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  • Action urged on asteroids

    Don Davis / NASA
    The worst-case scenario for cosmic impact: A celestial body slams into Earth.

    Astronauts and other space experts are calling for the formation of new international organizations to monitor a threat that may not be as imminent as the current financial crisis but would be even more catastrophic: a cosmic collision with an asteroid or comet.

    Such organizations would make contingency plans to divert threatening near-Earth objects, and recommend how to proceed when those plans actually have to come into play. But the final decision to take action should be left up to the U.N. Security Council, the panel says.

    The call to action, issued last Thursday, is the result of a three-year process spearheaded by the Association of Space Explorers - and particularly by Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart, chairman of the association's committee on near-Earth objects, or NEOs.

    One bad cosmic collision can ruin your whole day - or eon, as the dinosaurs discovered 65 million years ago. Based on Earth's impact history, scientists estimate that the planet suffers a hit capable of destroying civilizations every 500,000 to a million years on average - the so-called "background risk" for a NEO strike.

    We're not facing any known NEO threat right now, but every once in a while a space rock comes along that gives the scientists pause, at least until its orbit can be defined with greater accuracy. It was that way with the asteroid 1997 XF11 a decade ago, and with the asteroid Apophis a couple of years ago.

    The worries about Apophis have receded, but Schweickart told me we can expect many more worries to crop up as new observatories focus on NEOs in the years to come.

    "Over the next 10 or 15 years, because of Pan-STARRS and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, we're going to end up with an avalanche of near-Earth objects," he said.

    Software billionaire (and space passenger) Charles Simonyi, one of the backers of the $400 million Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, said during this month's congress of the Association of Space Explorers that the instrument will produce a torrent of astronomical data.

    "In the first week, we will see more data from this telescope than all the telescopes in humanity up to that point," Simonyi said.

    That's likely to produce significantly more observations of near-Earth objects - space rocks that may not be as big as the one that killed the dinosaurs, but could still wreak havoc on cities if they happened to be on a collision course, Schweickart said.

    "In 10 or 15 years, 6,000 [near-Earth objects] is going to become 300,000 or more. The 200 with some probability of impact is going to become 6,000 to 10,000. The two or three of elevated concern is going to go to 100 or more," he said.

    Who will sift through all those reports and figure out what to do with them? The scientific community has been pretty good about focusing on the potential close encounters, and so far the chances of catastrophe have been diminished in every case. But one of these days, scientists could come across a "cosmic Katrina" that doesn't go away.

    The recommendations drawn up by the Panel on Asteroid Threat Mitigation, set up by the association's NEO committee, addresses how to prepare for that eventuality. The panel recommends that the United Nations set up three new organizations:

    • The Information, Analysis and Warning Network would coordinate the various ground-based and space-based that detect near-Earth objects. The network would analyze NEO orbits and establish criteria for issuing collision warnings.
    • The Mission Planning and Operations Group would draw upon the expertise of spacefaring nations to work out the best strategies for deflecting a threatening near-Earth object.
    • The U.N. NEO Threat Oversight Group would oversee the other groups and figure out what level of threat would merit international action. If a potential threat rose to that level, the group would develop recommendations for consideration by the U.N. Security Council.

    Why get the U.N. involved? Why not just leave it to NASA, or the Defense Department, or the space and defense agencies of other countries? Schweickart pointed out that acting on a potential threat carries international risks. Efforts to change the incoming asteroid's path may actually increase the risk for some Earthlings. For example, in the process of shifting the collision path away from a direct hit on New York, a deflection effort could put Russia in the asteroid's sights.

    "In the process of shifting the trajectory off the earth, it will move across the earth before it reaches the edge," Schweickart explained. "That is hopefully a temporary risk that is very, very low, if you do it correctly. But in that process, you've got the transitional issue."

    That's why the expert panel recommends that the United Nations set up a system now, before the issue becomes a political hot potato (or a hot potato-shaped asteroid).

    Schweickart said that the report has just been delivered to one of the action teams for the U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, starting the ball rolling for consideration of the panel's recommendations. "Nothing happens in the United Nations without a very structured procedure, and nothing happens fast," he said.

    He said it may take several years for the report to churn its way up through the U.N. space committee for action. "These things take time," Schweickart admitted, "but once they get in the front end of the process, they end up in the back end of the process."

    The United Nations could decide to do nothing at all, but Schweickart hopes the world body will create a system as authoritative about cosmic threats as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is about global warming.

    "We are not talking about the United Nations forming a space program," he insisted. "The United Nations needs to be involved in coordinating a response through the international community. ... You can't have every Tom, Dick and Harry or Susie saying, 'Oh, here's one coming at us, there's going to be a hit.'"

    So does Schweickart, who has served in a variety of business and government roles after leaving NASA, aspire to become the world's asteroid czar? Not on your life. He'll be traveling around the world, trying to garner support for the asteroid crisis plan, but he doesn't see this as a lifelong quest.

    "I see myself down the line as being out of the game, ASAP!" the 72-year-old said good-naturedly. "I've put in seven years of retirement, with no compensation, to get it this far. I'm looking forward to being back with my family, being on the golf course and doing all the things you're supposed to be doing when you're retired."

    Learn more about how scientists track asteroids by clicking through our "Below the Belt" interactive graphic.

    Schweickart's colleagues on the Association of Space Explorers' NEO committee are all former astronauts and cosmonauts: Sergei Avdeyev and Viktor Savinykh of Russia, Chris Hadfield of Canada, Thomas Jones and Edward Lu of the United States, and Dorin Prunariu of Romania.

    Members of the Panel on Asteroid Threat Mitigation include:

    • Adigun Ade Abiodun, Nigeria, founder of the African Space Foundation.
    • Vallampadugai Arunachalam, India, chairman of the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy.
    • Roger-Maurice Bonnet, Switzerland, president of the Committee on Space Research.
    • Sergio Camacho-Lara, Mexico, secretary-general of the Regional Center for Space Science and Technology Education in Latin America and the Caribbean.
    • James George, Canada, former ambassador, Secure World Foundation.
    • Tomifumi Godai, Japan, former executive vice president, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
    • Peter Jankowitsch, Austria, former foreign minister and former chairman of the U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.
    • Sergey Kapitza, Russia, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
    • Paul Kovacs, Canada, executive director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction.
    • Walther Lichem, Austria, former president of the Association of European Space Agencies.
    • Gordon McBean, Canada, chairman of Integrated Research on Disaster Risk.
    • Sir Martin Rees, Britain, president of the Royal Society and astronomer royal.
    • Karlene Roberts, United States, director of Collaborative for Catastrophic Risk Management.
    • Michael Simpson, France, president of International Space University.
    • Crispin Tickell, Britain, director of the Policy Foresight Program, James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization, Oxford University.
    • Richard Tremayne-Smith, Britain, former chairman of Action Team 14 for the U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.
    • Frans von der Dunk, Netherlands, director of the International Institute of Space Law.
    • James Zimmerman, United States, president of the International Astronautical Federation.
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  • Spaceship dies in blaze of glory

    ESA
    The unmanned Jules Verne ATV cargo ship breaks up in a spectacular display
    during re-entry, as seen on Monday over the Pacific from an observation plane.

    The European Space Agency's first cargo mission to the international space station ended in a spectacular fireworks show today, with the fiery re-entry of the unmanned Jules Verne ATV  spaceship over the South Pacific.

    "Jules Verne has now successfully completed its mission," ESA Director-General Jean-Jacques Dordain declared at the International Astronautical Congress in Glasgow, Scotland.

    The end came at around 9:30 a.m. ET, when controllers back at Europe's mission control in Toulouse, France, directed the 17-ton craft into its final plunge. Jules Verne, the first of Europe's Automated Transfer Vehicles, was launched from the ESA spaceport in French Guiana early March 9. It linked up with the space station almost a month later, delivering tons of food, water and equipment.

    During its stay, Jules Verne periodically boosted the space station's orbit, and in fact helped the station dodge a passing piece of Russian space junk last month.

    But all good things must come to an end:  Unlike the Italian-built space cargo modules that are carried back and forth inside NASA's space shuttle, the Euroean-built ATVs are not designed for return or reuse. Instead, each spent craft has to be disposed of safely, by directing it remotely on a plunge through the atmosphere. The wide-open South Pacific is the favorite dumping ground for such space junk, as we saw back in 2001 when Russia's Mir space station fell to its doom.

    Jules Verne's re-entry was witnessed by an international team of scientists flying aboard a NASA DC-8 observation plane. Studying the spacecraft's controlled fall could lead to fresh insights about the chemical and radiation effects of falling meteors - as well as better computer models for predicting how objects fragment as the blast through the atmosphere.

    ESA
    The Jules Verne ATV cargo craft glows during its atmospheric re-entry, in a view
    captured Monday from a DC-8 observation plane flying over the Pacific. A lens
    diffraction flare can be seen in rainbow colors at lower right.

    Today's first pictures from the DC-8, posted to ESA's ATV blog, revealed a spray of fireworks similar to those seen during Mir's fall. More tragically, they also recalled what witnesses saw during the shuttle Columbia's breakup five years ago.

    Although experts still have to track all the bits of debris, it looks as if Jules Verne's plunge through the atmosphere provided a great light show, but no big impact. There were far more damaging plunges elsewhere on the planet today.

  • Doomsday lawsuit dismissed

    CERN
    A hardhat worker is dwarfed by the Large Hadron Collider's ATLAS detector
    during construction. Click on the image for a larger version.

    A federal judge in Hawaii today dismissed a lawsuit raising fears about Europe's Large Hadron Collider, on the grounds that she had no jurisdiction over the multibillion-dollar project.

    In a 26-page ruling, District Judge Helen Gillmor said that the world's largest particle-smasher was not subject to U.S. environmental regulations because the federal government didn't contribute enough money or play enough of a role in controlling the experiment.

    After years of construction, the LHC was started up at low energy on Sept. 10, sending beams of protons around a 17-mile-round (27-kilometer-round) ring of tunnels beneath the French-Swiss border. On the day after the startup, however, the machine suffered a magnet malfunction, and more serious problems cropped up a week later.

    This week, Europe's CERN particle-physics organization announced that the LHC would be shut down until next spring, due to the time needed for repairs as well as the experiment's previously planned winter break.

    The LHC, which is arguably the world's biggest and most expensive science experiment, is expected to extend the frontiers of physics over the next decade. It could help scientists solve puzzles about the origins of the universe, the nature of mass and dark matter and the potential existence of extra unseen dimensions.

    But the plaintiffs in the federal civil case - retired nuclear safety officer Walter Wagner and Spanish science writer Luis Sancho - voiced fears that the machine could create black holes or bits of exotic matter capable of destroying the earth. Experts have ruled out such scenarios in a series of safety reports. Nevertheless, the plaintiffs filed suit in March, seeking a suspension of operations at the collider until still more safety reviews could be conducted.

    Among the defendants were the Europe's CERN particle-physics organization as well as the U.S. Energy Department and the National Science Foundation. Federal attorneys argued that the court had no jurisdiction over the LHC - and ultimately, Gillmor agreed.

    She did not directly address the scientific issues raised by the plaintiffs, but said that federal court was the wrong place to consider the legal matter.

    Gillmor noted that the federal government's $531 million contribution to the LHC's construction budget was less than 10 percent of the total cost, which has been estimated at between $5.8 billion and $10 billion. She also noted that the federal government did not play a part in managing operations at the collider. For those reasons, the U.S. role in the project did not constitute a "major federal action" under the terms of the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, she said.

    The judge said that Wagner and Sancho didn't provide any evidence sufficient to show that the court had the power to rule. "Plaintiffs appear to believe they invoked federal jurisdiction by simply filing suit in a federal court," she wrote. "They have not met their burden of establishing that jurisdiction exists."

    Because of that lack of jurisdiction, Gillmor said she would not address the other claims and counterclaims contained in the hundreds of pages of documents filed over the past six months.

    "It is clear that plaintiffs' action reflects disagreement among scientists about the possible ramifications of the operation of the Large Hadron Collider," she wrote. "This extremely complex debate is of concern to more than just the physicists. The United States Congress provided more than $500 million toward the construction of the Large Hadron Collider. But Congress did not enact NEPA for the purpose of allowing this debate to proceed in federal court."

    Gillmor's dismissal of the federal civil lawsuit does not affect a separate, though similar, legal action currently under consideration by the European Court of Human Rights.

    Do you want to read the full decision? Click here to download the PDF file. This report was last updated at 2:05 a.m. ET Sept. 27.

    Past chapters in the doomsday saga:

  • Download the cosmos

    NASA / JPL / SSI
    Click for slide show: The Cassini spacecraft
    looks beyond Saturn toward the icy face of Mimas,
    the innermost of the planet's major moons. Click on
    the image for other highlights from September.

    The final frontier can be as close as your computer, thanks to a constellation of Web sites jam-packed with dramatic views of the cosmos. We're serving up a tall stack of the latest and greatest in our Month in Space roundup, but there's always at least one shot that comes in just a little too late to make the cut.

    This month's last-minute addition is a stunning view of Saturn, with its icy moon Mimas visible as a white pearl beneath the rings. The imagery was captured by the Cassini orbiter on Sept. 4 as it flew past the planet at a distance of 1.7 million miles (2.7 million kilometers). After processing the data, the Cassini team released the natural-color image just today.

    It's hard to pick out all the delicious details in space images that are scaled down to fit on a Web browser. Fortunately for photo fans, larger versions are almost always available. For example, the pairing of Mimas and Saturn comes in bigger sizes from NASA's Photojournal. And if you're looking for bigger versions of the photos in the Month in Space slide show, suitable for downloading, here are the places to go:

    So what's ahead? We've already mentioned the Shenzhou 7 mission, which could come to a climax this weekend with a spacewalk. The next opportunity for SpaceX to launch its Falcon 1 rocket also opens up this weekend, on Sunday. I'll be keeping an eye on SpaceX's fourth attempt to reach orbit - and so will my colleagues who track the final frontier online, including writer/publisher Charles Lurio. After more than a year of sending out his newsletter by e-mail, Lurio has finally set up a Web site for The Lurio Report. Welcome to the Web, Charles!

  • Science you can see

    J.D. Schiffman, C.L. Schauer / Drexel Univ.
    Click for slide show: See a snapshot of squid
    suckers and other images from the International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge.

    They say a picture is worth 1,000 words - but when it comes to science, one good picture might be worth 104 or 105 words, judging by this year's winners of the International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge.

    Check out our slide show to see a beautiful graphic analysis of the Bible's interconnectedness, a "Microscopic Wonderland" starring Alice and the Mad Hatter, and a group portrait of the cutest little squid suckers you ever did see.

    Fourteen examples of science you can see were selected for recognition by the contest's sponsors, the National Science Foundation and the journal Science. The winners were chosen from 181 entries that were sent in from 21 countries for the sixth annual challenge.

    "Science and NSF instituted this international competition to reward scientists for using visualization techniques to demonstrate the beauty and the wonder of science," Monica Bradford, Science's executive editor, said in today's news release. "We appreciate their results and encourage others to participate."

    Science, which is published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has established a Web portal linking to all sorts of information about the images and their creators. You have to be a Science subscriber to see all the details, but anyone can click through an awesome video-enhanced slide show as well as a podcast about the challenge. The National Science Foundation has a portal page and a slide show as well.

    Here's the list of this year's honorees, even though the mere words don't do justice to the images themselves:

    • Photography: First place goes to Mario De Stefano, The Second University of Naples, for "The Glass Forest." Honorable mentions: Andrew Davidhazy, Rochester Institute of Technology, for "String Vibrations." Jessica D. Schiffman and Caroline L. Schauer, Drexel University, for "Squid Suckers: The Little Monsters That Feed the Beast." Ye Jin Eun and Douglas B. Weibel, University of Wisconsin-Madison, for "Polymazing."
    • Illustration: First place goes to Linda Nye and the Exploratorium Visualization Laboratory, The Exploratorium, for "Zoom Into the Human Bloodstream." (Check out this big-screen version.) Honorable mentions: Chris Harrison, Carnegie Mellon University, and Christoph Römhild, North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church, for "Visualizing the Bible." Donald Bliss and Sriram Subramaniam, National Library of Medicine, NIH, for "3-D Imaging of Mammalian Cells with Ion-Abrasion Scanning Electron Microscopy."
    • Informational graphics: First place goes to Colleen Champ and Dennis Kunkel, Concise Image Studios, for "Mad Hatter's Tea" from "Alice's Adventures in a Microscopic Wonderland." (Check out the big-screen version.) Honorable mention: Andrew Dopheide and Gillian Lewis, University of Auckland, for "Stream Micro-Ecology: Life in a Biofilm." (Big-screen version here.)
    • Interactive media: First place goes to Jeremy Friedberg and Tommy Sors, Spongelab Interactive, for "Genomics Digital Lab: Plant Cells." Honorable mention: Janet Iwasa, Massachusetts General Hospital, for "Exploring Life's Origins."
    • Non-interactive media: Honorable mentions go to three entries: Travis Vermilye and Kenneth Eward for "A Window Into Life." Mirjam Kaplow and Katharina Strohmeier, Fraunhofer FIRST, for "Smarter Than the Worm." Etsuko Uno and Drew Berry, the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, for "Fighting Infection by Clonal Selection."

    To get at least 14,000 words' worth, don't miss the slide show. You can also review winning images from 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007.

  • Good company

    Every year, a few science writers are chosen for special recognition by the National Academies, which take in the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council. With support from the W.M. Keck Foundation, the National Academies Communication Awards "recognize excellence in reporting and communicating science, engineering and medicine to the general public."

    This year, I'm honored to be the first-ever recipient of the award in the online/Internet category, for the little ol' Weblog you're reading right now. I'm grateful to be chosen, and I'm humbled when I look at the list of other honorees:

    • Book award recipient: Walter Isaacson for "Einstein: His Life and Universe," a comprehensive, scholarly and ambitious look at the life and mind of the 20th century's pre-eminent scientific figure. (Check the Cosmic Log archives.)
    • Newspaper/magazine award recipients: Bob Marshall, Mark Schleifstein, Dan Swenson and Ted Jackson for "Last Chance: The Fight to Save a Disappearing Coast," a series appearing in The Times-Picayune in New Orleans. The academies said the series combined "superb storytelling with the latest science in its call to action to save Louisiana's wetlands." (Here's some background from the Cosmic Log archives.)
    • TV/radio/film award recipients: Director George Butler, White Mountain Films, Kennedy-Marshall Films and Walt Disney Company for "Roving Mars," a large-screen film that chronicles the science and engineering behind the Mars rovers. The film was made with the cooperation of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and was presented as a public service by Lockheed Martin. (Check the Cosmic Log archives.)
    • Online/Internet finalists: Vikki Valentine, Alison Richards and David Malakoff for NPR's "Climate Connections." This series also earned honorable mention in this year's Science in Society Journalism Awards, given by the National Association of Science Writers. (Check the Cosmic Log archives.)
    • TV/radio/film finalists: Joseph McMaster (writer, producer and director), Gary Johnstone (producer, director), Richard Hutton (executive producer) and Paula Apsell (senior executive producer) for WGBH/Nova and Vulcan Productions' "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial." (Check the Cosmic Log archives.)

    Honorees were selected from more than 200 entries from the past year. The $20,000 awards will be presented during a Nov. 13 ceremony in Irvine, Calif., during the "Futures" conference conducted annually by the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative. I'll be saying plenty of thank-yous there, but I also want to take this opportunity to express gratitude to the judges, to the organizations involved in this program ... and, of course, to you and the other Cosmic Log correspondents who make this many-to-many dialogue possible on a daily basis.

  • The Grid we live in

    Justin Knight Photography
    Nobel-winning physicist Frank Wilczek says reality at its most basic level is best
    described as the interplay of energy fields in "empty" space.

    What is the Matrix? It might be more than a cult movie classic, if you side with Nobel-winning physicist Frank Wilczek. In his new book, "The Lightness of Being," Wilczek sets forth the concept that at its most basic level, our universe exists as a vibrant energy field he calls "the Grid." (He says he might have considered calling it the Matrix, "but the sequels tarnished that candidate.")

    The way Wilczek sees it, interactions in virtually empty space give rise to the substance of subatomic particles and complex molecules, of everyday objects and distant galaxy clusters. But you shouldn't just take his word for it: He says experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, the particle-smasher that is now under repair far beneath the French-Swiss border, could unlock some of the Grid's biggest mysteries.

    Wilczek, a 57-year-old professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is quite familiar with mysteries. He won a share of the 2004 Nobel Prize in physics for explaining why the basic constituents of matter known as quarks and gluons are so hard to pull apart. And he promises that his next book is going to be an honest-to-goodness mystery novel, about a dark-matter discovery big enough to kill somebody over.

    Right now, however, the Grid and the LHC are uppermost in Wilczek's mind. His book takes readers on a guided tour of the frontiers of physics - including the rugged terrain of quantum chromodynamics. The payoff is that you come away with at least an inkling of how gravity could be unified with nature's other fundamental forces, and why physicists are so anxious to find the Higgs boson (a.k.a. the God Particle).

    In Wilczek's view, mass arises because the Grid is permeated with a not-yet-understood property that "slows down" some of the interactions in the field, just as electrons are slowed down in a superconducting medium. In the medium known as the Grid, we perceive that slowed-down quality as mass.

    "It's as if we're very intelligent fish, or super-dolphins, who have figured out after careful scientific study that we are not living in empty space but that we live in water," Wilczek said during a book-tour stopover in Seattle. "We're used to it, but we should understand this material – and we haven't yet figured out what this material is made of. That's really a close analogy to what's going on with finding the Higgs particle."

    The LHC could help scientists look behind the curtain and study the "water" in which we live: the very fabric of the Grid. If that sounds mysterious, it is. Here's an edited Q&A that dives into the depths of the Grid concept - and, by the way, also touches on the personal threats that were made against Wilczek in the days before the LHC's startup:

    Wilczek: In our theories, to properly understand the world we have to imagine that we're living in a medium that changes the properties of things - that slows particles down and distorts them. Those equations really seem to work extremely well, but we don't know what this medium is made out of.

    Cosmic Log: And is that the Grid?

    Wilczek: Well, that's one aspect of the Grid. The Grid is my term for what we normally perceive as empty space. It's a medium in many senses. It has spontaneous activity. It also has a constant material component, and this is one of the constant material components in the field. It's usually called the Higgs field. We don't know what it's made of. We know it's not made of any of the known forms of matter; they don't have the right properties. So the simplest possibility, logically, is that it's made out of one new thing, and those would be Higgs particles. But I think you get a nicer theory by embedding it in a larger framework, where it's made out of several things.

    Q: How do people react to hearing about the Grid?

    A: People react in different ways. Some people get very excited, because they really resonate with the idea that we live inside a medium and that we're all connected. It sounds almost New Age-y. Other people just scratch their heads and say, "What does that have to do with the world I know?" And in fact, that's a deep puzzle, because the concepts that we use to understand the physical world at the most basic level seem to be very removed from the world we experience.

    But that's part of the message: There's much more to the world than meets the eye. There's much more to the world than what our sensory apparatus has evolved to react to.

    The reaction I hope for – and I get it sometimes – is that people are dazzled at first, and then think and let it enrich their concept of what the world is all about.

    Q: A lot of people do wonder, "What's in it for us?" That's the classic question that all physicists usually face. Do you have a good answer?

    A: Well, I don't know if it's a good answer, but I've been thinking about that more and more. I think the deepest answer I've come to is the following: When people ask, "What's in it for us," what are they really asking? There are certain drives that people have that came out of the way we evolved. So when you tell people you're going to feed them better, or that you're going to give them better shelter, or give them more prestige, they don't have to ask, "What's in it for us?" These primitive drives are just there.

    This kind of stuff appeals to something a little more … evolved. It's not so primitive. It really has to do with our higher brain function and learned behavior. If you are intrigued by ultimate questions, such as what the universe is made of, or what's my place in it - questions that animals and probably primitive humans barely thought about - then this is the answer. These are the best answers we're coming up with, at least from the point of view of studying the physical world. And they're very informative answers, in the sense of conveying new information.

    When you study it carefully, the world turns out to be a much bigger and richer place, a place that's different from what it appears to be. To me, that adds a whole new dimension to life.

    In the long run, of course, understanding things better might enable you to control things better, too. At this point, we know so much about how matter behaves under all kinds of conditions that we have to study the really, really extreme conditions of the early universe in particle accelerators in order to look for new surprises.  It's hard to see how those are going to feed back into new technologies directly. But the tools we develop in the search very much feed into technology. Historically, the World Wide Web was first hatched at CERN as a tool to facilitate information exchange in particle physics. Now, people are developing new technologies for building powerful magnets - the same kinds of magnets that are used in medicine. They're working on the next level of the Internet. They're working on faster electronics for analyzing data. All these things are of technological importance.

    We don't know exactly what's going to come out of all this - but in the past, efforts of this kind with particle accelerators have really paid off, even if you look at them as a hard-headed investment.

    Q: I have to ask about the risk: People hear scientists say that they don't know exactly what will come of these experiments, and then they ask whether it's worth the risk that something catastrophic might happen - like the creation of black holes and so on…

    A: We've had to think about that. And we want to think about it. There are thousands of people who work at CERN, and other thousands who understand the issues involved. Many of them have families. Many of them have lives that they value. So we want to uncover any possible danger. There have been many careful studies, and people have tried to come up with worst-case scenarios. I personally served on one of these panels and spent considerable time trying to think of things that might happen. The conclusion of everyone competent to judge is that there's really no danger. There's just no remotely plausible scenario that suggests that there's a way to make big trouble.

    Q: And the question that usually comes back is, "Are you absolutely sure?"

    A: Well, at some philosophical level, if we read our Hume, we're not sure that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. There are levels of sureness. But I would say that I'm as certain that the LHC is safe as I am that the sun will rise tomorrow.

    Q: There were reports that you had received some death threats over all this. What more can you say about that?

    A: I don't want to say too much, because I don't want to irritate the situation. There was a disturbed individual who somehow glommed onto the idea that I was cavalier about endangering the whole world, and that I was a "mad scientist." I didn't go to the press with it. I discussed it with a colleague, who unfortunately mentioned it to a press person, and then it got blown up.

    I'm not a brave hero here. The real heroes are the people who are building the machine and will do the experiments and participate in the science.

    Q: But the important thing is that in terms of your personal situation …

    A: It's all under control.

    Q: Are there particular clues that you're going to be looking for in what the LHC will produce?

    A: I'm very much invested in this idea that there's a whole new world of particles that basically mirror all the particles we know about. They have the same charges and colors and other funny detailed properties, but different spins. This is called low-energy supersymmetry. It enables us to beautify the fundamental equations of physics in profound ways, which I describe in detail in the book. What's exciting is that these ideas tell you the masses of these particles can't be so heavy that they'll escape being made at the LHC. So it's make or break time.

    Q: One of the things that I appreciated about your book was that you came up with some new ways to explain the pioneering concepts of particle physics. When you read books of this type, you come across a lot of the same examples, but you seem to have found some new ways to do the same old thing.

    A: Well, some of it is different, or at least presented in such a different way that it might as well be different. The core of the book, as I see it, is the explanation of the story of mass. It used to be the defining property of matter, but now it's something that's kind of secondary. We explain it more deeply in terms of energy and properties of interaction.  We've really delivered on the promise of E=mc2, and can explain the "m" in terms of the "E."

    In modern physics, energy and space are much more fundamental than mass. That's part of the message. The traditional idea that there are stable, static bodies that are massive and hard to push around has been replaced by a much more fluid concept. Fields are more basic than particles. Empty space isn't really empty. That's the circle of ideas that hangs around this explanation of mass in terms of energy.

    The whole barrier between light and matter - which is at the heart of the metaphorical contrast between "celestial" and "earthy," or "free" and "heavy" - all that has fallen. The underlying reality is much closer to the traditional concept of light than the traditional concept of matter.

    This revelation about matter is not only satisfying, but it also opens new doors. Once we know that mass is not fundamental, we can ask why gravity - which responds to mass - appears to be as feeble as it is. Once we understand why gravity is so feeble, and so different from the other fundamental forces, we can ask about unifying all those forces together. Not only can we ask these questions, but we have some promising candidates for the answers - which, remarkably, are going to be tested in the near future.

    So it's an exciting time to be a physicist. And you don't have to be a physicist in the technical sense, in command of all the equations and so forth, to start to realize what the stakes are. Every thinking person can participate in the adventure.

  • Pay-as-you-go power

    Utilities are starting to think about electrical power the way phone companies think about cellular service, or the way gas companies think about filling stations - and it may not be long before you think that way, too.

    The paradigm shift could come when plug-in electric cars (hybrid as well as all-electric) become a significant factor in the automotive market, as described in my Auto Tech story today. Some experts estimate that 19 million plug-in hybrids will be on U.S. roads by 2020 - and if even some of those drivers take their cars to work or go on an overnight trip, they'll probably want to charge up at their destination.

    It's one thing to plug your laptop or cell-phone charger into someone else's outlet, but what about plugging in your car?

    Rich Feldman, a senior policy adviser in Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels' office, said utilities are already talking about an arrangement that would allow electricity users to bill battery fill-ups back to their home account.

    "It's like the old cell network: It's a roaming benefit, to some degree," he said. "When I go to my mom's house, I want to charge up my car, but I don't necessariliy want it to show up on her electric bill."

    Jim Francfort, a researcher at Idaho National Laboratory who studies the economics of plug-in vehicles, said the cost of a home battery charge is so low that Feldman's mom probably wouldn't care. At a cost of 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, it just takes 50 cents' worth of electricity to charge up a plug-in hybrid Prius equipped with a Hymotion booster battery, he said.

    At that price, you might even get away with charging up at the hotel down the highway. "If they're going to charge $150 for a hotel room, I don't see why they wouldn't give you 50 cents of electricity," Francfort said. "It's a marketing opportunity: 'Free charge for your plug-in.'"

    When it comes to plug-ins, the real cost of charging up isn't necessarily tallied in money, but in time and convenience. It takes about four hours for a full recharge of the plug-in Prius with your typical 120-volt plug - and while that may be fine for an overnight stay at your mom's house, that might not work so well while you're at the office.

    That's where filling stations could fill a role. Back in the 1990s, electric charging stations started to pop up to serve the expected wave of electric cars. (This was before GM's EV1 electric car was killed.) Now, companies such as California-based Coulomb Technologies are reviving the concept. Subscribers to Coulomb's Smartlet service can pull up, enter their code and plug into the juice while their car is parked on the street.

    Up the road from California (and down the road from Seattle), Portland General Electric is installing free charging stations as part of a pilot project that has also brought in businesses such as Nike. Such stations could eventually become status symbols for eco-conscious companies.

    Do such developments represent a paradigm shift for the electric grid? Will electric cars (and hybrids) finally break our dependency on oil? Or is all this merely a sideshow in the great energy debate?

    We haven't really talked about where the electricity comes from - and that can range from coal-fired power plants, to nuclear, to certified wind power and rooftop solar (either on your house or on your car). You might want to address that side of the energy equation as well. So, feel free to weigh in with your comments on plug-in vehicles, pay-as-you-go electricity and other power plays.

  • Supercollider = superstar

    CERN
    The Compact Muon Solenoid, shown here in a head-on view during construction,
    is the Large Hadron Collider's most massive detector.

    Like most multibillion-dollar projects, Europe's Large Hadron Collider is having some problems getting started. But lack of interest is definitely not one of those problems. By some accounts, a billion TV viewers tuned in for last week's startup of the LHC. For a day at least, the world's biggest atom-smasher made a bigger celebrity splash than Britney Spears and Amy Winehouse combined.

    And that's just the start: The Hollywood Reporter says ABC is close to a deal to turn a science-fiction tale about the Large Hadron Collider into a TV pilot.

    We've already mentioned the Robert J. Sawyer novel "Flashforward" as one of our doomsday dozen: The plot begins with a run at the LHC that is aimed at detecting the Higgs boson, but instead causes everyone on earth to black out for two minutes.

    During the blackout, everyone experiences what their life is like 21 years later (unless, of course, they've died between now and then). But back on the real world, planes fall from the sky because pilots (and passengers) go unconscious. Others are killed in auto accidents, and still others die simply because they were walking down the stairs when they went blank.

    The story blends present-day tragedies, future-day detective stories and the classic philosophical question over changing destiny. It's just the thing for the network that airs "Lost."

    Next year, the LHC could conceivably be on the big screen as well, playing a bit part in the movie based on Dan Brown's "Angels and Demons." But it sounds as if you'd have to look fast: The filmmakers did spend some time at the giant ATLAS detector, but only to capture the imagery for a computer-generated rendition of the device that might appear as if it's on the other side of a lab window.

    Of course, no one in his or her right mind would stand next to a working particle collider separated by a mere pane of glass - the radiation risk would be too great.

    Speaking of risk, Studio 360 offers an encore presentation of its podcasts about the Large Hadron Collider - including "Telford," a short story by Lydia Millet that starts with the creation of a black hole in captivity at the LHC.

    In the real world, the discussion over subatomic black holes is more subdued than it was before startup. Caltech physicist Sean Carroll discusses why we shouldn't be scared in the Cosmic Variance Weblog (and a Bloggingheads joint appearance with his spousal unit, science writer Jennifer Ouellette). Shahn Majid, a math professor at Queen Mary University of London, stirs the pot with a back-and-forth discussion of the doomsday scenarios.

    The legal discussion may heat up again sometime in the next few weeks, when a federal judge in Hawaii rules on the federal government's request to have a doomsday lawsuit thrown out. But in the meantime, take the opportunity to review our special report on the LHC - and check out the top 8 LHC videos as selected by Wired.com.

  • Planet debate gets greater

    A. Feild / STScI / NASA / ESA
    An artist's conception shows the dwarf planet Haumea
    and its two moons, Hi'iaka and Namaka.

    So just how many planets are there in our solar system anyway? Eight? Nine? Thirteen? Or thousands? Far from settling the question, the "Great Planet Debate" has revealed just how complex and interesting the question is.

    The planethood question got more interesting this week with the naming of yet another dwarf planet, Haumea. It's traditional to name planets after mythological deities - and Haumea, the Hawaiian goddess of childbirth and fertility, follows that formula.

    The football-shaped world was found by Caltech astronomer Michael Brown just after Christmas 2004 (which prompted its initial, unofficial nickname: "Santa"). Haumea's discovery was shrouded in a scientific controversy that Brown recaps in his Weblog. At the time, controversy surrounded its planetary status as well, because it added to a growing class of objects in the same general class as Pluto. Astronomers surmised that hundreds of Pluto-scale objects may lurk on the icy rim of the solar system's disk, known as the Kuiper Belt.

    The controversy came to a head in 2005 when Brown's team found the object now known as Eris - a world like Pluto, only bigger and farther out. All this led the International Astronomical Union to agonize over where to draw the line on planethood. In 2006, the IAU came up with a definition aimed at putting the solar system's eight biggest planets in one class, and Pluto in a different class with Eris and other dwarf planets or "plutoids."

    The Great Planet Debate has been simmering ever since. In August, astronomers held a teach-in on the subject at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, which is the base of operations for NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto. One of the purposes of the meeting was to see how teachers were handling the planethood question.

    Scientist (and parent) sees 'teaching moment'
    The education angle literally hit home for planetary scientist Alan Stern - and not just because he's the principal scientific investigator for New Horizons.

    "My own son was told by a teacher that an answer was wrong on a test about Pluto," Stern told me last week. According to the test, the "right" answer for the number of planets in the solar system was eight - but Stern said that August's installment of the Great Planet Debate proved that the question was still up for grabs, even among educators.

    "It was clear at the end of the two and a half days that there was no consensus," he said. "We're in transition. I think that's a teaching moment."

    Stern has long argued that the IAU's definition of planethood provided more confusion than clarification. "There's a lot of unhappiness with the IAU's solution," he said. "I didn't hear anybody say, 'Oh, I think it's the cat's meow.'"

    He maintains that it's wrong to think about the solar system as if there were a sharp division between eight planets and everything else. Even dwarf planets are still planets - and in Stern's mind, they may be more representative of the planetary spectrum than the eight biggies.

    "It's the most populous class of planets in the solar system," Stern said. "Pluto's no longer the misfit."

    There's something about Haumea
    The fact that the IAU is giving names to dwarf planets - Pluto, Eris, Ceres, Makemake and now Haumea - shouldn't make a difference in the debate, Stern said. In fact, it totally makes sense. "From our perspective, these are planets. They deserve names," he said.

    Stern has often compared the definition of planets with the definition of rivers: Sure, there might be six great rivers in the world ... or are there 14? In any case, that doesn't mean you have to set the Maquoketa River or thousands of other streams apart as "dwarf rivers." Every river, great or small, has its own special appeal - and it's the same with planets.

    In fact, Haumea may be one of the most endearing little planets out there: Caltech's Brown has said it's his "favorite object in the solar system," in part because of its fast, end-over-end spin, the elongated shape it has as a result, and also because of its tightly orbiting satellites (which have been named Hi'iaka and Namaka, after two of the goddess Haumea's children). Brown said additional bits of ice and rock were apparently struck off Haumea in a cosmic collision long ago and are now circling the sun in their own orbits.

    New Horizons gets a transplant ... and Twitter!
    Oodles of such oddities may well come to light when the New Horizons spacecraft makes its way through the Kuiper Belt, starting in seven years. Last week, the probe underwent a successful "brain transplant" that upgraded the onboard software. It's now more than a billion miles from Earth, flying toward Pluto at a rate of about a million miles a day.

    You can keep up with the mission's progress via Twitter or Facebook. (In the wake of Phoenix Mars Lander's Twitter success, it seems as if every space mission nowadays is getting into social networking.)

    New Horizons' team will be checking out the spacecraft's instruments over the next couple of months, and then put the probe back to sleep for another months-long nap. The first "dress rehearsal" for the Pluto flyby will be conducted next year, but there's still a long way to go before showtime in 2015.

    Will the planethood debate be settled by that time? Stern won't be surprised if it isn't. After all, it took decades for scientists to settle the controversy over continental drift - and some are still going back and forth over the implications of climate change and evolutionary biology.

    "This is not atypical," Stern said. "It's just one of the most visible topics on the table right now."

  • Sagas of science and society

    An African-American chemist's ascent to success, the often-frustrating quest for fertility, the ins and outs of genetic screening and the local effects of global climate change are among the subjects covered in this year's crop of award-winning science sagas, as selected by the National Association of Science Writers.

    NASW says its Science in Society Journalism Awards recognize "innovative reporting that goes well beyond the research findings and considers the associated ethical problems and social effects." The winners, who were chosen by a panel of their peers, will be honored on Oct. 26 during the association's annual meeting in Palo Alto, Calif. This year's awards carry a cash prize of $2,500.

    I was lucky enough to win one of the 2002 Science in Society awards for my genetic genealogy tale, and since then I've served on the judging committee a couple of times (but not this year). Take a look at this year's stand-outs:

    • Books: "Everything Conceivable," by Washington Post Magazine feature writer Liza Mundy, examines assisted reproduction technologies and their often-unexpected ramifications. "Even people who think they are really up to date on these issues are going to be very surprised," one judge said. Another said the book documented trends that are "as baffling as they are unknown."
    • Periodicals (magazines and newspapers): "The Match," a five-part series by Newsday reporter Beth Whitehouse, traces the case of a girl suffering from a rare blood disorder - and her family's controversial quest to cure her. The series appeared in the newspaper Sept. 30-Oct. 4, 2007. "This is such a wonderful example of what a newspaper can do in a very personal way," one of the judges said. "To take a single story, a single family, and turn it into a symbol of this entire debate over prenatal genetic screening."
    • Electronic media (TV, radio, Internet): "Forgotten Genius," a TV documentary that first aired on PBS on Feb. 6, 2007, chronicles the life of Arican-American chemist Percy Julian. Writer/producers Stephen Lyons and Llewellyn M. Smith share the award. One of the judges said the show is "one of the few docudramas that actually blends documentary with the drama and really grips the viewer." In addition to the latest honor, "Forgotten Genius" has won a Science Journalism Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
    • Honorable mention: NPR's "Climate Connections" is a series of 170 stories that document how humans around the world are addressing - or failing to address - the challenge of global warming. The judges said they were impressed by NPR's "incredible commitment of resources." Editor/correspondents Alison Richards and David Malakoff share the honors.

    In all, 155 works were entered in this year's competition.

    "I think the quality of all the entries showed that science journalism is alive and well, but we should not take that for granted," one of the judges, Madeleine Jacobs of the American Chemical Society, said in NASW's news release. "In this era of very short attention spans and dwindling resources for journalism, we are blessed that we still have publishers that are willing to commit the resources to ensure that the public learns about these extremely important issues."

  • Astronauts get down to earth

    NASA file
    Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders took this picture of Earth above the lunar horizon in
    1968. This "Earthrise" has become a symbol of our planet's beauty and fragility.

    Space travelers from around the world are gathering this week to focus on the most precious planet they've ever discovered: Earth.

    The planetary introspection is taking place in Seattle during this year's congress of the Association of Space Explorers, which brings together astronauts and cosmonauts from the United States, Russia and other nations. There's only one membership requirement: You have to travel through outer space for at least one orbit around Earth.

    "Like any professional society, we have a common bond," said former NASA astronaut Bonnie Dunbar, who served as one of the hosts for this year's congress in her capacity as president and chief executive officer of Seattle's Museum of Flight. More than 50 spacefliers were on the guest list, although some of the would-be attendees were held up by Hurricane Ike and other complications.

    During this week's sessions, old friendships were renewed: Billionaire space passenger Charles Simonyi chatted in the aisles with Russian cosmonauts, while pioneers of the Apollo program joshed with space shuttle veterans. "It's not just the formal sessions, but the informal get-togethers are also important," Dunbar said.

    Even during the formal meetings, earthly issues were at center stage. Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders retold the story of his 1968 trip around the moon - and the famous picture he took of the Earth above the lunar horizon.

    "I can't claim to be a photographer," he told attendees at the museum. "I took about 20 of 'em, changing the f-stop every time - and they eventually found one that came out pretty nice."

    The "Earthrise" photo became an environmental icon, symbolizing the planet's beauty and fragility. Some writers have talked about the "Overview Effect" - the profound change in perspective that comes along with seeing Earth in its totality - and Anders clearly was feeling the effect, even after 40 years. He said the sight filled him with an overwhelming sense of stewardship.

    "Apollo went to the moon for political reasons, and also to study and learn about our nearest neighbor," Anders said. "But to me, the most important discovery was planet Earth."

    Retired astronaut Tom Jones, a veteran of four shuttle flights, agreed that there's nothing like a spaceflight to give you the feeling that Earth has to be protected. "It's something that every astronaut comes home with," he said.

    Jones provided a preview of his forthcoming book, "Planetology," which blends imagery of Earth and other celestial bodies to show the similarities and contrasts in climate and geology. Earth's watery lakes help us understand Titan's hydrocarbon lakes. Insights into Mars' past climate help us plan for Earth's future climate changes. Volcanoes on Earth help us figure out how eruptions work on Io and Enceladus.

    So how does the resolve to protect our planet get passed along to the wider world? The spacefliers had several suggestions:

    • Simonyi, a software executive who visited the international space station last year, said the thrill of spaceflight should be shared with those who have been waiting decades to buy their ticket to the final frontier. "We should talk more about hope, and destiny, and vision - and, of course, tourism."

    • Former U.S. Sen. Jake Garn, a Utah Republican who flew into space aboard the shuttle in 1985, called for a campaign to counter the public perception that too much was being spent on science in general and space science in particular.  "I'm very disgusted with the past couple of administrations and Congress, that we spend so little on scientific research and development, because of the benefits that come back from it," he said. (This year's NASA budget of $17.3 billion is significantly less than what the Pentagon spends on space ventures, representing 0.6 percent of total federal spending.)

    • Perhaps the most enduring way of passing along the "Overview Effect" is by getting young people excited about space exploration, and the Association of Space Explorers was doing its part on that front this week. The spacefliers spent more time in public outreach - at Seattle-area schools, universities and other venues - than they did being cooped up in lecture halls. "The major portion of what we're doing is about inspiring the next generation in science, technology, engineering and math careers," Dunbar told me.

    Is going to space one of the best ways to build support for protecting the earth? Or is it a costly luxury in the current eco-conscious era? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

    Update for 8:11 p.m. ET: This afternoon, the astronauts were given previews of what could be coming up on three frontiers:

    • Phoenix Mars Lander: During a teleconference, the mission team for NASA's latest Mars probe talked about their "fairy-tale mission" to the Red Planet's north polar region, with the confirmed detection of water held up as a highlight. The team members have largely dispersed from the mission's science operations center in Arizona, and they've gotten one last mission extension before the Martian winter closes in. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Miles Smith said some instruments will likely have to be disabled by late next month, putting the solar-powered lander into "weather station mode." After that, the climate will only get colder and darker. "We don't expect to be around at the beginning of next year," he said.

    • Return to the moon: Space station veteran Carl Walz, who is now director of the Advanced Capabilities Division for NASA's exploration program, brought his fellow spacefliers up to date on the multibillion-dollar effort to send astronauts back to the moon by 2020. He said the prototype for a small pressurized lunar rover - basically, an enclosed cab mounted on NASA's Chariot chassis - would undergo engineering tests next month at the Black Point lava flow near Flagstaff, Ariz. He also said NASA favored a leg-and-wheel concept for mobility on the moon, exemplified by the Athlete experimental vehicle.

    • Five-month round trip to asteroid? Former astronaut Tom Jones recapped studies that looked at the possibility of going to an asteroid using the space hardware developed for moon exploration. The judgment so far is that such a mission might be doable, although the crew would have to be pared down to two or three astronauts. One leading scenario would provide for a five-month mission to the near-Earth asteroid 1999 AO10: Launch would be set for September 2025. The astronauts would arrive at the asteroid in early 2026 for a two-week expedition and would return to Earth in February 2026. (This scenario is discussed in depth in Air & Space magazine.) Jones said such a mission could yield valuable insights on how to extract resources from an asteroid, or even divert a space rock if it threatened Earth. "It's the right way to protect our planet," he said.

  • DNA fingerprints in orbit

    Sergei Remezov / Reuters file
    Click for video: Millionaire spaceflier-to-be
    Richard Garriott undergoes training at Russia's Star
    City cosmonaut complex. Learn more about Garriott's
    plan to deliver genetic fingerprints to orbit.

    Space: the final frontier ... for your DNA.

    Millionaire game guru Richard Garriott didn't know what to expect when he offered to bring along a collection of digitized genetic fingerprints to the international space station. Even the soon-to-be spaceflier says he was amazed by the response.

    This week, what started out as a video-game publicity stunt is getting TV exposure on "The Colbert Report," proving how eager even celebrities are to leave their mark on space.

    "That desire to participate ... in the dream of spaceflight is fairly universal," Garriott told me over the phone from Russia's Star City training complex last week. "It's much more ingrained than even I had predicted."

    Garriott is including DNA fingerprints from more than 100 game players and notables, along with other digital goodies, on a hard drive he's bringing with him when he launches to the space station on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in October. The 47-year-old video game designer, who is the son of retired NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, paid an estimated $30 million for the 10-day trip.

    The younger Garriott told me that the Operation Immortality DNA project - which piggybacks on one of his best-known games, Tabula Rasa - provides an opportunity for people to "travel with me into space here next month."

    "It's just been striking how interested people were, and how they vied for position," Garriott said.

    Regeneration? Sorry, Stephen
    Comedian Stephen Colbert, host of the TV show, has been among the cagiest of the celebrities invited to contribute their genetic code. In a statement last week, he joked that Operation Immortality could bring him "one step closer to my lifelong dream of being the baby" who looms over Earth at the end of the classic science-fiction film "2001: A Space Odyssey."

    Unfortunately for Colbert and the other Operation Immortality participants, the genetic information being sent to the station won't be quite enough to allow for cloning in the event of Earth's destruction. This isn't like earlier schemes to send actual samples into space. Instead, only a selection of each participant's genetic markers - analogous to the raw data from paternity or family ancestry tests - will be encoded on the space-certified hard drive. But that's enough for Garriott's purposes. "It's clearly enough of a fingerprint to identify individuals," he said.

    The concept behind Operation Immortality plays off the plotline for the Tabula Rasa game.

    "The back story for Tabula Rasa is that Earth, in just a few years, is going to face a significant challenge: an evil alien invasion," Garriott explained. "If that fate were to befall the earth, or if some other natural challenge were to befall humanitiy, the Immortality Drive being stored on the ISS might be placed where the survivors on Earth, or future alien races, could go to find out about the human race and maybe even rebuild the human race."

    Garriott said about three dozen "notables" from different walks of life were invited to swab their cheeks and send in their DNA samples for analysis. The Operation Immortality Web site also offers a trial version of the Tabula Rasa game, and game players are selected on a random basis to join the operation. The online contest wraps up next week, said David Swofford, a spokesman for game publisher NCsoft.

    Garriott's Immortality Drive will contain digital descriptions of Tabula Rasa characters, as well as the game program itself. But the designer had to give up the idea of actually playing the game online from space: The space station's Internet service is pretty pricey - and besides, there's the computer virus threat to consider.

    "It's not only an expensive route ... but it's also one that they're understandably extremely worried about, for example, getting hackers or other people who trace packets back through the system on the ISS, and damage the Internet on the ISS," Garriott said. 

    More than fun and games
    Operation Immortality is just one of the twists to Garriott's mission, which was brokered by Virginia-based Space Adventures. Even though he and his predecessors are often called "space tourists," Garriott insisted that he's "not just going as a tourist, but rather to go and live and work in space, and find a way to contribute through my time in space."

    He said that's an attitude he picked up from his father, now aged 77, who flew aboard the Skylab space station in 1973 and on the space shuttle in 1983.

    "If you happen to be lucky enough to stumble into, or buy your way into one of the rare or valuable places within this reality, it's really important to find a way to make the most of your time with that rare opportunity," the younger Garriott said.

    As part of the scientific agenda, he's planning to take pictures of some of the places on Earth that his father documented during Skylab's photographic survey. The pictures will be compared to gauge the effects of climate change, deforestation and pollution as well as environmental remediation efforts. Garriott also will conduct protein-growth experiments that build upon work done at Extremozyme, one of the ventures that he and his father founded.

    On the educational side of the mission, Garriott plans to do some video demonstrations of zero-G experiments for the Challenger Center for Space Science Education. He'll also put on an art show - creating paintings as well as displaying them. "I'll be floating droplets of paint in microgravity and basically catching them with the canvas," he explained. When he returns to Earth, the artwork will be auctioned off, with the money going to the Challenger Center.

    Looking backward, looking forward
    Speaking of money, Garriott has acknowledged that the bulk of his video game fortune is going toward this one spaceflight - but in this case, the bank balance is not his primary concern.

    "I've been pursuing this forever, investing in all the ways I could in order to make this opportunity show up. ... I look at this as what I've been earning the money for."

    That attitude dates back to Garriott's childhood in Houston, when he was surrounded by astronauts and naturally assumed that everyone would eventually go into space.

    "One day, the NASA optometrist came to me and said, 'Hey, Richard, your eyesight's really bad. I'm very sorry to be the one to inform you, but that's going to prevent you from ever being selected as an astronaut,'" Garriott recalled. "For me, that was like saying, 'Hey, by the way, you are no longer going to be a member of the club that everyone you know is a member of.'"

    Rather than giving up, Garriott persevered: He struck it rich in the video game industry, and invested money for decades in ventures ranging from Spacehab to Space Adventures. He intended to become the first-ever spaceflier to pay his own way into orbit - but when his portfolio shrank in the Internet bust, he had to give way to California millionaire Dennis Tito in 2001.

    Now it's Garriott's turn - and as luck would have it, the first son of a NASA astronaut to fly into space himself is due to meet up with space station commander Sergei Volkov, the first spacefaring son of a Russian cosmonaut.

    "Both of us are very happy that we get the chance to usher in the second generation of spaceflight together," Garriott said, "although I think we're going to be more excited about it once I get to orbit, and more when we get back to ground."

    He's not worried about the flight ... much. "I definitely do not feel more at risk than I did prior to making the decision," he told me. "That being said, I have learned all kinds of new and interesting ways to harm yourself in space." (For example, you could conceivably suffocate in a cloud of carbon dioxide while you sleep, if the life support system went haywire.)

    Garriott hasn't yet formulated a detailed plan for life after orbit - although he's sure that he'll want to promote efforts to get private individuals involved in spaceflight, "and not just as tourists." Who knows? The experience also might suggest some new twists for Garriott's future video games. That's what happened after Garriott's past adventures to Antarctica, the deep ocean and other frontiers.

    "If you look at the games that I've created, all of my explorations of reality also show up in my games," Garriott said.

  • Political picks? Ask again later

    Political prediction markets may be technically more accurate than polls, but they can go through the same ups and downs that polls do. Now that the trend line has had a few days to settle down, it looks as if the Republicans as well as the Democrats got a mini-bounce after their respective conventions - but nothing near the swings that the polls recorded.

    Whether you're backing the GOP's John McCain or the Democrats' Barack Obama, you can find a fresh prediction that will warm your heart.

    Republicans can take encouragement from the latest projections based on state-by-state electoral votes, which are the only votes that count in the end. This week, researchers led by Sheldon Jacobson at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign reported that their mathematical model gives the edge to McCain. A "neutral" prediction puts McCain's electoral-vote count at 271, beating out Obama's tally of 267. (That's barely enough to win.)

    A similar analysis was served up by the University of Washington's Darryl Holman at Hominid Views. The current forecast at Electoral-vote.com also favors McCain, although it leaves 34 votes up for grabs - enough of a margin to throw victory into doubt.

    These models draw heavily upon state-by-state polling, and that means there's plenty of time for the forecasts to change. So what's the verdict from other models that supposedly do a better job at long-range forecasting? The margin has tightened just a bit on the political prediction markets since our last status report, but so far the Democrats are still on top.

    The GOP shares in winner-take-all trading on the Iowa Electronic Markets topped off at 47 cents on Sept. 12 and have since settled down to 42 cents. The Democrats' shares bottomed out at 53.1 cents on the 12th and are at 59.2 cents today. (To refresh your memory, each share pays $1 in November if the presidential candidate wins, and zero if he loses.)

    Yale economist Ray Fair uses yet another long-range mathematical model, based on economic statistics for the quarters leading up to the election. His latest analysis, issued at the end of July, sets the eventual Republican vote share at 48.5 percent.

    Since then, of course, we've had not only the conventions but McCain's surprise pick of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. We're also having a pretty significant economic crisis, by the way.

    Fair said the economic situation in particular could make things worse for the GOP.

    "It's probably the case that the growth rate [for the year's third quarter] is going to be smaller than the figure I used - in fact, it could be negative," he said. If third-quarter growth is less than the 2.8 percent Fair projected, the GOP's vote-share figure would suffer.

    On the other hand, Fair can't account for factors such as Palin's selection - or, for that matter, McCain's "not-your-typical-Republican" image.

    "It is an intangible, and it could be a significant one," Fair said. "If he can distance himself from the current administration, it's to his advantage to do so." And that's just what he's trying to do.

    In any case, a projected 51.5-48.5 vote split is within the 2.5-percentage-point margin of error that Fair has set for his model. So the bottom line, based on the long-term economic statistics, is that the election is up for grabs. And that's something the pundits told you 10 days ago.

    Update for 8:15 p.m. ET: This week we addressed the presidential platforms on science and technology. To find out where your congressional candidates stand on science and technology issues, check the SHARP Network's database, presented by Scientists and Engineers for America. (SHARP stands for "science, health and related policies.")

    Keep up with the presidential race at Politics.msnbc.com.

  • Catch a galactic double feature

    NASA / ESA / STScI / AURA
    This Hubble image reveals a rare alignment involving a small foreground galaxy
    and a larger background galaxy. The smaller galaxy's tentacles of dust are
    silhouetted against the bigger galaxy's glow. Click on the image for a larger
    version from the Space Telescope Science Institute.

    Two galaxies, one right in front of the other, have put on a rare light show for the Hubble Space Telescope - and the backlighting reveals seldom-seen dust tentacles that may be standard equipment for starry spirals.

    Until Hubble focused its Advanced Camera for Surveys on the sight in the southern constellation Sculptor, astronomers saw just one single blob in the sky. But the space telescope could make out a background galaxy about 780 million light-years away that is the size of our Milky Way - as well as a smaller, closer galaxy.

    The galactic double feature is cataloged as 2MASX J00482185-2507365, and the research team's description of the pair has been submitted for publication in The Astronomical Journal. The researchers haven't yet gotten a fix on just how close the closer galaxy is, but they see no evidence that it's gravitationally interacting with the background galaxy.

    The most interesting thing about the sight is the way that the closer galaxy is silhouetted against the farther-out galaxy. That rarely happens in astronomy. More typically, you merely see the galaxy's glow against the blackness of space, and the dark edges remain invisible.

    In this case, the background galaxy serves to light up the foreground galaxy's outer tentacles of dark dust. Today's image advisory compares the structures to "barren branches" on a tree and says that "astronomers have never seen dust this far beyond the visible edge of the galaxy."

    Astronomers don't yet know whether these dark branches are common features in galaxies. But they do know the dust doesn't account for the mysterious dark matter that makes up most of the universe's mass. "This is a known component in galaxies," Roelof de Jong of the Baltimore-based Space Telescope Science Institute, told me today.

    De Jong said astronomers have long known that the dark dust was there, based on infrared emissions. They just haven't had much of an opportunity to see how it was distributed. "The silhouette effect helps you see the tiny amounts," he explained.

    The double feature also helps you see why Hubble's observations are the gifts that keep on giving. This research was based on archived imagery that was captured almost exactly two years ago, before the Advanced Camera for Surveys was crippled. Next month's Hubble repair mission could return the ACS to full service - but even when the venerable space telescope gives way to the next generation, there'll still be Hubble data galore for astronomers to pore over.

    The science team behind the double-galaxy observations includes de Jong as well as Benne Holwerda of the Space Telescope Science Institute; Bill Keel of the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa; and Julianne Dalcanton and Benjamin Williams of the University of Washington. Dalcanton is a frequent blogger at Cosmic Variance.

    Update for 6:15 p.m. ET: I caught up with the University of Washington's Williams and Dalcanton to find out more about the research. They're involved in a project called the ACS Nearby Galaxy Survey Treasury, or ANGST. The researchers were in the middle of reviewing Hubble imagery showing scores of galaxies neighboring our own when the galaxies popped up in the region of the sky around the better-known spiral galaxy NGC 253.

    "I was the one who found them in the data," said Williams, a postdoctoral research associate. "It was one of the first observations that we took for our project. ... I just thought, 'Wow, I've never seen anything like that before.'"

    Williams showed the sight to Dalcanton, and although they couldn't follow up immediately (Oh, the ANGST!) they eventually enlisted Holwerda, de Jong and Keel to do further analysis.

    "There are only a handful of systems known with similar overlaps, and none are as nicely arranged as these two," Dalcanton said in an e-mail. "Bill Keel ... has been working hard on similar systems for years."

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