freely available to researchers around the world, starting in 2011 or so, via the National Center for Biotechnology Information, the European Bioinformatics Institute and the Beijing Genomics Institute in Shenzhen.

Who's involved?
The first samples for the 1000 Genomes Project will be coming from specimens already collected for the HapMap project and the extended HapMap set. The DNA is not linked to personal medical data, but rather to ethnic/geographical populations: Yoruba in Nigeria, Japanese in Tokyo, Chinese in Beijing, Utah residents with northern European ancestry, Luhya and Maasai in Kenya, Toscani in Italy, Gujarat Indians in Houston, Chinese in metropolitan Denver, Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles and African-Americans in the Southwest.

The project is getting major support from the institutes headed by Durbin and Collins, as well as from the Beijing Genomics Institute. A variety of American institutes and universities will be working through the National Human Genome Research Institute's Large-Scale Sequencing Network - and more institutions may join the international consortium as time goes on.

Based on current rates, the cost of sequencing so many genomes would amount to at least $350 million, and perhaps more than $500 million. Earlier this month, Massachusetts-based Knome and the Beijing Genetics Institute announced that they were pairing up to do whole-genome sequencing for 20 people, with a price tag starting at $350,000 per genome. (You think that's expensive? BGI did the first Chinese personal genome last year for $1.3 million.)

Over the next three years, the 1000 Genomes Project is aiming to bring the cost down to a tenth of the current rate - for a total cost of between $30 million and $50 million - by employing new sequencing technologies with greater efficiency.

The road ahead
The first year of the international effort will be taken up with pilot projects, aimed at finding out which combination of low-resolution and high-resolution sequencing will work the best. Then, during the scheduled two-year production phase, researchers hope to churn out an average of 8.2 billion DNA bases per day - the equivalent of more than two full human genomes every 24 hours.

"When up and running at full speed, this project will generate more sequence in two days than was added to public databases for all of the past year," the University of Oxford's Gil McVean, one of the co-chairs of the consortium's analysis group, said in today's announcement.

Will the project hasten the day when your genome is an open book, revealing your predisposition to suffer deadly diseases - and perhaps to do dastardly deeds? The project's organizers say that they're deploying a phalanx of ethicists to guard against abuses, and that the privacy of genetic donors will be preserved. What do you think? Learn more about the project from the 1000 Genomes Web site, as well as this advance report from Nature, then weigh in with your comments below.

Update for 10:50 a.m ET: Nature's follow-up report says some scientists fear the project's goals are too ambitious for its budget and timeline. The report also quotes Knome's George Church as saying the project might not be ambitious enough, because the database won't link genetic variants directly with disease data. The project organizers held back from doing that due to privacy concerns - and also because they felt the medical applications were best left to follow-up studies. More food for thought...

• L.A. Times: Girl, you'll be a woman sooner than expected
• Aviation Week: Forget the moon, go for the asteroids?
• The Space Review: The dark side of space disaster theories
• The Daily Grail: Richard Dawkins comes to call

It's been almost 40 years since a great man lost his life, essentially because he had a dream of racial equality. As America celebrates Martin Luther King Jr. Day today, there's been a resurgence of interest in the issue of race - not only because a black man is a serious contender for the presidency, but also because scientific trends have raised new questions about the concept of race.

On one side, we have DNA pioneer James Watson's comments about potential correlations between ethnicity and intelligence - comments that sparked the biggest controversy in Watson's controversial career. On the other side, we have genomics maverick J. Craig Venter's observation that "race is a social concept, not a scientific one."

This year's HapMap genetic survey adds to the picture's complexity, noting that there are links between geographical origins and genetic traits, ranging from your vulnerability to diseases to your vulnerability to underarm wetness. Just as we're getting over the idea that your skin color defines who you are, researchers are pointing out that genetics can play a role in defining what you will become.

When it comes to higher functions, however, the nature-vs.-nurture argument comes to the fore. If one geographical population behaves differently from another, is it really a case of genetic differences, or rather of cultural differences? New research indicates that the pull of cultural values can be surprisingly powerful, potentially leading to changes in the wiring of the brain. 

Such findings reinforce what Martin Luther King (and J. Craig Venter) said: Much of what we think of as racial differences have to do with social differences instead. When populations are isolated, genetic variations and environmental factors tend to take those populations down separate paths. That's how some of our ancestors happened to end up lighter-skinned than others.

Today, we're dealing with the multimillion-year hangover from those differences,  as well as our hard-wiring for "us vs. them" tribalism. I have a dream that a deeper understanding of genetics will finally help us bridge the gap.

I'm out of the office today, but to help bridge the gap to my next posting, here are some Web offerings that touch upon race and genetics:

• Wired: Police won't touch racial DNA test
• Center for American Progress: Geneticizing disease
• N.Y. Times: In DNA era, new worries about prejudice
• New America Media: Genetic drift and the nature of race

KXAS-TV

CLICK FOR VIDEO KXAS-TV's Scott Gordon reports on the UFO frenzy in Stephenville, Texas.

Ten days after the first sightings of lights in the sky over Texas, tales of UFOs are still sparking speculation. One of the witnesses, Steve Allen, is offering $5,000 for a good picture of the flying object - but he hasn't bought any of the photos or videos offered so far. "The pictures weren't worth a damn," he told me.

On Saturday, he and other witnesses are gathering to pool their accounts for a national UFO organization – but there's always a chance the Texas sightings will fade into the distance, just like the O'Hare UFO sighting over a year ago. What's the best way to document a sighting? Here are some tips:

Take a picture
Getting an image of something in the sky may sound like the best way to go, but as this month's reports illustrate, that's not always sure-fire. Allen was one of the most widely quoted witnesses of the purported flyover on Jan. 8, and it was his desire to have an image that led him to offer the $5,000 reward. "I'd have given five grand that day to have a camera," he explained.

Several residents from the area around Stephenville, Texas, responded - but Allen said the pictures showed little more than dots in the sky. "I don't need a dot standing out there," he said.

Today the Fort Worth Star Telegraph published a front-page picture of the sighting, taken by a trucker with his cell phone as he drove along Interstate 20. "It looked like a meteor entering the atmosphere," the truck driver, Sean Kiel, was quoted as saying.

Allen was unimpressed. "It's not worth a flip," he told me. The bright spot's position in relation to the sun reminded me of a sundog, and the speck on the upper part of the image looked like an airplane. But of course, I'm no expert.

Photos are easy to fake. For example, in the case of the O'Hare UFO sightings, there were rumblings for weeks afterward about photographs showing the strange saucer over the airport. However, more than a year after the story caused such a sensation, only one picture remains that hasn't been debunked, according to Above Top Secret. And that one is far from conclusive.

Take a reading
NBC News space analyst James Oberg is hardly a true believer. Over the years, he's been pilloried by ufologists for coming down too hard on claims of strange sightings. But in the Texas case, Oberg is reluctant to prejudge the witnesses. Rather, he merely says that observers should be alert if they have an opportunity to identify a strange sky object. Here's what he had to say in an e-mail:

"Anytime you get a revisiting UFO, you have the chance to narrow down the normally near-infinite candidate list of prosaic explanations. You can ask people to memorize or record positions in the sky and angular size and speed of the apparition - not make unhelpful and automatically suspect guesses of sheer size and range, guesses that always involve unspoken (and unrealized) guesses about exactly those parameters that are supposedly being reported. Compare the object to the size of a fingertip, or a fist, at arm's length.

"Note where you are when you see it, and where it is over - and later go back and convert that to a true compass bearing. Log the times as accurately as possible - and if by your own watch, later compare it to a clock on a news channel. That way, separate but simultaneous sightings can be combined to create parallax measurements of true range.

"If nobody does this serious observation stuff, they may all be excited and have fun, but they'll be of no use to figuring out what may be behind the apparitions - and there's lots of stuff, some of it deliberately clandestine, that could be masquerading.

"Seeing jets chasing a UFO is a common perception - it's happened to me at least twice - and one has to be cautious about interpretations. Even at ranges of a mile or two, three jets in a close row will give the impression of the first object being silent - a 'UFO' - because the sound delay makes the second jet appear to be the first object giving off engine noise. It is a striking misinterpretation that most folks are never warned about. I'm not offering it as an explanation - only as a cautionary admonition."

Take a meeting
The Texas chapter of the Mutual UFO Network, or MUFON, has scheduled a session starting at 1 p.m. CT Saturday in Dublin, Texas, to interview Allen and other witnesses. To hear MUFON state director Ken Cherry tell it, the spectators and journalists in attendance might well outnumber those witnesses. "Normally we do this in a more private setting," he told me today.

Nevertheless, Cherry said he has received eyewitness reports from at least 40 to 50 "folks who sound credible," via telephone (817-379-0773) or the MUFON Web site.

"We consider this the most significant mass sighting since the Phoenix Lights of 1997," he said.

MUFON investigators will be asking the witnesses to fill out three-page questionnaires and also tell their stories - and the results will be eventually be compiled in a report. "The whole process will probably take several months," Cherry said.

Will the Texas sighting be the event that finally rips the lid off the UFO conspiracy, or will it go into the same file drawer where the O'Hare and Phoenix cases are sitting? Stay tuned for the next installment - and in the meantime, feel free to take our UFO quiz, register your opinion using our unscientific Live Vote, check out the archived Log items here and here ... and, as always, weigh in with your comments below.

Update for 6:10 p.m. ET Jan. 20: The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has a report about the "crowded cacophony of confusion" at Saturday's UFO meeting, with seven investigators quizzing more than 50 witnesses as 400 onlookers (some in tinfoil hats) milled about. As Cherry said in advance of the event, it'll be several months before MUFON puts out its report. Among other media outlets in attendance were KXAS-TV, the Houston Chronicle and The Dallas Morning News.

Update for 6:30 p.m. ET Jan. 23: There will likely be more about this, but just for the record, I should pass along this U.S. Navy advisory issued today:

"NAVAL AIR STATION JOINT RESERVE BASE FORT WORTH, Texas - In the interest of public awareness, Air Force Reserve Command Public Affairs realized an error was made regarding the reported training activity of military aircraft.

"Ten F-16s from the 457th Fighter Squadron were performing training ope,rations  from 6 to 8 p.m., Tuesday January 8, 2008 in the Brownwood Miltary Operating Area (MOA), which includes the airspace above Erath county.

"A MOA is airspace designated for military training. ..."

Does this solve the mystery? Feel free to weigh in once more.

• The Economist: Dangerous driving in the heavens
• 'Nova' on PBS: 'Family That Walks on All Fours'
• Computerworld: 'Jumping' from fact to fiction 
• Discovery.com: How to build a snowflake

Nature Nanotechnology / Stanford

Photomicrographs show silicon nanowires before and after charging (left and right, respectively).

If you've ever rushed to save your files before your laptop battery gave out, or scrambled to recharge your iPod, or wished out loud for the resurrection of the electric car ... relief is in sight.

Yet another battery breakthrough is on its way to market, taking its place alongside improved hybrid-electric vehicles, the promise of ultracapacitor systems and even better AA power cells. Next-generation batteries could well last several times as long as current power packs, thanks to nanotechnology.

"This idea will have a really high impact on battery technology," said Stanford chemist Yi Cui, who is the lead researcher behind a study appearing in this month's issue of Nature Nanotechnology. "This is really revolutionary."

The key innovation involves using silicon nanowires instead of the usual carbon to store energy in a lithium-ion battery's anode.

Silicon has more than 10 times as much charge capacity as carbon. If commercial batteries could live up to that performance level, you could theoretically be running your laptop for 20 to 40 hours straight rather than the typical two to four hours. An electric car could go 400 miles on a charge rather than 40 miles.

Of course, the reality is more complex than the theory. But more about that later. The first question is whether this technology is actually for real. If silicon is that good at storing electrical energy, why isn't it being used already?

That's where nanotechnology makes the difference: For years, engineers have been trying to harness silicon electrodes for battery applications. But the problem with silicon is that its volume bulks up by a factor of four when you add the lithium - and then shrinks by the same factor when power is extracted. That quickly pulverizes an electrode made of silicon film or particles, rendering the battery useless.

Cui and his colleagues took a different approach: They grew nanowires of silicon directly on a stainless-steel plate. Each wire was about 90 nanometers wide, or a thousandth of the width of the typical human hair. When the filaments were filled with lithium-ion power, they thickened up and lengthened into curls, like tiny spongeworms - but they retained their resiliency through dozens of power cycles.

"This idea really made these silicon materials possible to be used in battery technology," Cui said.

Challenges still lie ahead: First of all, Cui's team focused on retooling the anode, which is just one of the electrodes in a battery. To get the full tenfold improvement, Cui told me, "you would need to improve also the other electrode ... but with one electrode improvement, you can improve a lot already." For example, you could make the anode smaller, leaving more space for a bigger cathode.

Cui's team also found that there was a one-time capacity drain after the first charge. But that's no biggie. The nanowires' storage capacity was still about eight times higher than carbon, Cui said. "This won't prevent this technology from going forward," he said.

On the plus side, silicon-nanowire batteries wouldn't have to look like the battery bricks that are typically used in laptops or cell phones. "It's a fundamentally different structure from the current technology," Cui said. And that could result in batteries that are better-shaped to conform to the available space.

Cui said a patent application has been filed for the technology, and he's considering starting up a company to commercialize the concept. So when might silicon-nanowire batteries hit the market? "I'm thinking in the next three to five years," Cui said.

Some companies are already knocking on the lab door. Cui acknowledged that Tesla Motors, the company working on an all-electric sports car, is just one of the outfits expressing interest. "There are lots," Cui told me, "but it's better not to mention their names now."

To learn more about Cui's work, check out this interview at GM-Volt.com and this story in The Stanford Daily. In addition to Cui, the authors of the Nature Nanotechnology paper include Candace Chan, Halin Peng and Robert Huggins of Stanford University, Gao Liu of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Kevin McIlwrath and Xiao Feng Zhang of Hitachi High Technologies.

• L.A. Times: Why do people believe weird things about money?
• National Geographic: Can Egypt copyright the Pyramids?
• Wired: Why do some pot-smokers become paranoid?
• New Scientist: What kind of cup works best in space?

NASA / JHUAPL / CIW

The giant Caloris impact basin is at upper right in this image of Mercury, captured by NASA's Messenger probe. Click on the image for a bigger version.

In the wake of this week's successful flyby, the team behind NASA's Messenger probe has released the first picture of a side of the planet Mercury never seen before – a moonlike landscape covered with craters and bright material turned up by impacts.

Yet another image presents a new, up-close view of a double-ringed crater named Vivaldi, which was last seen during the Mariner 10 flyby more than 30 years ago. From here on out, images from the Messenger flyby should be dribbling out on a regular basis via the science team's Web site.

Until now, Mariner 10's flybys in 1974 and 1975 have provided the definitive views of surface details for our solar system's closest-in planet (and the smallest, if you don't count places like Pluto or Eris). Mariner missed seeing more than half the planet, however. This time around, the $427 million Messenger mission - which was launched back in 2004 - will be seeing the whole picture, during three flybys as well as a yearlong orbital mapping phase that's due to begin in 2011.

Monday's initial flyby came as close as 124 miles (200 kilometers) to the surface, zipping past at 16,000 mph (25,000 kilometers per hour). The spacecraft's camera captured about 1,200 images, and the science team is now checking through the best of the bunch, one frame at a time, mission spokeswoman Paulette Campbell told me from the team's headquarters at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland.

The first look, taken from a distance of 17,000 miles (27,000 kilometers) and released Tuesday, reveals one of the prime targets for the imaging team: the 800-mile-wide (1,300-kilometer-wide) Caloris impact basin, one of the biggest and youngest craters in the solar system. Mariner 10 spotted the eastern side of Caloris, but the western portions have never been seen before.

"The new image shows the complete basin interior and reveals that it is brighter than the surrounding regions and may therefore have a different composition," Messenger scientists said in their image advisory. "Darker smooth plains completely surround Caloris, and many unusual dark-rimmed craters are observed inside the basin."

NASA / JHUAPL / CIW

This image of Mercury's surface, taken by NASA's Messenger probe on Monday, shows the double- ringed Vivaldi crater in shadow at upper right. Click on the image for a bigger version.

Today's picture, the second in Messenger's series, shows the 125-mile-wide (200-kilometer-wide) Vivaldi crater, which boasts a double ring and was glimpsed by Mariner 10. This view - taken from a distance of 11,000 miles (18,000 kilometers) - shows new details, including a broad depression overlapped by Vivaldi's lower left rim.

Right now, there are more questions than answers about what Messenger is seeing - but that's what this mission is all about. In addition to paying tribute to the messenger of the Roman gods, the probe's name is a tortured acronym for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging. To cover all those bases, the spacecraft is carrying a dual imaging system (juggling wide-angle and narrow-angle cameras), four spectrometers, a laser ranging device, a magnetometer and a Doppler radar to gather data about Mercury's mass distribution.

By the time Messenger is done, sometime in the next decade, scientists should be able to resolve some of Mercury's mysteries - such as why the planet is so dense, where its vanishingly thin atmosphere comes from, and whether or not frozen water lurks in deep shadowed craters. The answers should start coming in by Jan. 30, when the science team is due to share their first impressions in a NASA news briefing. Until then, be sure to check the Web sites at APL as well as NASA for your daily dose of Mercury.

Update for 9:30 p.m. ET Jan. 16: Oops, they did it again ... The Messenger team has released yet another picture of Mercury's surface, showing a weird-looking terrain of craters and cliffs. And then there's this picture of a never-before-seen crater with bright rays and dribbling craters extending outward. How long will it be before someone spots the "Face on Mercury"?

Update for 1:30 p.m. ET Jan. 17: ... And again! Today's additions include an even clearer view of a double-ring crater and a look at Mercury's horizon. From here on out, you're on your own to keep tabs on the messages from Messenger.

Update for 9:15 p.m. ET Jan. 18: Some Cosmic Log correspondents have been asking about the oval appearance of most of the craters in the pictures released so far. My guess was that the ovals came through because the spacecraft was taking its pictures from an angle rather than from directly overhead. Ralph McNutt, the Messenger mission's project scientist, confirmed my surmise in a voicemail:

"The craters that look like they're oval in shape really are the result of the oblique viewing perspective. We'll be working through some of that as the processing continues."

McNutt reminded me to tune in on Jan. 30 for the big news briefing, and so I'll remind you as well.

• Journal Times: High-school sophomores find asteroid 
• Scientific American: How humans sing
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A technique for developing stem cell lines from a single cell plucked from a human embryo is unlikely to pass muster with the Bush administration, even though the latest experiments indicate that the embryo can survive the procedure. At least that's how the initial reactions to last week's research revelations are shaping up.

The technique, described in the journal Cell Stem Cell, involves removing one or two cells from the embryo at the eight-cell stage, then allowing the embryo to continue developing to a point where it can be frozen for later implantation. It's a procedure very much like the one currently used to check test-tube embryos for genetic flaws before they're implanted - a technique known as preimplantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD.

Usually, the removed cells are analyzed, then discarded. But researchers have found a way to grow those cells in a special chemical brew so that they take on the characteristics of an embryonic stem cell - that is, they can transform themselves into virtually any type of cell in the body, a property called pluripotency.

If the cells are truly pluripotent, they could theoretically offer another route to new therapies to boost ailing hearts, mend broken spinal cords and regenerate other broken-down tissues.

The research follows up on an earlier study that was somewhat less than fully successful a couple of years ago. This time around, about 80 percent of the embryos survived to be "frozen down" for safekeeping - which the researchers said was the normal survival rate for test-tube embryos.That led Advanced Cell Technology's Robert Lanza, the principal author of both studies, to call upon the White House to approve the resulting cell lines for federal funding as soon as possible.

Will the White House do so? A couple of years ago, the technique used by Lanza merited a mention from the President's Council on Bioethics as one of the alternatives to the usual methods for generating embryonic stem cells - which involve destroying the embryo. But even at that time, Chairman Leon Kass said the council had reservations about the method. Here's how Kass explained it to me in a July 2005 interview: 

"No one has yet converted a single blastomere from an eight-cell embryo into a stem cell line. That's a scientific challenge. But the council was quite concerned about the ethics of this. We didn't think that one could justify putting a child-to-be at additional risk, not for its own benefit. Until it could be proved by animal studies, or by much longer studies of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, that embryo biopsy is really risk-free to the child who results from all of this, the council is unprepared to pronounce this particular approach as ethically acceptable at this time."

Have opinions changed, now that someone actually has converted a single blastomere into what appears to be a stem cell line? Not really. Stanford neuroscientist William Hurlbut, a member of the bioethics panel, told me last week that the doubts about the procedure persist:

"We really don't know what it does long-term. It's not a foolish concern to think that when you take one-eighth or one-fourth of the embryo out, such an intervention might have some unrecognized long-term consequences."

The way Hurlbut sees it, researchers would have to show that the procedure poses no additional risk to the embryo (and one recent study raises questions). For the time being, federal funds cannot be used to pay for preimplantation genetic diagnosis - and unless there's a sudden change of heart (or a legal opinion that clarifies the matter), they're not likely to go toward research using the resulting stem cells, either. At least that seems to be the case for the final year of the Bush administration.

Of course, the next administration may well take a different view toward embryonic stem cell research. But even then, questions about the PGD-based procedure would remain, said Arthur Caplan, director of the Penn Center for Bioethics (and an msnbc.com columnist). Here's how he laid out the issues in an e-mail to me:

"Four issues arise from PGD-created stem cells:

"1. Will the isolated cell really act like a human embryonic stem cell? It's still early days to answer that.

"2. Is PGD really safe for embryos? Parents accept the risk when trying to prevent the birth of a child with a serious condition like Fanconi's anemia - but is the risk to the embryo worth it just to generate stem cells?

"3. Where are the embryos coming from that Lanza proposes be used? Who is going to want their embryo biopsied, other than people who want biopsies to prevent the use of embryos with odd diseases?

"4. If a cell from an embryo in early stages is really acting like an embryo, then why won't critics of embryonic stem cell research say it is an embryo and demand that it not be used for research?"

On the last point, Lanza told me that he's not aware of any case where a single cell from an eight-cell-stage embryo could develop into a viable embryo itself:

"No one I've ever spoken with knows of any pregnancy or any child who was born from a single cell that was removed from an embryo. That argument is very weak, and not only is it weak, but with all the new technologies, with reprogramming, even a skin cell could in theory have the potential to become a human being. The real issue here is that no embryo is destroyed, and we're only talking about a single cell that's being turned directly into an embryonic stem cell."

Lanza suggested that the cells removed for preimplantation genetic diagnosis could be routinely allowed to divide a couple of times to yield a stem cell line that would be a perfect match for the person who might eventually develop from that embryo - yielding a medical benefit with no extra risk (that is, beyond the risk of the PGD procedure).

That seems like the likeliest scenario for using Lanza's procedure. But will the concept catch on? Harvard researcher George Daley, the current president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, suggested a more mainstream route in his congressional testimony back in 2005:

"Far preferable to spending limited research dollars on these speculative proposals, in my opinion, is support for research on additional embryonic stem cell lines that are available today—lines that are similar to those already approved under the Bush policy."

Will a new administration ease the limits on  federally funded research, essentially bypassing PGD-created stem cells? How long will it take for scientists to perfect new methods for reprogramming ordinary skin cells so that they act like embryonic stem cells?

Science vs. politics ... embryo ethics vs. the moral imperative to find cures ... timelines and bottom lines: All those factors can enter the picture when you're talking about stem cell research - as illustrated by the reactions to Lanza's latest findings. For a sampling of other reactions, check out the reports from Wired Science, TechNewsWorld, LifeNews.com and The Scientist.

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Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers say they have spotted their first double Einstein ring – a bizarre optical phenomenon that shows how massive objects like galaxies can bend light rays, furnishing evidence for Einstein's general theory of relativity.

NASA / ESA / UCSB

The gravitational-lens system known as SDSSJ0946+1006 includes a bright foreground galaxy at center, the ringlike image of a middle galaxy 6 billion light-years away, and the dimmer ring of another galaxy 11 billion light-years away.

The fact that there's a double ring around this gravitational-lens galaxy means that two other galaxies are aligned precisely behind it. And the odds of that happening are estimated at 1-in-10000. That's a big reason why Tommaso Treu of the University of California at Santa Barbara felt as if he and his colleagues "hit the jackpot" when they saw the double ring's signature in data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

Single Einstein rings are rare enough: On a telescope image, such a ring looks like a faint circlet of light surrounding a massive galaxy. The circle is actually the light from a galaxy much, much farther away, which has been bent around the closer galaxy to provide a distorted image.

This diagram shows how the closer galaxy serves as a lens to twist the light beams like a funhouse mirror - demonstrating that light beams are affected by gravitational fields, just as Einstein said they were. Our "Putting Einstein to the Test" interactive explains how gravitational lensing and other strange-but-true concepts relate to general relativity.

Over the years, Treu and the other astronomers involved in the Sloan Lens ACS Survey have spotted a gaggle of Einstein rings - but the ring-hunters suspected that they had something special when they happened upon the gravitational-lens system known as SDSSJ0946+1006.

"The original signature that led us to this discovery was a mere 500 photons hidden among 500,000 other photons in the SDSS spectrum of the foreground galaxy," Adam Bolton of the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy said in a news release put out during this week's meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

The double ring was clearly visible in Hubble imagery of the same spot - telling the astronomers that two galaxies were both exactly behind the massive foreground galaxy.

"When I first saw it, I said, 'Wow, this is insane!" Treu said. "I could not believe it!"

The team analyzed the geometry of the two rings to determine how far away the galaxies were: The foreground galaxy is about 3 billion light-years away, the middle galaxy is 6 billion light-years away, and the farthest-out galaxy is 11 billion light-years away - which would put it close to the frontier of the observable universe. Astronomers could even calculate the mass of the middle galaxy at 1 billion solar masses, representing the first such measurement of a dwarf galaxy at cosmological distances.

A research paper on the findings has been submitted to The Astrophysical Journal.

Einstein rings make for much more than mere pretty pictures: An analysis of the ring's geometry can reveal how much mysterious dark matter the gravitational-lens system contains.

"Dark matter is not hidden to lensing," Leonidas Moustakas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in Thursday's news release. "The elegance of this lens is trumped only by the secrets of nature that it reveals." 

For SDSSJ0946+1006, the researchers estimate that dark matter makes up 66 to 82 percent of the system's mass - which is in the right ballpark, based on other observations.

If astronomers can find enough of these double rings, they could even run a statistical analysis to arrive at an independent, more precise measure of how gravity affects our space-time continuum. The studies so far indicate that our universe is geometrically flat rather than curved, with dark energy providing an accelerating push to cosmic expansion.

A sample of, say, 50 double rings would provide a better fix on the dark matter content of the universe as well as the influence of dark energy. The researchers note that a couple of space missions now under consideration, America's Joint Dark Energy Mission as well as Europe's Dark Universe Explorer, could provide just that kind of data - not to mention more glorious double-circlets to stare at.