Univ. of Wash. via YouTube

Robby Connor demonstrates the drink mixer in a University of Washington lab.

If you're looking for a buzz on New Year's Eve, consider the automatic wireless drink mixer - a student-built contraption that is generating a fresh wave of buzz on the Internet.

The homebrew bartender-bot was built by Robby Connor, Richard Evan Cross and Zach Rasmor for an electrical engineering class at the University of Washington last spring. "We all got A's on it," Connor told me this week.

The guy who gave them the A's said they richly deserved the grade.

"They took all of the stuff that they had learned and brought it together in a nice way," James Peckol, senior lecturer in electrical engineering at UW. "And more than that, they had fun doing it. They invented some weird drinks. One of their drinks was a mix of Coke and cranberry juice, which actually tastes good. They called it a 'Cokenberry.'" (Alcoholic beverages weren't allowed in the lab.)

Peckol said the beauty of the bar-bot project was how the students combined a variety of technologies to come up with "something that, within all of our projects, no one has ever done before."

Although the students' video clip about the project has been up on YouTube for months, it's just now getting traction in the blogosphere - perhaps in part because this is the season of holiday cheer.

YouTube video features the automatic wireless drink mixer.

Up to four different beverages can be tanked up in large plastic bottles hanging over the bar-bot's electronic brain and plastic plumbing. Servo motors are attached to valves, set up to meter out the right mix of ingredients into a waiting cup. Pre-established drink recipes can be stored in the bot's memory chips, and patrons can also specify their own drink mix on a remote-control touch pad. Drink orders are transmitted wirelessly from the pad to the bot.

The cup receptacle includes an infrared sensor that makes sure a cup is actually present before a drink is poured. Cross programmed the sensor to compensate for ambient light, so that the machine can be just as spill-proof in a dark pub or a bright fern bar. The cups can also be equipped with RFID chips that basically tell the bot what you had during the last round of drinks.

The whole thing cost a few hundred dollars to put together, Rasmor said. "It was a lot of commercial, off-the-shelf stuff," he told me.

"We actually did think about patenting it," Connor said, "but it isn't at this stage good enough to do something like that. It's not commercializable yet. You can order a drink from afar, which is a cool thing, but you still have to actually walk up and get the drink."

That's not necessarily a bad thing. I can easily imagine a techno-tavern where you order your drink from one of several mixing stations at the bar - perhaps the station where the cute guys or gals are hovering, or where the robotics club is working on the latest plan for world domination. XCOR Aerospace's Mike Massee recalls a recent space conference where a remote-controlled drink mixer known as the "CosmoBot" was the hit of the party. (Click on the following links to see pictures of the 007-themed control panel and the CosmoBot itself, courtesy of Massee.)

Cross said the software coding might be the most innovative part of the University of Washington's bar-bot. "I would be very interested in getting it out there and seeing if there's a demand for it," he told me today. When I suggested going open source with the code, he said, "I'll certainly look into that."

On another, arguably more important level, the project was a smashing success: Not only did the three students get A's in the class, but they also got jobs after graduating. Connor works for W.L. Gore & Associates in the medical field; Rasmor works for Lockheed Martin Information Systems and Global Services in the defense field; and Cross is at Accenture Systems in Houston, helping design a new crude-oil trading system for Shell.

Will Cross be designing new drinks for the bar-bot as well? Since the class ended, the machine hasn't been put back into service - which means it's never been used for anything more intoxicating than a Cokenberry.

Right now, Cross has custody of the mixing apparatus, and if he wants to have it ready for a New Year's Eve party, he's running out of time. "I haven't had plans to do that yet - but it's a good idea, and it's not out of the realm of possibility," he said. "I need a power supply...."

I'll be taking Friday off for the turnover to a new decade, the 2010s. And yes, it is a new decade.

The way I see it, the decade-counting scheme is different from the sometimes-confusing convention for centuries and millennia: If you're talking about the third millennium or the 21st century, you start with 2001. That's because the ordinal numbers "third" and "21st" are used in the context of a counting system that started with the year 1, not the year zero. But if you're talking about a decade, you're talking about time frames like the 1960s or the 1990s - time frames that began in years ending with zero (1960 or 1990, respectively).

Thus, the decade of the 2000s (or the "Aughts," or the "Noughties," or the "double-oh decade") began on Jan. 1, 2000, in the final year of the 20th century. That's the decade which is ending today. The 2010s begin on Friday, Jan. 1, 2010, and that's the extra day I'm taking off.

To tide you through the long weekend, here are some Web links to decadal discussions:

• Decade of science highs and lows
• The decade's top 10 science stories
• 50 years of science sagas
• Msnbc.com's decade in review
• Newsweek: The decade in rewind
• Newsvine: Will 2010 be better than 2009?

Check out The Volokh Conspiracy for further discussion on the decade-counting question. And while you're surfing around the Web this holiday weekend, give a look to my newly published book, "The Case for Pluto." You can also find out what I'm up to via my Twitter account (http://twitter.com/b0yle) or my Facebook page.

WETA / Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.

In the film "Avatar," Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) teaches the Na'vi language to Jake (Sam Worthington), a "dreamwalker" who is mind-linked to a human controller.

Ayftozä lefpom ayngaru nìwotx! That's "Happy Holidays to You All" in Na'vi, the language that was created for the sci-fi blockbuster "Avatar." The professor who made up that phrase as well as all the alien dialogue in the movie hopes Na'vi does as well as Klingon, another fictional alien tongue that has taken on a life of its own. But for now, that's out of his hands.

"I have an in-box that's amazingly full," linguist Paul Frommer, a professor at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business, told me today. "They're all asking the same thing: 'Where can I learn this language?' I'm getting messages from all over the globe. The thing is, I don't own the rights to the language."

Frommer noted that snippets of Na'vi are finding their way onto the Internet - some correct, some incorrect. "What I would love to do is get something out to the people, but I can't do it on my own. I have to do it in conjunction with the movie people," he said.

Those people have been a little busy - which is understandable, considering that "Avatar" has been America's top-grossing movie for the past two weeks. But once the holidays are over and school is back in session, Frommer is planning to check in with Twentieth Century Fox, the studio behind "Avatar," and with Lightstorm Entertainment, director James Cameron's production company.

If Na'vi takes off the way the "Avatar" saga has, Frommer could well follow in the footsteps of fellow linguist Marc Okrand, whose rendering of "Star Trek" Klingon has been immortalized in dictionaries, literary works, films, online name generators, rap music and merchandise. Heck, there's even a Klingon Language Institute.

How Na'vi lingo was born
The gestation period for the Na'vi language was much longer than a Klingon pregnancy: Cameron conceived of the idea behind "Avatar" - set in a world where humans could interact with aliens by projecting their consciousness into genetically engineered alien bodies, or avatars - back in 1994. The filmmaker already had some definite ideas about names and words when he put out the word in 2005 that he was looking for a linguist.

	USC
	Paul Frommer

At the time, Frommer was director of the Center for Management Communication at USC and the co-author of a linguistics textbook. He jumped at the chance to work with Cameron. "It's probably the most exciting thing that's happened to me," he said.

The first job was to find a palette of sounds that would satisfy Cameron's vision. "I wanted to make sure that whatever aural impression I came up with would be something that he'd be happy with," Frommer said.

The professor offered up three audio choices: a language like Mandarin Chinese, where rising or falling tones convey meaning; a language where vowel lengths make a difference, as they do in Mayan languages, for instance; or a language with ejective sounds, paralleling Native American tongues ranging from Lakota to Tlingit.

Cameron went with the ejectives, and as a result, you'll hear p's, t's and k's occasionally popping out of the mouths of the Na'vi. How do you enunciate an ejective? Here's Frommer's example: "You make a 'k' sound as loudly as you can without breathing, and then you add a vowel ... k-uhhhh." In written Na'vi, the sounds are represented by px, tx and kx.

Building a language
Frommer's next task was to whip up a recipe for combining the sounds. "It's not just a question of what sounds go into the languages, but also what sounds are excluded," he said. "If you throw in every kind of spice you have in the kitchen, you're not going to get something distinctive."

So Frommer held back on some of the ingredients commonly found in English. "There's no buh, duh, guh. There's no 'j' sound. There's no chuh, shuh or thuh," he said. To compensate, he added some sounds not commonly found in English, including the initial consonant clusters fp-, tsm-, sng-, tskx- and ftx-.

Another feature of spoken Na'vi is its use of vowel clusters. Frommer's favorite example is the eight-syllable mouthful "meoauniaea" (meh-oh-ah-oo-nee-ah-eh-ah). "Don't ask me what it means - I haven't assigned a meaning yet. But I love the word!" Frommer said.

The sounds were sometimes real tongue-twisters for the actors, who had to be taught how to say their Na'vi lines. "I didn't think I could get through it," Zoe Saldana, who plays the alien heroine in "Avatar," told the Los Angeles Times. "I'm not good with languages. All the actors, we worked together. It was the only way."

Frommer assumed that the ejectives would be the hardest part for the actors, but the real toughies were some of the initial consonants, such as ng- (as in "fishing" or "nga," the Na'vi word for "you"). "Putting a familiar sound in an unfamiliar place turned out to be the most difficult," he said.

The overall effect has been called "Afro-Polynesian-Native American." That description might suggest that the language parallels the enviro-panentheistic philosophy expressed by the Na'vi - just as the guttural tones of Klingon parallel that culture's martial bent. But Frommer said he wasn't specifically going for that connection.

"The Klingons are a pretty rough crowd, so Okrand put in a lot of 'khaaaa' and that kind of stuff. What Cameron wanted for Na'vi was something smoother and more appealing, so I tried to make it sound nice," Frommer said. "But other than that, there isn't any obvious correlation between language and culture. So much of that is in the ear of the beholder."

Cameron started out with a repertoire of about 30 words, including the names of the major characters, words for some Pandoran animals and the term "Na'vi" itself. Frommer expanded the vocabulary to more than 1,000 words, adding some to the list even as the movie was being shot.

"There were days when I spent 12 or 13 hours on the set," he recalled. "They would change things on the fly, and they would come to me and say, 'Well, we need to say such-and-such.'"

Playing by the rules ... sort of
Frommer had free rein when it came to Na'vi grammar. The sentence structure isn't determined by word order (as English is) but by cases (like Russian). That means the word order is free to reflect the most mellifluous phrasing of a sentence. "If a sentence didn't flow in a particular word order, then if the discourse allowed, I could change the word order to something that flowed better," Frommer said.

The meaning of a single word can be altered by the addition of a suffix. For example, the word for a human who is manifest in an avatar is "uniltìranyu," or Dreamwalker, while the word for the avatar itself is "uniltìrantokx," or Dreamwalker Body. The plural form of a noun is denoted by a prefix rather than a suffix. For example, a single human is known among the Na'vi as a Sky Person, or "tawtute," while the plural (Sky People) is "aysawtute" or simply "sawtute."

The linguist also came up with clever twists to change a noun's case depending on whether the verb was transitive or intransitive, and to change a verb's aspect depending on whether the action was incompleted or complete. If Neytiri is sleeping, for example, you would say "Neytiri herahaw." But if Neytiri hunted a hexapede ("yerik"), you would say "Neytiril yerikit tolaron."

The Na'vi language isn't always as rigid as it sounds, which can make things interesting for linguists - even the linguist who made it all up in the first place. Frommer said there were a few occasions when the dialogue that Cameron wanted didn't mesh with the official rules. "I would tell him, 'Yes, but according to the grammar, it should be such-and-such,'" the professor recalled. "And he said, 'You know what? Find a way to do it the way I want to do it.'"

Frommer always found a way. After all, this is Hollywood - where even linguistic rules were meant to be broken.

More about languages and the movies:

• New York Times: Skxawng! 
• Vanity Fair: Brushing up on Na'vi
• Language Log: Some highlights of Na'vi
• UGO Movie Blog: We translate your phrases into Na'vi
• Space.com on msnbc.com: How much reality in 'Avatar'?
• msnbc.com: How a linguist revived 'New World' language
• Cosmic Log: The race to save our languages

Join the Cosmic Log team by signing up as my Facebook friend or following b0yle on Twitter. And pick up a copy of my new book, "The Case for Pluto." If you're partial to the planetary underdogs, you'll be pleased to know that I've set up a Facebook fan page for "The Case for Pluto."

	Brenda Tan and Matt Cost via Rockefeller Univ.
	A cockroach found during a DNA barcoding survey  may represent a new species or subspecies.

When high-school students did an inventory of the DNA in their own homes, they were amazed to find lots of mislabeled food products, a pesky invasive species ... and what appears to be a new breed of cockroach.

"The idea was to explore our environment through the lens of DNA," Matt Cost, an 18-year-old senior at Manhattan's Trinity School, told me. The experiment turned up more than 150 usable DNA fingerprints, found in common items ranging from apartment-building bugs to a feather duster.

The real detective work came into play when Cost and his 17-year-old classmate, Brenda Tan, matched the DNA code against a couple of publicly available databases for animal species. They found out that an expensive brand of sheep's-milk cheese was actually made from cow's milk, that "sturgeon caviar" was actually Mississippi paddlefish, and that dog treats supposedly made from venison were actually made from beef.

Eleven of the 66 food items that Cost and Tan tested turned out to be mislabeled - which reinforced the findings from an earlier Trinity School DNA project. That experiment found that a quarter of the fish offerings purchased at Manhattan markets and restaurants were mislabeled to make them seem more palatable or expensive. The caper, cracked by Kate Stoeckle and Louisa Strauss, came to be known as "Sushigate." (The "Sushigate" sleuths are due to discuss the case at February's annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.)

Cost and Tan followed in the footsteps of "Sushigate," under the guidance of mentors at their school and at The Rockefeller University and the American Museum of Natural History. One of the advisers was Kate Stoeckle's dad, Mark Stoeckle, a physician and researcher who is a member of Rockefeller's adjunct faculty.

Jesse Ausubel, director of Rockefeller's Program for the Human Environment, said the project was an eye-opener for the advisers as well as the students. He was surprised to find so many different species (97, to be exact) represented in New York City's urban setting.

"I wish I were a cartoonist," he told me. "I'd like to show a picture of a doorman at a Manhattan apartment building, and instead of people walking in, it'd be an ostrich and a bison and all these animals. ... It'd be a crazy Halloween or New Year's Eve party."

	Mark Stoeckle / Rockefeller Univ.
	Trinity School students Brenda Tan and Matt Cost collected more than 200 samples from their surroundings in New York City.

The samples were collected at Cost's apartment building on the Upper East Side and Tan's house in Brooklyn, as well as at Trinity School, in the homes of friends and around the neighborhood. The students also took strands of hair from eight of their classmates. "We were happy to report that they all came back as 100 percent human," Tan said in a Rockefeller University news release.

The American Museum of Natural History analyzed each sample and, when possible, deciphered its DNA "barcode." Intact DNA was found in 151 of the 217 items tested, including dried soup mix, butter and yogurt, beef jerky and horse droppings from Central Park.

Cost and Tam compared the four-letter codes (ATATTGCAT, etc.) with the codes for more than 65,000 animal species kept by the Barcode of Life Data Systems, as well as codes recorded in the federally funded GenBank database. Ausubel said such databases promise to open up the field of genetic analysis to millions of citizen scientists.

"Now so much information is available over the Internet that it's democratized science again," he said. "In a way, it's turning back to the 17th and 18th century, when a lot of the people who were doing science were not full-time, dedicated scientists."

One rich scientific frontier was found in an Upper West Side apartment building, where the DNA barcodes from several cockroaches were 4 percent off from the norm. That could signal the discovery of a new species or subspecies of insect, Cost said.

"The professors at Rockefeller are in talks with the world's eminent cockroach experts - yes, there are such people," he said. If the samples support the claim of a new species, the students would get to coin its Latin scientific name.

When the students sampled a bug they found in a box of Texas grapefruit, they were able to identify it as an Oriental latrine fly, an invasive species that has become established in Texas, California and Hawaii but not New York (at least not yet).

Tan said she was struck by how resilient the DNA was - and how widespread the product mislabeling turned out to be. "How are consumers supposed to protect themselves?" she said in the news release. "Someday DNA barcoding may be a cool smartphone app. Until then, we think government agencies should start using these early versions of species identification tools to police the market, and the sooner the better."

It's already starting: Check out this report plus this slideshow gallery for more on how the pros are using DNA barcoding in their detective work, and click through to this Web page for more on the students' DNAHouse experiment.

Both students are getting ready to go on to college - and will likely refer to the DNAHouse experiment in their applications. "Whether you're playing soccer or doing science, actually doing it is better than watching it on television or reading a book," Ausubel observed. Tan plans to study biology. Cost, meanwhile, is focused on music right now, but was intrigued to hear about a project that turns DNA coding into machine-composed music.

Join the Cosmic Log team by signing up as my Facebook friend or following b0yle on Twitter. And pick up a copy of my new book, "The Case for Pluto." If you're partial to the planetary underdogs, you'll be pleased to know that I've set up a Facebook fan page for "The Case for Pluto."

	NASA / JHU APL
	An artist's conception shows New Horizons at Pluto.

NASA's New Horizons probe passed a key milestone today on its nine-year journey and is now closer to Pluto, its primary target, than it is to Earth. But it still has more than five years and more than 1.5 billion miles to go.

The 1,054-pound (480-kilogram) piano-sized spacecraft blasted off for the solar system's most controversial dwarf planet almost four years ago. New Horizons was the fastest spacecraft ever launched from Earth, and thanks to a gravitational boost from Jupiter, it's closing in on Pluto at the rate of 750,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) per day. The probe is due to zoom past Pluto and its three moons on July 14, 2015.

As of today, New Horizons is between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus - a little more than 1.527 billion miles (2.463 billion kilometers) from Earth and 1.526 billion miles (nearly 2.462 billion kilometers) from Pluto, according to today's status report from mission control at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland. (APL is managing the mission on NASA's behalf.)

So this is the halfway point, right? Well, that all depends on what your definition of "halfway" is. "This is the first of several milestones over the next 10 months that mark the halfway points in our journey to the solar system's frontier, where Pluto lies," said Alan Stern, the mission's principal investigator and a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute.

In an e-mail, Stern explained why there's more than one halfway point:

"We are not yet halfway. That comes in late February. We are closer to Pluto than Earth as of today. It's not the same! Why? Because Earth is on the far side of the sun from Pluto. Make sense? ... We get halfway in miles before halfway in days because we are slowing down, owing to the sun's gravity, and therefore the second half of the miles takes a little over half the time. Halfway [in mileage] is February 25; half the days is October 17, both 2010."

Another complication is that Pluto is getting farther and farther away from the sun each day, and that means the halfway point between the sun and the place where Pluto will be for the 2015 encounter is a different day altogether: April 20, to be precise.

	JHU APL
	This graphic shows the position of the New Horizons probe with relation to Pluto, Earth and other planets.

As far as New Horizons' camera is concerned, Pluto is still just a speck in a black sky. In fact, the spacecraft snoozed through today's milestone and won't wake up until next month, for a quick 10-day tuneup. But when 2015 comes around, New Horizons will send back our first-ever close-up of a world that has a thin atmosphere and icy clouds, a mottled surface, and possibly ice volcanoes as well.

The view just might be cool enough to put Pluto in an unprecedented spotlight, almost a decade after its demotion from the nine-planet pantheon. Will its current dwarf-planet designation be reconsidered? Will that designation really matter? "Today's pedantic fuss over planetary semantics will seem naive and irrelevant," the Space Telescope Science Institute's Ray Villard predicted today in a Discovery News blog posting.

It might have been different a decade ago, when it wasn't clear whether the $700 million mission would ever get off the ground. As it was, Stern and his colleagues had to struggle for 17 years to get New Horizons launched. At the time, Pluto was sometimes called the "last unexplored planet," even though the discovery of other icy objects on the solar system's ring was already making it clear that Pluto wasn't the last planet after all.

Suppose the International Astronomical Union had reclassified Pluto while New Horizons was in doubt. Would there have been any space mission to the solar system's icy edge?  "I am convinced ... if the IAU had acted prior to 2003, we would probably not be en route today," Stern told me earlier this year.

As it is, New Horizons will continue its journey through the Kuiper Belt long after the 2015 encounter with Pluto, sending back data about other ice worlds as well. For how long? Who knows? Villard points out that the solar system's frontier stretches for a mind-boggling distance - so far that it would take New Horizons 80,000 years to get to the nearest star.

To learn more about New Horizons, Pluto and the planetary frontier, check out my book, "The Case for Pluto" - and stay tuned for more Plutonian milestones in the months ahead.

Join the Cosmic Log team by signing up as my Facebook friend or following b0yle on Twitter.

• Nature: 2009 review of the year
• 'Nova' on PBS: 'What Darwin Never Knew'
• N.Y. Times: Scientists compiling a microbopedia
• New Scientist: How I made 'Atomic Dogs' a hit | YouTube 

	NASA / JPL / SSI
	The moon Rhea, at far right, is dwarfed by Saturn. The shadow of another moon, Tethys, dots the disk at far left. Click on the image for a larger version.

The Cassini orbiter has been working overtime during the holidays to deliver a cartload of gifts from Saturn and its moons. Highlights include fresh views of frost-spewing Enceladus and yam-shaped Prometheus, plus a "Nutcracker"-style ballet of Saturnian satellites.

The excitement began last week with the animated images of moons passing back and forth with the giant planet and its rings as a backdrop. In an image advisory, the folks who process Cassini's pictures compared the interplay to the dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker" ballet.

My favorite movie is "Moon Jumble," which has Rhea in the starring role, joined by its siblings Janus, Mimas and Pandora. (That's the real Pandora, not the fictional "Avatar" moon). Make sure you stretch your browser window wide enough to take in the whole picture.

"As yet another year in Saturn orbit draws to a close, these wondrous movies of an alien place clear across the solar system remind us how fortunate we are to be engaged in this magnificent exploratory expedition," imaging team leader Carolyn Porco said. "So, from all of us on the Cassini Imaging Team to all of you, Happy Holidays!"

That might fool you into thinking the Cassini team was taking the holidays off. There's no way that was going to happen. On Christmas and the day after, the orbiter snapped pictures as it flew past Enceladus and Prometheus. Over the weekend, Cassini zoomed within 600 miles (960 kilometers) of Titan's north pole.

	NASA / JPL / SSI
	Cassini's view of Enceladus highlights geysers spewing ice from the southern hemisphere.

A sampling of the raw imagery released on Sunday includes a striking full-disk view of Enceladus and its geysers of water ice, spewing out from southern fissures that have been nicknamed "tiger stripes." Such geysers hint at the existence of a subsurface ocean beneath Enceladus' icy surface - an ocean that just might harbor alien life.

The latest picture was taken from a distance of 383,000 miles (617,000 kilometers), and it might make you wonder why those geysers hadn't been spotted decades ago when the Voyager spacecraft flew past. In a posting to the imaging team's Web site, Porco says it wouldn't have been that easy for Voyager to spot the frosty spray.

"We never got a good look at the southern hemisphere with Voyager; we even missed the tiger stripes back then," she wrote. Porco also said "some of the jets - and maybe all of them - are 'intermittent' in the sense that we expect they could turn on and off on a daily timescale (where 'daily' here means 1.3 Earth days)."

Another raw image provides the best view yet of Prometheus, a "shepherding" moon that along with Pandora helps keep Saturn's F ring in line. This view was captured from a distance of 36,000 miles (59,000 kilometers). A farther-out image from Cassini, released five years ago, shows Prometheus at work.

The Planetary Society's Emily Lakdawalla put together the raw imagery to produce a natural-color composite photo of the moon, which measures 74 miles long and as little as 38 miles wide (119 by 87 by 61 kilometers).

"This is one of the more elongated moons to be seen in the solar system, almost exactly twice as long as it is wide," Lakdawalla observes. "The word 'potato' is commonly used to describe the shape of small bodies in the solar system, but I think that Prometheus, with its pointy ends, looks more like a related vegetable, a yam."

The fact that candied yams are a traditional holiday dish makes Prometheus even more palatable as a year-end picture - and whets the appetite for more from Cassini in the year to come.

NASA / JPL / SSI / Color composite by Emily Lakdawalla

The Planetary Society's Emily Lackdawalla produced this color composite view of the Saturnian moon Prometheus from Cassini's raw imagery.

Check out our "Greatest Hits From Saturn" slideshow for classics from Cassini, and our "Year in Space" slideshow for even more stunners. Join the Cosmic Log team by signing up as my Facebook friend or following b0yle on Twitter. And pick up a copy of my new book, "The Case for Pluto." If you're partial to the planetary underdogs, you'll be pleased to know that I've set up a Facebook fan page for "The Case for Pluto."

• SlashFilm: 'Space Tourists' on screen (via Space Transport News)
• National Geographic's top 10 space pictures of 2009 
• L.A. Times: Ground control to NASA TV: Liven up!
• Scientific American's top 10 stories of 2009
• Cumbrian Sky: Carnival of Space 134 

Here's hoping that the December holiday season (Christmas, Hanukkah, Eid, Solstice, Kwanzaa, New Year's, Festivus) renews your sense of wonder for a whole year to come. Postings to Cosmic Log will resume on Monday. In the meantime, here are some Web links to see you through the long weekend:

• Wondering about the 'Star of Wonder'
• Telegraph: Angels can't fly, scientist says
• Planetary Society: Happy Christmas on Mars!
• AIR: Our shrinking solar system and 'Horton Sees a Pluto'

From left: Seoul Nat'l Univ. / Museo Ideale Leonardo da Vinci / AP

Glow-in-the-dark puppies, a naked "Mona Lisa" and gay-penguin parenting were among the weirder science stories of 2009. But wait ... there's much, much more.

So much weird science ... so little time. It's time to look back on the past year's research and pick the winners of the 2010 Weird Science Awards.

In previous years, the top Weirdies have included glow-in-the-dark cloned cats and the rediscovery of an ancient marijuana stash. But if you think those stories are weird, this year's candidates kick it up a notch. Heck, we've got glow-in-the-dark puppies and mushrooms as well as poop armor and gay penguin parents. (The last subject turns out to be surprisingly controversial.)

The problem is, there are so many deserving candidates that it's hard to narrow them down to a manageable list of finalists. We've put 30 on the ballot, plus a few extra honorable mentions, and it's up to you to decide which 10 topics win 2010's Weirdies.

If you think any of the also-rans deserve to go into the winner's circle, feel free to cast a write-in ballot. If a particular topic gets 10 write-ins, it'll be elevated to the official ballot. The deadline for voting is Jan. 1, so don't dawdle over your choice. The top 10 will be highlighted in an online gallery to be published after the first of the year.

One of the selections on the menu is a combination plate that serves up the winners of this year's Ig Nobel prizes for silly science - including the researchers who found that cows seem to give more milk if you name them, and the woman who invented the bra that converts into a pair of gas masks.

The criterion for the Ig Nobels - "science that makes you laugh, and then makes you think" - is a pretty good rule of thumb for the Weirdies as well. But you could go with other criteria, such as "Why on earth did they spend research money on that?" ... or "Wow, that's weird!" ... or "Ewwwww!"

I asked Marc Abrahams, the creator of the Ig Nobels and editor of the Annals of Improbable Research, whether the universe of weird science stories was truly expanding. Here's his e-mailed response:

"Seems to me that two things are causing this:

"1) Yes, there are more weird things happening than ever before, because the world has more people than ever before.

"2) The largest news media organizations are becoming more consolidated yet reducing their corps of reporters and editors - and somehow this results in them reporting an ever-higher percentage of weird and trivial news, in all categories."

Well-said, Marc. I'm proud to make my small contribution to the great task of trivializing the news. For Marc's latest observations on scientific weirdness, including a timely recap of research into white noise vs. "White Christmas," check out the Improbable Research blog.

Here are the nominees for the 2010 Weird Science Awards in chronological order, from January to December:

• Newly discovered catfish species climbs rocks
• Female 'vampire' unearthed in Venice
• Scientists claim to have cloned glowing dogs
• Brainwave Twitter translator invented
• Giant blob lies deep beneath Nevada
• Urine-filled 'witch bottle' from 17th century found
• Animals tickled to study how laughter evolved
• Gay penguin pair raises chick
• Nude, Mona Lisa-like painting surfaces
• Lady mummy was actually a daddy
• Frog dozes in mud for years without food or water
• Women are handier than men with a hammer
• Zookeeper wears abandoned baby kangaroo
• Music made specifically for monkeys
• Naughty Neanderthals nixed monogamy
• Awards honor milkologists and bra-mask inventor
• Glow-in-the-dark mushrooms discovered
• Leg mummified with ancient Egyptian recipe
• Is the future trying to save us from collider doom?
• Tiny ears found on butterfly's wings
• Fruit bats use oral sex to prolong the deed
• Fiddler crabs trade sex for survival
• Lab-grown penis helps rabbits mate ... like rabbits
• Bug wears armor made of poo
• Bird brings down big bang machine
• Fragrances pay tribute to dead celebrities' DNA
• Galileo's missing fingers and tooth found
• Chair floats to final frontier
• Light show sparks UFO buzz
• Clever octopus builds a mobile home

Some of the honorable mentions include stir-crazy bacteria, the she-turtle that was actually a he-turtle, ancient Egyptians with bad teeth, the case of the stolen cadaver lung, the research into a duck's screwy mating habits, and the study that found out why Americans were more likely than Britons to survive the Titanic's sinking.

If you like any of those stories better than the 30 on the ballot, cast a write-in vote and persuade nine of your friends to do the same. Then check back after New Year's Day to find out if your favorites made the top 10.

CLICK HERE TO CAST VOTE FOR THE WEIRDIES

For still more weirdness, check out msnbc.com's Weird News Roundup and Newsweek's oddest headlines of 2009. Don't miss last week's "Year in Science" and "Decade in Science" reviews from last week, and cast your vote for top stories and trends in "The Year in Space."  This year we even have a forecast for the "Decades of Future Science."

Join the Cosmic Log team by signing up as my Facebook friend or following b0yle on Twitter. And pick up a copy of my new book, "The Case for Pluto." If you're partial to the planetary underdogs, you'll be pleased to know that I've set up a Facebook fan page for "The Case for Pluto."

• YouTube: The Known Universe by AMNH
• CICLOPS: Holiday greetings from Saturn! 
• Washington Post: SETI quest gains momentum
• POGO: Researchers accidentally blow up building
• Pwned Experiments: All your data are belong to us
• Interstellar mission studied (via Space Coalition Blog)
• Science @ NASA: Voyager makes interstellar discovery
• Cracked: Six adorable cat behaviors with evil explanations
• ONN: Net archaeologists find ruins of 'Friendster' civilization

NASA

An artist's conception created for NASA in the 1970s shows a double-barreled space colony in action. Today's visions of the future are different, but just as grandiose.

Cloud science? Solar-power primacy? Affordable clean-energy cars? Space colonies? Super-centenarians galore? These are some of the visions put forward for the next 50 years in science and technology.

The past 50 years have set a precedent of sorts for the next half-century: Back in 1960, folks may have assumed their children would be riding rockets to other planets, finding signs of alien life and interacting with intelligent machines - all of which are featured in Arthur C. Clarke's "2010: Odyssey Two" as well as the film based on the book.

The issues that scientists and engineers faced from then up to now have turned out to be more complex than they seemed in 1960. Getting to the moon wasn't a sustainable proposition, and right now it's not clear when anyone will ride a U.S.-made rocket out of Earth orbit again. The evidence for life or even livability beyond Earth is still not in hand, although there have been tantalizing hints from Mars. And for better or worse, machines have not yet reached anything close to HAL 9000's level of intelligence.

That doesn't mean scientists have been standing still: In some ways, we've come farther in the past half-century than we did in any previous century - as evidenced by this 50-year timeline of discovery. Among the leading fields have been medicine and genetics, information technology and cosmology.

In the next 50 years, we may well fall short of the breakthroughs we expect - but unexpected discoveries will pop up to keep life interesting. Here are a few of your predictions for the next decade and the next half-century:

Jeff Simmons, San Diego: Augmented reality (textual/graphical information superimposed over reality) will become an integral part of our lives. Once interfaces such as glasses, windshields and other mobile surfaces become display technologies connected wirelessly to mobile devices (think smartphones on steroids) we will come to depend on this flow of just-in-time information: Want to work on your car's engine? View a schematic that gives you the part's location and the steps to carry out. Looking at a product? See comparative pricing and reviews. Looking at a piece of art? Learn more about the artwork and the artist. Looking at a person you've met before? See their name, where you last met, birthdate, etc. ... and the list goes on.

Bruce Core, Sunriver, Ore.: I'm just a casual observer and marvel at the advances presented, but it seems something belongs on the list about automotive propulsion advances in the past decade and the next. Hydrogen, electric, solar, fossil fuel, air and other propulsion systems have been undergoing tremendous innovation. Perhaps most useful is the reinvention and miniaturization of the storage battery. ...

Onevoice, Frederick, Md.: Things to look for in the next 10 years:
1. Real evidence of global warming will be realized. It will be worse than the deniers believe but also not as bad as the doomsayers claim.
2. Middle East countries will still be rattling their sabers. Only now, Iran will become a nuclear power.
3. For all their effort, CERN will still not find a Higgs boson.
4. Commercial suborbital and orbital spaceflight will become a viable business.
5. Gas prices will go up. Battery prices will drop and we'll all be driving plug-in hybrids.
6. Astronomers and physicists will come together to realize that there is more matter and energy in the universe than previously realized and significantly revise their estimates about dark matter and dark energy.
7. The first example of a true artificially intelligent computer program will be created ("Open the door, HAL").
8. Commercial and residential solar power costs around the world will drop low enough that it will disrupt the economies of several oil-producing nations.
9. The first Earth-sized, Goldilocks Zone, extrasolar planet will be discovered.
10. Life will be found, active or dormant, underground on Mars.
Two suggestions for the next 50 years: First permanent human colony off Earth and first discovery of an extrasolar world that shows signs of organic processes.

Robert Bynum, Beaumont, Texas: I don't think we will have an answer on the question of global warming, either yes or no, since it is a political question at this point. However what I do hope to see in the next 10 years:
1. Sucessful treatment of diabetes with adult stem cells.
2. Discovery of extrasolar planet with near-Earth conditions.
3. Brain-computer prostheics for amputees.
4. New treatments for Alzheimer's disease that at least halt its progression.
5. Home diagnostics for many diseases and home-based treatments of disease that will cut the cost of health care.
6. New treatments for obesity to curb this growing health threat to our country.
7. Cell phone apps that will act as a health monitor for heart disease, blood sugar levels, and a general overall state of health that people can use for on-the-go diagnostics. These apps would be combined with advanced diagnostic software and connected to emergency services. Sort of an OnStar system for the body.
8. More progress in human genome research to identify treatments for genetic diseases.
9.  An economical system for completely burning carbon fuels with no byproducts other than CO2 and water, and recycling the CO2 for use as fuel.
10. Switching of most of our automobiles to gas/electric hybrids or plug-ins, with 400-mile range of travel. ...

McKinley Hill, Morgantown, W.Va.: Even with NASA's amazing accomplishments, the debate about moon vs. Mars shows it's likely that robotic exploration will precede a lunar colony, which might even be the result of private enterprise rather than the efforts of government-sponsored astronautics. The potential for helium-3 on the moon is substantial, especially if a third-generation fusion reactor can be developed, because of the complete absence of radioactive waste.  Tourism is another valid reason to develop the tech, it may have lessons to teach on terraforming and colonization techniques. Moon vs. Mars? Let's do both.

Kevat Shah: Many new ideas and inventions will come to be in the next few years:
1. Automated flying cars.
2. Domestic and military humanoid robots.
3. Cure for cancer and AIDS.
4. "Space Jam" -  an amusement park in space or on the moon.
5. Mining colonies on moon (run by the aforementioned humanoid robots)
6. Medical nanobots - ones you can put into your body and then control them/see through them.
7. Immortality - through perfection of human cloning and organ transplantation.
8. Bio-implant chips, allowing us to have telepathy-like abilities. These chips may also directly connect your brain to the Internet and act as a computer.
9. Virtual reality - Glasses which show you a world that isn't there
10. The theory of everything.

The power curve
Some of these forecasts touch upon the predictions put forward by inventor/futurist Ray Kurzweil, having to do with three kinds of power: the power for our vehicles and devices, computing power, and our own staying power.

Controlled nuclear fusion power or space-based solar power would be great, and we might indeed have those alternatives sometime in the next 50 years. But the way Kurzweil sees it, cheap terrestrial solar power is the energy source that will keep the lights on. Last year, he told me he expected the per-watt cost of sun-generated electricity to equal the cost of fossil-fuel energy by 2014 - which would set up the "tipping point" for a solar-dominated energy economy by the 2030s.

Kurzweil is also well-known for his view that humans can extend their longevity quickly enough to beat the Grim Reaper. That's the theme of his latest book, "Transcend," co-written with Terry Grossman. Some of the later steps in the process - such as developing injectable nanobots, infusing our blood with artificial respirocytes and reverse-engineering the brain - sound as way-out as Arthur C. Clarke's science fiction does. There's also a chance that limits will be placed on biomodification, just as the scientific community placed limits on DNA modification in 1975. But who am I to rule out a breakthrough before it breaks?

So how could we possibly get from here to there? Futurists assume that the pace of technological change will continue to accelerate as computers become increasingly powerful and increasingly interlinked. That's the basis for Kurzweil's claim that machines will match human intelligence in the next 20 years or so. He says that will set the stage for a "singularity" in the mid-2040s - an event beyond which it's impossible to foresee humanity's future.

Cloud science ... for humans, too
Part of the power curve has to do with the move toward "cloud computing," a process for massaging information on linked computers instead of stand-alone machines. The Energy Department is already using the cloud-computing paradigm for its research. So are the scientists at the Large Hadron Collider, and NASA has been experimenting as well. This approach, also known as grid computing, promises to revolutionize how science is done.

It's not just the machines that are coming together into grids. Citizen scientists are doing something similar through projects such as Galaxy Zoo. I can imagine a time in the not-so-distant future where large-scale experiments routinely farm out their data to be run on garden-variety computers, tended by knowledgeable science enthusiasts under the supervision of professionals. That won't render the scientific method obsolete. Instead, it could well create a whole new market for the method.

Should we fight the rise of the machines? Will cloud-science cooperation help humans learn to get along? Feel free to weigh in once again with your thoughts about the coming decades in science and innovation.

Don't miss the "Year in Science" and "Decade in Science" reviews from last week, and stay tuned for the Weird Science Awards on Wednesday. Join the Cosmic Log team by signing up as my Facebook friend or following b0yle on Twitter. And pick up a copy of my new book, "The Case for Pluto." If you're partial to the planetary underdogs, you'll be pleased to know that I've set up a Facebook fan page for "The Case for Pluto."

• Tech Review: Quantum leap in battery design (via Space for All)
• The New Yorker: China's crash program for clean energy
• Failure Magazine: The silent math genius (via Slashdot)
• Daily Grail: Watson ... the needle!

	NASA / ESA / Hubble
	Click for slideshow: Review the top space images from 2009, including this Hubble view of a nebula.

The highest highlight of 2009 was clearly the revival of the Hubble Space Telescope, a mission that blended moments of beauty and brute force 350 miles above the earth.

Or was it?

Maybe the top story was the reassessment of NASA's plans for human spaceflight. After all, tens of billions of dollars could be at stake. Or maybe it was the series of victories in NASA-backed competitions that had gone unwon for years.

For scientific significance, it's hard to beat this year's confirmation that the moon holds significant reserves of water. And if you're looking for Hollywood flash plus a touch of drama, you just might choose the unveiling of the SpaceShipTwo rocket plane.

Every year since 1997, we've reviewed the top space stories of the previous 12 months and looked ahead to the trends to watch in the 12 months to come. It's up to you to choose which story from 2009 and trend for 2010 should lead the list. Here's this year's lineup:

Hubble gets final upgrade: After years of debate and planning, NASA launches the final servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. The shuttle Atlantis' crew members do virtually everything they set out to do, although sometimes a little brute force was required. A collision event on Jupiter puts the new, improved Hubble to an early test. Weeks later, a post-servicing picture album proves that Hubble is back and better than ever.

Space vision reassessed: Even before new leaders take the helm at NASA, the Obama administration calls for a review of plans to send humans back to the moon by 2020. Some say NASA should stay the course, but an independent panel says that's not possible under current budget limitations. There's increasing talk about a "flexible path" approach that can be adapted for targets in space other than the moon. Meanwhile, a prototype for NASA's controversial Ares I moon rocket gets its first test in October.

NASA prizes finally won: After years of trying, Masten Space Systems and Armadillo Aerospace succeed in carrying out rocket demonstrations that earn them $1.65 million of NASA's money. Other NASA challenges produce winners as well: $900,000 for LaserMotive in the Beamed Power Challenge, $750,000 for three teams in the Regolith Excavation Challenge, and $350,000 for two teams in the Astronaut Glove Challenge.

Moon probe detects water: NASA sends a probe called Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, crashing into the moon. Weeks later, scientists report that an analysis of the impact debris confirms the existence of "significant" reserves of water ice. This was judged one of the top science stories of the decade, so it's gotta be on this year's list.

SpaceShipTwo unveiled: Virgin Galactic's plan to send passengers to the edge of space finally gets off the drawing board when the SpaceShipTwo rocket plane rolls down the runway at California's Mojave Air and Space Port. Freezing weather didn't put a damper on the ceremony, but just a couple of hours later, billionaire Richard Branson had to end his post-rollout party early due to high-wind warnings. The day-after scene looked like something from "Gone With the Wind."

CLICK HERE TO VOTE FOR 2009'S TOP STORY

Now it's time to select the top trend for 2010. Think of this as your turn to try your hand at the crystal ball. For what it's worth, you selected the transition in NASA's leadership as the top trend last year, over the Hubble Space Telescope's revival. I'm thinking the space agency's transition still ranks as the top trend for next year, but that's up to you. Here are the five choices I'm laying out:

Transition time for NASA: So which path will the White House choose for NASA's future spaceflight? Will the space agency continue to work on the Ares I booster, or go on to its Plan B? Is the moon still the next frontier for humans in space? How much money will NASA get for its space vision? There have been rumblings about which path Barack Obama will choose, but indications are that the president still hasn't made up his mind. (The outlook doesn't look good for the Ares I, however.) Obama himself is expected to make the announcement sometime between now and February. Another big part of the transition is the retirement of the shuttle fleet, which may or may not take place during 2010.

The planet boom: The science team for NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is due to unveil its first results next month, and the announcements are likely to kick off a years-long series of revelations about worlds beyond our solar system. Meanwhile, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer should be reporting loads of asteroids and maybe even a brown dwarf or Planet X over the next year and a half. Other research projects are likely to report further news about extrasolar planets like the "water world" and other super-Earths discussed last week. 

Rover reality check: The saga of the Spirit rover will continue into the new year, as the mission team tries to get the machine out of its Red Planet sand trap. The effort will either mark the greatest escape ever for an interplanetary rover, or the beginning of the end for the long-lived rovers. Don't sell NASA short when it comes to machines on Mars. Some folks are even thinking the Phoenix Mars Lander just might rise again once the Martian winter is over.

Private rockets take flight: SpaceX's planned launch of the Falcon 9 rocket could have a powerful effect on the debate over NASA's future. If it works, SpaceX could help fill the gap between the shuttle's retirement and NASA's next-generation spaceship. Heck, the Falcon 9, or Orbital Sciences' Taurus, or some other private-sector rocket could essentially be NASA's next-generation spaceship. But if NASA's private-sector initiatives founder, that will add to the need for the Ares 1 ... or make America's space effort more dependent on foreign rockets.

Solar sail succeeds at last: The Planetary Society's effort to put a CubeSat-based solar sail into orbit could be a dark-horse candidate to make headlines, if the mission is a success sometime next year. A similar effort in 2005 ended in failure, which would just add to the story's "if at first you don't succeed" appeal.

CLICK HERE TO VOTE FOR 2010'S TOP TREND

There's always the chance that I've missed something, so you can cast a write-in vote as a comment on the ballot, or in the space below. I'll add a note to this item recognizing your choices when the year truly ends.

For historical background, here are the "Year in Space" roundups from the past eight years. (Unfortunately, the annual reviews from previous years have disappeared into the ether - although if you happen to find them on Archive.org, let me know.)

• 2008: Planets, planets everywhere
• 2007: A second space race?
• 2006: Space efforts build momentum
• 2005: New players in the space game
• 2004: Back to the future frontier
• 2003: Worst of times, best of times
• 2002: Lots of 'ifs' on the space stage
• 2001's odysseys on a pale blue dot  

Update for 9 p.m. ET Dec. 21: Almost forgot to mention that NASA has its own "Year in Review" recap, leading with the space agency's new leadership team.

Correction for 1 p.m. ET Dec. 22: I've done some silly things over the past few years, but confusing Earth and the moon is a new one. I've fixed the reference to NASA's planned return to the moon. Thanks to everyone who pointed out the error.

Update for 7 p.m. ET Jan. 5, 2010: The results are in, and there's not much question about your preferences for the past year's top story and the coming year's top trend.

2009's top story: NASA sends a probe called Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, crashing into the moon. Weeks later, scientists report that an analysis of the impact debris confirms the existence of "significant" reserves of water ice. This was judged one of the top science stories of the decade, so it's gotta be on this year's list.

2010's top trend: SpaceX's planned launch of the Falcon 9 rocket could have a powerful effect on the debate over NASA's future. If it works, SpaceX could help fill the gap between the shuttle's retirement and NASA's next-generation spaceship. Heck, the Falcon 9, or Orbital Sciences' Taurus, or some other private-sector rocket could essentially be NASA's next-generation spaceship. But if NASA's private-sector initiatives founder, that will add to the need for the Ares 1 ... or make America's space effort more dependent on foreign rockets.

It's worth noting that you're not alone in your assessments: VOA called LCROSS' moon-crash mission and its outcome "possibly the biggest space story this year." And this week, Aviation Week named "the space entrepreneur" its Person of the Year.

For another perspective, here are NBC News space analyst James Oberg's stories to watch during 2010:

Most space activities this year will be "more of the same" – applications satellites, research satellites, International Space Station, etc. – but there are a number of first-ever (or last-ever) space-related events that are clear on the crystal ball. Here's my take:

1. The last space shuttle mission (probably). The year starts with a triple ripple-fire of all three orbiters: Endeavour (24th flight, Feb. 7), Discovery (38th flight, March 18), and Atlantis (32nd flight, May 14) for STS-130, 131, and 132. Then Endeavour goes again (STS-134, July 29), followed by nominally the "last" flight, of Discovery (STS-133, Sept. 16). For that mission, Atlantis will be standing by for "STS-336," to launch Dec. 2 if Discovery's heat shield is fatally damaged during ascent and the crew is stranded on the ISS.

If there's no emergency, the STS-336 mission, crew and vehicle become "surplus." But momentum is building to use the hardware and fly this mission (as STS-135) in early 2011 anyway, for delivery of more consumables – and accept the schedule impact if a stranded crew needs to be evacuated via Soyuz missions over the following six months. And although external tank production has stopped with the tank for STS-336, there reportedly is a spare test tank that can be converted for an additional supply flight (STS-136) in March-April 2011 if desired.

2. X-37B, The first flight of a military space plane. Sometime in April, the five-ton automated X-37B orbital space plane will be sent into orbit atop an Atlas booster, conduct maneuvers, and then glide back to Earth at Edwards Air Force Base. Expect some political and diplomatic fireworks over what this spacecraft is actually intended for – anything from "engineering development" to military space missions including combat.

3. Interplanetary probes keep on cruising, and occasionally pass interesting small objects. In July, the European probe Rosetta passes the relatively large asteroid 21 Lutetia, while NASA's ion-drive asteroid mission Dawn continues to align itself for an orbit of the major asteroid Vesta in July 2011.  The mothership of the now-concluded Deep Impact mission, renamed EPOXI, will pass Comet Hartley 2 on Nov 4, while the Stardust probe, its primary mission successfully accomplished and its name changed to NExT, lines up for a fly-by of the interesting Comet Tempel 1 in February 2011. New Horizons, meanwhile, coasts up and out toward Pluto-Charon and ice worlds beyond, while Messenger swoops close to the sun to prepare for entering orbit around Mercury on March 19, 2011, when it will be able to observe the planet's polar craters and search them for ice deposits thought by some astronomers to exist there. Other probes continue orbiting and observing Mars, Saturn, Venus and the moon.
 
4. SpaceX's Falcon 9. Elon Musk's ambitious entry into private space transportation, this large space booster is on schedule for a flight from Cape Canaveral in March or soon afterward. The single-engine version failed three times before racking up two orbital successes, so the odds of the first flight of the nine-engine version don't seem promising – but the rocket team is talented and devoted to learning by doing. [This week, SpaceX reported a successful full-duration orbit insertion test firing of the Falcon 9's second stage at its Texas test site.]

5. Will Phoenix revive? This probe landed on Mars on May 25, 2008, and had a very successful mission prior to arrival of winter way up north where it searched for water. It was last heard from on Nov 2, 2008,  as a dust storm cut solar power levels and winter darkness set in. The craft was tested at minus 55 degrees Celsius, the expected coldest temperature while there was enough sunlight for electrical power - but the Martian arctic winter temperatures can go down to as much as minus 126 degrees Celsius, where components can thermally contract to the point of fracturing, and carbon dioxide ice ("dry ice") on the power panels might get heavy enough to snap them off.

However, Lockheed Martin Space Systems, the company that built the craft, also integrated what it called a "Lazarus Mode" into it, which is basically the ability for Phoenix to re-energize itself if given the proper conditions. And those conditions are now improving, so NASA will start sending "hello?" signals to the probe by the middle of this month.

6. Will Hayabusa, the plucky Japanese interplanetary probe, get back to Earth – and what (if anything) is in its sample chamber? Despite limping along on only one and 'two halves' of its original four ion thrusters, the Japanese probe now seems well enough to reach Earth (and its landing zone in Australia) this June. But the suspense remains – when it twice touched down on the asteroid Itokawa in 2005, did its scoop pick up any soil samples at all? Success or not, the ambitious probe has been an inspiration to space explorers of all nations.

7. "Mars-500" ground simulation. The Napoleonic-era Russian general Suvorov's favorite saying was "Battle is easy – training is hard". For the modern Russian space program, shaking out the psychological challenges of an isolated, high-hazard interplanetary mission is best done before you start the trip – by simulating it on Earth. Sometime this summer, a joint Russian and European Space Agency team of six male astronauts will be locked into a chamber in Moscow and will pretend they are flying to Mars. Past sessions – but none this long – have revealed unexpected stresses that, after all, are best discovered in such pre-flight runs.

8. Will solar sail rise at last? LightSail-1 is supposed to fly by the end of 2010, according to its sponsors at the California-based Planetary Society. Previous attempts both by NASA and by private groups have foundered on budget cutbacks and the unreliability of military-surplus space boostersl More than half a century after it was first imagined, it's incredible that this promising interplanetary technology has not yet actually been achieved. This year, at last – maybe.

9. Russia's GPS. GLONASS is a network of two dozen navigation satellites built by Russia to replace its own military's embarrassing dependence of the American GPS network. The first attempt to deploy a network in space collapsed with the Soviet Union, but by the end of this year enough satellites with long-enough lifetimes ought to have been deployed to provide continuous worldwide coverage. But Moscow faces two astronomical problems back on Earth in promoting civil use of the system: Its domestic industry has proven incapable of producing the electronic components needed for affordable handsets, and its national maps are still not digitized in accurate-enough format following decades of Soviet-controlled falsification of cartographic data. Nevertheless, by the end of the year you can expect big national bragging about the eventual "completion" of the still mostly-useless space network. After all, the European Union's own alternate to GPS, the Galileo system, is even more deeply mired in delays and diplomatic squabbles over the distribution of the work among European states.

10. SpaceShipTwo. After a gala unveiling ceremony last month (at which desert winds tore down the tents and sent guests scurrying), the first commercial spaceship begins flight tests this year, and by the end of the year should have begun reaching its maximum altitude of 65 miles, just across the legal boundary of outer space. If all goes well this will clear the way for passenger-carrying missions in 2011. And this vehicle may not be the only one of its class flying by then.

11. Russia's space workhorse upgraded. Russia will again be upgrading its venerable Soyuz crew spaceship in the fall with a new digital control system that replaces all the old analog control circuits and actuators with computer-commanded links. Late this year or early next, it will also launch a pair of Luch communications satellites to provide round-the-world space-to-space-to-Earth relay communications with the Russian segment of the International Space Station. NASA inaugurated this capability with its Tracking and Data Relay Satellite system in 1983, but a prototype Soviet system for Mir had barely been started when the Soviet collapse bankrupted the project. On the space station today, the Russians do use sporadic space-to-ground radio when over in-country tracking sites but mostly rely on (and barter for access to) the U.S. communications net, a dependence they are eager to reduce.

12. [Insert surprise vehicle here]. There are more players lurking out there, some known but tight-lipped about their plans, others still unknown. They will pull some big space surprises, to be sure – but the only prediction is that these feats cannot yet be explicitly predicted.

Don't miss the "Year in Science" and "Decade in Science" reviews from last week, and stay tuned for the Weird Science Awards later this week. Join the Cosmic Log team by signing up as my Facebook friend or following b0yle on Twitter. And pick up a copy of my new book, "The Case for Pluto." If you're partial to the planetary underdogs, you'll be pleased to know that I've set up a Facebook fan page for "The Case for Pluto."

• New show from Spaceflight Now: This Week in Space 
• New blog from NPR: 13.7: Cosmos and Culture
• Red Orbit: Antifreeze molecule found in Alaska beetle
• 'Nova' on PBS: 'The Last Great Ape' 

From left: NASA, Seoul National Univ., CERN

The milestones of the past decade in space and science include the 2003 Columbia tragedy, stem cell research and the debut of the Large Hadron Collider.

Some may call the decade that's ending the "aughts" or the "noughties," but you could also think of the 2000-2009 time frame as the double-oh decade. In the world of science, the past 10 years have brought us plenty of "Oh! Oh!" moments – and a few uh-ohs as well. In honor of the decade's denouement, we present a triple scoop of scientific highlights.

First up is our own list of the top 10 science stories of the decade, stretching from the unveiling of the human genome in 2001 to this year's revelations about water ice on the moon.

Between those bookends is the decade's biggest scientific downer: the catastrophic breakup of the shuttle Columbia, which killed all seven astronauts aboard and forced a two-year suspension of shuttle flights. It's ironic that Columbia's flight in 2003 was the last human spaceflight mission totally devoted to scientific research.

The Columbia tragedy also nearly led to the doom of the Hubble Space Telescope, which is one of the greatest scientific instruments to come around in the last couple of decades. NASA initially decided mounting a mission to upgrade Hubble one last time was too risky.

After some pressure from the politicians and the public, as well as a big personnel change at the space agency, the Hubble servicing mission was put back on the schedule. This year, astronauts on the shuttle Atlantis paid Hubble a final visit and spruced up the space telescope, ensuring that the "Oh! Oh!" moments will continue long after its 20th birthday next April.

Check out the top-10 timeline for more key moments - including the Mars rovers' landings, SpaceShipOne's flight, intelligent design's fall from grace, 2007's climate change Nobel and the ups and downs of the Large Hadron Collider.

Here's a slightly different top-nine roundup, which is part of the 50-year science timeline drawn up to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing next year. These highlights start and end the same way, but the difference is that the entries in between focus more on the research than the headlines. 

2001

42. Human genome decoded: The publicly funded Human Genome Project and privately funded Celera Genomics simultaneously publish the first working drafts of human genome in the journals Nature and Science, respectively. The genomic code was refined in succeeding years, providing a rich resource for studying the genetic origins of disease as well as tracing linkages in evolutionary biology.

43. Age of the universe: Using data from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Boomerang balloon flight and other data, astronomers determine the age of the universe to be 13.7 billion years — an estimate further refined by data from the space-based Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe.

44. Targeted cancer therapy: The Food and Drug Administration approves imatinib, marketed under the name Gleevec, as the first in a class of drugs that target the chemical mechanism behind the spread of cancer.

2005

45. Titan revealed: Europe's Huygens lander descends through the smoggy atmosphere of the Saturnian moon Titan and sends back the first pictures of Titan's hydrocarbon rivers as well as its icy and possibly tarry surface. Huygens rode to Titan aboard the international Cassini orbiter, which continued to study Saturn and its moons. Another highlight of the Cassini mission was its observations of Enceladus' geysers of water ice, which led scientists to suggest the ice-covered moon possessed a subsurface liquid ocean and perhaps marine life forms as well.

46. Planets realigned: Astronomers discover an icy world in the Kuiper belt that is larger than Pluto, forcing the International Astronomical Union to draw up a much-debated definition of the term "planet" a year later. The definition reclassified Pluto and the newfound world (later named Eris) as dwarf planets, distinct from the solar system's eight major planets.

47. T. rex tissue: Paleontologists recover soft tissue from within the fossilized bones of a Tyrannosaurus rex, upending assumptions about the limits of fossil preservation. Analysis of the tissue turns up the signature of proteins similar to those found in the bones of chickens and ostriches, solidifying the linkage between dinosaurs and present-day birds.

2006

48. Invisibility shield: Building on a formula proposed a year earlier, two teams of researchers announce the creation of "cloaking devices" that can cancel out the radiation reflected by an object and shield it from detection. Such devices are not as all-concealing as Harry Potter's cloak of invisibility, however. They are made from metamaterials that must be tailored for specific wavelengths and dimensions.

2008

49. Tasting Martian water: NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander touches down in Mars' north polar region and samples the planet's water ice for the first time. Mission scientists say images of the probe's own lander legs appear to show droplets of liquid water stirred up during the landing. Phoenix's findings furnish the latest chapter in the decades-long scientific assessment of Mars' potential for life in ancient times.

2009

50. Water on the moon: NASA sends a probe called Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, crashing into the moon. Weeks later, scientists report that an analysis of the impact debris confirms the existence of "significant" reserves of water ice. The mission followed up on indications from earlier probes (Clementine, Lunar Prospector, Chandrayaan 1, Cassini) and even from Apollo lunar samples. Some speculated that the findings could lead to a fresh round of lunar missions, but as the decade came to a close, NASA's plans for future exploration were still under review at the White House.

For the rest of the 50-year timeline, you can revisit the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s separately, or see them all together on CASW's Web site.

Here are five more "Oh! Oh!" and "uh-oh" moments that are worth mentioning in a 10-year science review:

Oh! Oh! The International Space Station! The first expedition crew moves into the space station on Nov. 2, 2000, marking the beginning of full-time habitation that has continued for almost 10 years. The crew receives its first paying passenger in 2001 when millionaire investor Dennis Tito comes aboard. Six more have visited since then.

Uh-oh! Physics fraud! German physicist Jan Hendrik Schon publishes a flurry of papers on nanotechnology and molecular electronics early in the decade, but other physicists question his results. In 2002, a committee at Bell Labs, where he worked, finds that data sets had been fudged and reused. The affair set off a high-profile debate over scientific fraud. By 2003, more than 20 of his papers have been withdrawn.

Oh! Oh! The speech gene! In 2002, researchers identify a gene known as FOXP2 that plays a key role in human speech. The discovery kicks off a series of studies linking genetics with milestones in human evolution. A later study suggests that Neanderthals carried the gene as well and may have been capable of speech.

Uh-oh! Stem cell fraud! In 2004, South Korean researcher Hwang Woo-Suk claims that his lab extracted embryonic stem cells from cloned human cells, and he later reports that the resulting cells could produce tissue genetically matched to specific patients. The experiments couldn't be duplicated, however, and investigators determine that the findings were faked. Hwang left his job in disgrace, and this year he was convicted on charges of embezzlement and other crimes connected to the scandal.

Oh! Oh! Cell reprogramming! There is happier news on the stem cell front in 2007, when two teams of researchers announce that they can create cells as versatile as embryonic stem cells from ordinary adult cells, without having to use human embryos. Studies conducted since then have borne out researchers' hopes that the cells will be useful for medical research.

Now let's move on to the decade ahead: Dust off your crystal ball and tell us what scientific, technological and medical advances you see coming down the road in the next 10 years. If you think we've left any double-oh scientific highlights off our lists, let us know. Just leave a comment below, and we'll gather up a selection of your comments for a follow-up post.

Next week, we'll roll out the last of our year-end science roundups: the Year in Space and the Weird Science Awards.

Update for 8:50 p.m. ET Dec. 18: German science writer Daniel Fischer raises an interesting point in a Twitter update: "Why all those 'decade' reviews now? Since the 3rd millennium began in 2001, its 1st decade ends only on 31 December 2010." The answer is relatively simple: We're not talking about the first 10 years of the third millennium or the 21st century (which would get into that "no year zero" mess). We're talking about the 2000s (or the double-oh decade, if you prefer) in the same sense that we talk about the 1960s or the 1990s. The 1990s ended on Dec. 31, 1999. Similarly, the double-ohs end on Dec. 31, 2009.

Update for 5 p.m. ET Dec. 19: Bill Ralston writes: "Why isn't the falsification of data on alleged global warming one of the top 'uh-oh' stories?  For crying out loud - we just had a global conference agree to spend billions of dollars on a 'problem' based on fudged data!" That is definitely an "uh-oh" moment, showing how even scientists resort to spin control in order to squelch rivals. The hacked e-mails show how data can be massaged to support the desired story. That doesn't mean the underlying story of climate change isn't true, but it does mean climatologists will have to work harder to earn the trust of politicians and the public. My favorite Web site for this kind of debate is RealClimate.org. Folks on the other side of the question will no doubt have their own favorite resources, and I'm glad to pass them along as comments.

The 50-year timeline was prepared in consultation with CASW's board, of which I am a member. Join the Cosmic Log team by signing up as my Facebook friend or following b0yle on Twitter. And pick up a copy of my new book, "The Case for Pluto." If you're partial to the planetary underdogs, you'll be pleased to know that I've set up a Facebook fan page for "The Case for Pluto."

• Dimijian: Spot the invisible gecko (via Evil Mad Scientist)
• SciFi Scanner: The decade's sci-fi movie highs and lows
• Wired: Fighting a killer asteroid would take years
• Archaeology: Eight classic dubious discoveries

The 1990s were marked by marvels that scientists are still trying to understand: the discovery of planets outside our solar system ... the mysterious dark energy that appears to dominate our universe ... embryonic stem-cell research that has sparked so much hope and concern over the past decade.

Today's installment of our 50-year science timeline, drawn up to mark the 50th birthday of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing, focuses on the advances of the '90s. This list isn't set in stone, so feel free to weigh in with your own suggested milestones. We'd also love to hear what milestones you're hoping to see in the next 50 years.

1994

33. Witnessing a cosmic crash: Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smashes into Jupiter during one of the most widely watched astronomical events of the century. This was the first time astronomers predicted a planetary impact in advance. The event also had an impact on our own planet, pushing along efforts to catalog near-Earth asteroids and assess the threat they may pose.

34. Quantum computing quest: U.S. mathematician Peter Shor demonstrates a theorem for a procedure that could be used to crack the RSA cryptographic code using a computer based on quantum interference phenomena. Such a quantum computer was discussed in 1980 by Paul Benioff, and a year later by Richard Feynman. Since then, researchers have worked to construct quantum computing devices. In 2007, Canada-based D-Wave said it built the first practical quantum computer, but other researchers doubted whether the device was truly a quantum computer. In 2009 Google announced that D-Wave's technology was being incorporated into its new image recognition system.

1995

35. Math milestones: More than 350 years after Fermat's Last Theorem was proposed, British mathematician Andrew Wiles proves the claim that xⁿ + yⁿ = zⁿ works for whole integers only if n is less than 3. The hard-won proof earns Wiles a $50,000 prize. Eight years later, reclusive Russian mathematician Grigory Perelman proves another long-running puzzle, the Poincare conjecture - but turns down a $1 million prize as well as the Fields Medal, mathematics' highest honor.

36. Alien planets: Astronomers detect the first extrasolar planet circling a normal star, 51 Pegasi. The discovery built upon 1992's detection of "pulsar planets," and pioneered techniques that have been used to find more than 400 extrasolar planets to date. The findings have led scientists to conclude that planets are much more common in the universe than previously thought.

1996

37. First cloned mammal: Researchers announce the birth of Dolly the Sheep, the first mammal to be cloned from the adult cell of another animal. The achievement was followed by a string of other cloned species - ranging from dogs and cats to champion racing mules and rhesus monkeys. Dolly also touched off a long-running political and religious debate over human reproductive cloning.

1997

38. Big bounce on Mars: Mars Pathfinder probe lands on Mars, marking a new era of interplanetary exploration two decades after Viking. Pathfinder blazed a trail for the even more wildly successful Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity (which were both launched in 2003 and landed, like Pathfinder, cushioned by airbags). The Pathfinder mission also served as an early milestone in public interest in science as mediated by the Internet.

1998

39. Dark energy: Two teams of astronomers studying distant supernovae determine that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, supporting a theoretical twist that Albert Einstein once called the "biggest blunder of my life." The discovery of the acceleration factor has sparked one of the biggest mysteries of contemporary cosmology: What is dark energy?

40. RNA interference: Biomedical researchers Andrew Fire and Craig Mello publish a study showing how small RNA molecules influence genetic pathways in C. elegans worms, opening up a new field of research into RNA interference. RNAi-based therapies could address a wide variety of illnesses, including AIDS, cancer, Huntington's and Alzheimer's disease.

41. Human embryonic stem cells: First human embryonic stem cells are isolated. Such cells can transform themselves into virtually any tissue in the body, raising hopes for new cell-based therapies. Because embryos were destroyed in the process of extracting the cells, the process touched off a years-long ethical and political debate, highlighted by federal funding limits in 2001. In 2007, two teams of researchers used genetic modification to transform ordinary skin cells into cells that appear to function like embryonic stem cells. The use of these reprogrammed cells, known as induced pluripotent stem cells or IPS cells, may resolve the ethical concerns.

Go back to the 1960s ... the 1970s ... the 1980s ... or go ahead to the 2000s. You can also see the full 50-year timeline on CASW's Web site, and you can check out Science's top breakthroughs of the past year. Don't forget to leave your comments below, on the past half-century of discovery as well as the half-century ahead.

• ScienceInsider: Obama backs bigger rocket, more $ for NASA
• Planetary Society: Saturn orbiter spots a shining lake on Titan
• Science @ NASA: Colliding auroras spark explosions of light
• Ars Technica: Two events hint at dark matter detection
• Gizmodo: The physics of future space battles

XCOR Aerospace

Click for video: The Lynx Mark I rocket plane, shown in this artist's conception, would serve as a test bed for a higher-flying Lynx Mark II. Click on the image to watch a video from XCOR's March 2008 announcement about the Lynx.

XCOR Aerospace and Yecheon Astro Space Center today announced a deal that would eventually provide rides to the edge of outer space from South Korea, in a rocket plane made in the U.S.A.

The $30 million project calls for the development of a suborbital spaceport at Yecheon, which would serve as the Asian base of operations for California-based XCOR's Lynx Mark II rocket plane. Today's announcement didn't provide a flight timetable, but if XCOR sticks to its hoped-for schedule, the first Mark II plane could be flying in the 2012-2013 time frame.

The deal is dependent on approvals from the U.S. government for export arrangements, as well as from the South Korean government for launch operations.

XCOR Aerospace would operate the Lynx under what is known as a "wet lease" model, which is common in the maritime and aviation market: The space center would pay XCOR for flying and maintaining the craft, and perhaps for training the paying participants as well. XCOR's executives hope such an arrangement would avoid many of the problems that launch providers have faced with U.S. export regulations.

"This is a groundbreaking opportunity for our company, our industry and a very good opportunity for the U.S. to set an example of responsible international commerce in space transportation," Jeff Greason, XCOR's chief executive officer, said in today's announcement. "To our knowledge, this is the first time that a U.S. commercial suborbital launch vehicle will undergo the export licensing and approval process."

Jo Jae-Seong, the space center's founder and chief executive director, said XCOR was chosen for the Korean venture because the Lynx represented "the best mix of safe design, reliable clean propulsion, skilled team members, full reusability, ease of operation, turnaround time, up-front cost and long-term cost to operate."

"We look forward to a long-term relationship wtih XCOR and Lynx," Jo said.

Charles Lurio, writer/publisher of The Lurio Report, said the deal could be a "big breakthrough" for suborbital space entrepreneurs.

"Korean funding will come from a mix of private and public entitites after final approvals in the first quarter of 2010," he wrote. "There are no absolute guarantees until then, but Yecheon has already put 'skin in the game' with an initial payment to XCOR on Monday, December 7."

XCOR Aerospace declined to detail the financial arrangements.

The announcement described Yecheon Astro Space Center as a nonprofit venture that operates an aerospace training center, an astronomy research center and planetarium, a commercial space camp and a helicopter tour service about 150 miles (240 kilometers) southeast of Seoul.

"It's the Mojave of South Korea," XCOR spokesman Mike Massee, referring to the California town where his company is based. "It's in a rural area, and it's right next to a military base."

Payments from the Korean venture should help XCOR move ahead with its development of the two-person Lynx vehicle, starting with a Mark I prototype version that would fly at least 38 miles (61 kilometers) high, and probably higher. Testing of the Mark I is to begin in late 2010 or early 2011. Those tests would be factored into a Mark II version to be built using lightweight composite materials capable of withstanding the heat of atmospheric re-entry.

The Mark I would provide moments of weightlessness plus an out-of-this-world view. The Mark II would go to the next level - soaring above 62 miles (100 kilometers) in altitude, the internationally accepted boundary of outer space. XCOR's chief operations officer, Andrew Nelson, has said the Mark II could be ready a year or two after the Mark I.

In today's announcement, Nelson said he hoped the partnership model used for the South Korean venture would set a precedent for other international space ventures. "I think the wet-lease model is an innovative means to safely operate, maintain and provide physical security for the Lynx while ensuring that U.S. export control issues are addressed completely," he said.

Greason said the South Koreans had their own regulatory issues to work through.

"South Korean authorities had already identified the need to develop regulations for commercial space activity, and that process is in the early stages," Greason said in an e-mail.  "XCOR has considerable experience with the U.S. space regulatory regime and, together with our Korean partners at the Yecheon Astro Space Center will work with the Korean authorities towards an appropriate regulatory regime."

In addition to the South Korean venture, XCOR has set up an arrangement with RocketShip Tours for $95,000 flights on the Lynx. Massee said more than 30 advance tickets have been sold to date.

"At this stage in the game, we are much more focused from a sales perspective on Lynx vehicle wet leases, propulsion systems and related subsystems for commercial customers and government clients.  And technically our primary focus is getting the Lynx subsystems built and the vehicle integrated and tested," Massee wrote in an e-mail. "Selling advance tickets is a part of all that, but not our primary focus."

XCOR isn't the only company that's relying on international partners to launch commercial space services. Virgin Galactic, which rolled out its SpaceShipTwo rocket plane last week, has brought Arab investors into its suborbital space venture. That arrangement is reportedly under review by U.S. authorities.

This month, Chicago-based PlanetSpace teamed up with Excalibur Almaz, a company based on the Isle of Man, to put forward a bailout plan for the bankrupt Sea Launch venture. PlanetSpace has been working on a hypersonic glider that could be used for orbital cargo services or space passenger flights.

J.H. Matternes / Science via AFP - Getty Images

Click for video: An artist's conception shows how Ardipithecus ramidus, or "Ardi," might have looked during life 4.4 million years ago. Click on the image to watch an "NBC Nightly News" video about Ardi from October.

Is she our oldest known ancestor, or just another cousin on the primate family tree? The scientific debate over the 4.4 million-year-old fossil now known as Ardi is continuing, two months after her skeleton was unveiled. However the debate turns out, Ardi is shining "bright new light on an obscure time in our past" and rates as the top scientific breakthrough of the year, the journal Science proclaims today.

Science's annual breakthrough roundup serves as a status report for the research world - and its top-10 list includes discoveries that have gotten plenty of play in the past year (such as NASA's moon crash) as well as discoveries that are just on the verge of bearing fruit (such as the effort to boost longevity). Here's a recap of the journal's review of 2009 - and preview of 2010.

Top breakthrough: It took 15 years for researchers to reconstruct the skeleton of Ardipithecus ramidus, an apparent human ancestor unearthed in Ethiopia in 1994. The results were surprising: Ardi's image didn't look like a cross between an African ape and early hominids such as Australopithecus afarensis (represented by another famous skeleton, nicknamed Lucy). Rather, her skeleton was structured for upright walking as well as climbing, with long, curving fingers suited for grasping tree branches.

The message was that apes as well as humans have changed significantly since Ardi's heyday to adapt to their particular evolutionary niches. Anyone who still thinks that "humans evolved from apes" will have to shift their paradigm.

Some researchers question whether Ardi was actually able to walk upright. Others question whether being able to walk upright should continue to be a requirement for admittance to the club of human ancestors, also known as hominins. But the important thing is that scientists have been given "a Rosetta stone" to help answer the questions surrounding our ancient family tree, according to Science's Ann Gibbons.

"In the year of the bicentennial of Darwin's birth, it seems fitting that researchers finally broke through the 4-million-year barrier to understanding our origins," she writes. "Models for our earliest ancestors can now be informed by plenty of fresh data and at least one body of hard evidence."

The other nine: Science doesn't rank the other items in its list of top 10 breakthroughs - but here they are, as they were listed in the journal.

Pulsars in the gamma-ray sky: NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope reveals a new wave of pulsars.

How plants get a rush: Scientists are learning how ABA receptors help plants get through stressful times.

Mock monopoles spotted: An elusive phenomenon, involving materials that have only a north or a south magnetic pole, is created in the lab using special materials. Magnetic monopoles have figured in the debate over the Large Hadron Collider's safety as well as in episodes of "The Big Bang Theory."

The stuff of longevity: Drugs such as rapamycin are being targeted for animal studies that eventually could lead to life extension for humans.

Our icy moon revealed: NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite crashes into the moon to find fresh evidence of water ice.

The return of gene therapy: Gene therapy has suffered setbacks over the past 20 years, but this year researchers reported success in treating maladies such as X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy, Leber's congenital amaurosis and "bubble boy" disease.

Graphene takes off: Single-atom-thick sheets of carbon atoms are the hot new thing in materials science, potentially opening the way for graphene transistors that can outdo silicon.

Hubble reborn: The Hubble Space Telescope gets its final scheduled upgrade from shuttle astronauts and emerges working better than ever.

First X-ray laser shines: SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source was fired up for the first time in April, beginning a series of experiments that will use X-rays to probe structures on the atomic scale. Check this item to look back at my tour of SLAC while the LCLS was under construction.

Virus of the year: H1N1 (a.k.a. swine flu), naturally.

Breakdown of the year: The economic downturn's effect on academic research (which was highlighted last year as well).

Trends to watch in 2010: Reprogrammed cells, also known as IPS cells. ... The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which was revived by NASA at Congress' insistence. ... Exome studies, which could reveal genetic causes of hereditary diseases. ... Biochemical cancer treatment, using glycolysis disruption. ... NASA's rethinking of human spaceflight.

... And by the way: Climate change studies came in for shout-outs from Science, which noted the Copenhagen proceedings as well as increased attention for ocean acidification. The race for the Higgs boson was also noted, with runs at Fermilab's Tevatron now extended through 2011 and the Large Hadron Collider restarted at last.

Does this cover everything that was significant in the world of science during 2009? I doubt it. You're probably thinking, "I can't believe they didn't mention [fill in the blank]," right? Feel free to weigh in with your own scientific highlights, keeping in mind that the Weird Science Awards and our annual review of the "Year in Space" are still coming up.

Some of today's coolest technologies - ranging from DNA analysis to the personal computer and the space shuttle - were built upon foundations laid during the 1980s. The '80s also marked the start of the global fight against AIDS, as well as growing concern about the effect of greenhouse-gas emissions on global climate.

This week we're revisiting 50 of the top science sagas of the past 50 years - and it goes without saying that every saga has made a contribution to the current state of society. But if you had to pick one decade that sowed the seeds for the current crop of technological triumphs and troubles, it just might be the '80s.

Today we highlight 10 scientific sagas from the decade, selected for a timeline that marks the 50th birthday of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.

You won't find the shuttle's first flight or the PC's debut on this list, and maybe they should be there. Doing a beta test on the timeline is what this exercise is all about. Feel free to let us know what we're missing, what we're putting too much emphasis on - and what you remember about the technological tenor of the times.

For example, I'll always remember buying my first "computer" in the early 1980s. It was an Atari 800, which I actually used at the newspaper where I worked to tabulate the votes in an Oscar poll. To program the darn thing, you had to type in lines of code, oh so carefully, then hit the "record" button on a cassette tape recorder to store the program. Later, I sprung for a floppy-disk drive. Today there's far more computing power packed inside your typical cell phone (which first came to market in 1984, by some accounts).

Am I really remembering all this right? Set me straight or share your own tech tall tale in the comment section below.

1980

23. Farewell to smallpox: The World Health Organization announces that smallpox has disappeared worldwide. The infectious disease killed untold millions over the course of centuries, and its eradication through widespread vaccination was a crowning achievement in public health.

24. Killer asteroid: Luis and Walter Alvarez propose that a cosmic impact was responsible for the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction that killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The hypothesis provided a focus for further scientific study into the causes of great extinctions. Cosmic impacts as well as the effects of climate change have come to be seen as the primary factors behind ancient die-offs.

25. Cosmic inflation: Inflationary big bang theory is put forward by Alan Guth to explain seeming contradictions in the scientific model for the universe's creation. Subsequent observations supported inflation as the leading explanation for what happened immediately after the universe's origin to create the seeds of cosmic structure.

1983

26. HIV identified: French doctors isolate the virus that causes AIDS. The discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus marked the beginning of a continuing effort to develop treatments for a disease that was at the time seen as a death sentence.

27. Evo-devo: Researchers at the University of Basel and Indiana University independently discover homeobox DNA sequences within genes, which regulate patterns of development in a wide spectrum of organisms. Such work helped lead the way to evolutionary development ("evo-devo") studies that shed light on how different species are interrelated.

1984

28. DNA decoders: Polymerase chain reaction technique for DNA analysis is developed by Kary Mullis, who won a Nobel Prize in 1993 for the discovery. PCR analysis has become the foundation of modern genetic research, touching on fields ranging from medicine and evolutionary biology to criminology.

29: String theory: The first superstring revolution begins. Theorists suggest that string theory - the idea that the most fundamental constituents of matter can be thought of as minuscule strings vibrating in multidimensional space - could resolve the inconsistencies between general relativity and quantum physics. The first superstring revolution (1984-85) set the precedent for the second superstring revolution (1994-97). Even today, string theory sparks debate over whether it could be a "theory of everything" ... or a "theory of nothing."

1985

30. Nanotechnology: Buckminsterfullerene is created in the lab by Robert Curl, Harold Kroto and Richard Smalley. The soccerball-like C60 molecule was the first of several artificial carbon constructs that paved the way for innovations in nanotechnology such as carbon nanotubes. Other nanotech innovations, such as gold nanoparticles and quantum dots, appear to have medical applications - but nanotechnology has raised medical concerns as well.

1986

31. Catching up with comets: Europe's Giotto mission observes Halley's comet up close. For the first time, humans were given a glimpse at the source of one of the most dramatic displays in the heavens - and, according to some theories, a primordial source for the stuff of life. Cometary studies continued with 2005's Deep Impact mission, which fired a "bullet" into the heart of a comet, and the Stardust mission, which brought samples of comet dust back to Earth in 2006.

32. High-temperature superconductors: The first high-temperature superconductor is discovered by Karl Mueller and Johannes Bednorz. The achievement earned them the Nobel Prize in 1987. High-temperature superconductors could eventually be used for more efficient power transmission and vehicle propulsion.

Go back to the 1960s

Go back to the 1970s

Jump ahead to the 1990s

Jump ahead to the 2000s

See the full 50-year timeline at the CASW Web site.

I'm on the board of CASW and will be in charge of revising the timeline for next year's 50th-anniversary observances. Join the Cosmic Log team by signing up as my Facebook friend or following b0yle on Twitter. And pick up a copy of my new book, "The Case for Pluto." If you're partial to the planetary underdogs, you'll be pleased to know that I've set up a Facebook fan page for "The Case for Pluto."

• Hubblesite: Tiniest object detected on solar system's rim
• ESA: Inside the dark heart of a cosmic Eagle 
• Univ. of Florida: Tracing the opossum's origins
• Wired: Hacking Wiimotes ... for science!
• Daily Mail: Discovery casts doubt on Turin Shroud 
• Bad Astronomy: Top 10 astronomy pics of 2009
• The Onion: A long, elaborate history of time

David A. Aguilar / CfA

An artist's conception shows the planet known as GJ 1214b passing across the disk of its parent star, a red dwarf just one-fifth as big as our sun.

Astronomers say they have detected a planet just six and a half times as massive as Earth - at a distance so close its atmosphere could be studied, and with a density so low it's almost certain to have abundant water.

The alien world known as GJ 1214b orbits a red dwarf star one-fifth the size of our own sun, 40 light-years away in the constellation Ophiuchus, the astronomers reported in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

"Astronomically speaking, this is on our block," David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, lead author of the study, told reporters this week. "This is a next-door neighbor. For perspective, our own TV signals have already passed beyond the distance of this star."

He said the planet was detected using an array of eight off-the-shelf, 16-inch telescopes equipped with commercially available cameras.

"Since we found the super-Earth using a small ground-based telescope, this means that anyone else with a similar telescope and a good CCD camera can detect it too," Charbonneau said in a news release. "Students around the world can now study this super-Earth."

Super-Earths - planets that are roughly two to 10 times Earth's mass - represent the hottest frontier in the years-long search for worlds beyond our solar system. Planet-hunters reported finding their first transiting super-Earth in February, and earlier this week, other researchers added two more super-Earths to the list.

Those planets orbit stars like our own sun, but the brightness of GJ 1214b's parent star is hundreds of times dimmer. The planet is also much closer to the star than any of our own solar system's planets, orbiting at a distance of only 1.3 million miles (2 million kilometers). That combination suggests that the planet's surface temperature would be about 400 degrees Fahrenheit (200 degrees Celsius), Charbonneau's research team reported.

Charbonneau speculated that GJ 1214b was a little too hot for life as we know it, "but it didn't miss it by very much."

The planet's discovery was hailed as a potential breakthrough by Geoffrey Marcy, an astronomer at the University of California at Berkeley who is a pioneer in the planet quest. In a commentary written for Nature, Marcy said Charbonneau and his colleagues "provide the most watertight evidence so far for a planet that is something like our own Earth, outside our solar system."

How it was found
GJ 1214b was detected thanks to an innovative telescope system, a cleverly focused observation campaign - and perhaps a little bit of luck. The eight-telescope array, dubbed the MEarth Project, was set up at the Whipple Observatory on Mount Hopkins in Arizona. The telescopes were programmed to gaze at 2,000 low-mass stars and check for slight, regular dips in light that could be caused by a dark planet's transit across the star's disk.

Relatively dim, relatively close stars were favored because the planet's dimming effect would be more noticeable than it would be with brighter, bigger, farther-out stars.

Just a few months after the MEarth Project began, graduate student Zachory Berta spotted the signature of GJ 1214b's 38-hour orbit. Based on the pattern of the dimming, the team figured out that the planet was 2.7 times as wide as Earth.

The astronomers then turned to another instrument, the HARPS spectrometer on the European Southern Observatory's La Silla telescope in Chile, to figure out the planet's mass. Such mass calculations depend on another technique that checks for the slight wobble in a star's motion caused by a planet's gravitational pull. The HARPS observations indicated that the planet was 6.55 times as massive as Earth.

Putting those measurements together, the team was able to model the planet's density and composition. The best fit for the data was a mixture consisting of about three-quarters water and other ices, one-quarter rock and a gaseous atmosphere.

Implications of a water world
Although the surface temperature on GJ 1214b would be well above water's boiling point on Earth's surface, Charbonneau said the planet could nonetheless possess an exotic form of liquid water due to extreme atmospheric pressure at the surface. In today's news release, Berta said the pressure may turn at least some of the water into a rare crystalline form known as ice-seven.

"Despite its hot temperature, this appears to be a water world," Berta said.

On Earth, organisms have been found living near deep-sea hydrothermal vents, where superheated water is held under high pressure. But Charbonneau said he wouldn't want to bet that life could endure under GJ 1214b's crushing conditions.

In fact, it's too early to bet heavily on any detailed description of GJ 1214b. Fortunately, Charbonneau said, the star is close enough that the Hubble Space Telescope could someday analyze the composition of the planet's atmosphere. "That will make it the first super-Earth with a confirmed atmosphere - even though that atmosphere probably won't be hospitable to life as we know it," he said.

Knowing what the atmosphere is made of, and how thick it is, could help astronomers determine whether their characterization of GJ 1214b as a water world is correct. "It's possible that what you have is a ball of rock with a much bigger envelope of light gas," Charbonneau said.

The larger implication of the Nature study is that other super-Earths may be waiting out there with just the right conditions for life. "We found this planet in the first six months," Charbonneau noted. "We had only looked at a small fraction of the stars that we planned to look at through the entire project. That means that either we got really lucky - which is possible - or these planets are common."

Two planet-hunting spacecraft, NASA's Kepler and the European Space Agency's COROT, are expected to find hundreds of super-Earths and Earth-sized planets in the years to come. The first scientific results from the Kepler mission are due to be reported next month in Washington at the winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

More on the planet boom:

• Hunt for new worlds goes into overdrive
• Looking for alien Earths? Here they come
• Super-Earths found around sunlike stars
• Super-Earths may be superior at fostering life
• Pluto debate is about more than one little world
• How the search for other planets is done
• Gallery: Top 11 planet-hunting telescopes
• Video: New frontiers in planetary science
• Interactive: The new solar system
• Planets galore on the Web

In addition to Charbonneau and Berta, the researchers behind the Nature paper include Jonathan Irwin, Christopher Burke, Philip Nutzman, David Latham, Ruth Murray-Clay, Matthew Holman and Emilio Falco of the Center for Astrophysics; Lars Buchhave of Copenhagen University's Niels Bohr Institute; Christophe Lovis, Stephane Udry, Didier Queloz, Francesco Pepe and Michel Mayor of the Geneva Observatory; Xavier Bonfils, Xavier Delfosse and Thierry Forveille of Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France; and Joshua Winn of the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research at MIT.

Join the Cosmic Log team by signing up as my Facebook friend or following b0yle on Twitter. And pick up a copy of my new book, "The Case for Pluto." If you're partial to the planetary underdogs, you'll be pleased to know that I've set up a Facebook fan page for "The Case for Pluto."

Issei Kato

Click for video: A special electric plug is used to recharge Toyota's Prius plug-in hybrid in a Tokyo showroom. Click on the image to watch a video report from "NBC Nightly News."

Automakers are promising that affordable plug-in hybrid electric vehicles will be available in the next couple of years, but a new report contends that it will be decades before the fuel savings and lower emissions make up for the high cost of batteries.

The National Research Council issued its reality check on the prospects for plug-ins on Monday, the same day that Toyota announced it would field an "affordable" plug-in version of its Prius hybrid in the United States in 2011. The Japanese automaker said the car would be capable of traveling 14.5 miles on electricity alone, and achieve levels of fuel economy equivalent to 134 miles per gallon.

Toyota is just one of the companies in the race to get plug-ins to the marketplace. General Motors and Nissan are expected to roll out their entrants — the Chevy Volt hybrid and the Nissan Leaf all-electric car, respectively — by the end of next year.

The per-mile cost of running an electric vehicle has been estimated at about a quarter of the equivalent cost for gasoline, which has led some experts and consumers to see plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, or PHEVs, as the cure for what ails America's energy economy. The research council's report, however, estimates that it could be 2028 or later before the fuel savings outweigh the additional up-front cost for plug-in vehicles.

When it comes to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, the report said regular hybrid vehicles such as the present-day Prius might well be more environmentally friendly — unless power companies start phasing out the use of coal and other fossil fuels for electricity generation.

"If it was a choice between two regular hybrids and a plug-in, you'd do better with two hybrids," said Alan Crane, study director for the plug-in report. "The regular hybrids came out looking very good in that report."

The report said the biggest reason for the higher up-front cost of a plug-in is the battery. The battery pack for a car capable of going all-electric for 10 miles, like the plug-in Prius, would add about $3,300 to the cost, the authors estimated. They said the battery pack for a car that can go 40 miles without using gas, like the Volt, would add about $14,000 to the car's cost.

"How much can that come down over time?" asked James Katzer, a former ExxonMobile executive who was a member of the study panel. "That's what we've been discussing."

Affordability is relative
Members of the panel consulted with experts in the battery industry, the auto industry and other fields to flesh out a variety of scenarios for future plug-in production. The break-even point for up-front costs vs. fuel savings was 2028 for PHEV-10 (Prius-style) vehicles, and later than 2040 for PHEV-40 (Volt-style) vehicles.

Both Katzer and Crane saw Toyota's announcement as a small step rather than a giant leap into the marketplace. "It's not a huge jump-in for them," Crane said. "They're talking about 10,000 of them, or 12,000. ... It's a reasonable step, but I don't think it's much more than a toe-dip."

Just how affordable will those plug-ins be? Toyota hasn't said what its future plug-in Prius will cost, but it's likely to carry a premium ranging somewhere between $3,000 and $10,000. The higher figure is roughly how much it costs to convert a present-day Prius into a plug-in.

"'Affordable' is open to some interesting questions," Katzer said. "You've got big subsidies already on the books for these vehicles, and that brings the delta [cost difference] you see in that report down significantly."

The report assumed that government support for plug-in cars would continue at their current level or higher in the decades ahead.

Looking at the bigger picture, the panel estimated that plug-ins would have little impact on total U.S. oil consumption before 2030. That's because it will take a long time for plug-ins to replace a significant proportion of the 200 million vehicles now in operation in the United States, Katzer said.

Batteries are key
Crane said the future cost of batteries represents the "greatest uncertainty" surrounding the report. The panel assumed that there would be incremental improvements in lithium-ion batteries, and some researchers are working on more promising technologies, such as lithium-air or lithium-polymer batteries. Battery breakthroughs would accelerate the transition toward plug-ins, the report said.

"A carefully laid-out R&D program that tries to address some of these questions is clearly warranted," Katzer said. "The key is the battery, because of the cost."

So what's a consumer to do? "That's for each individual consumer to decide," Katzer said. Some Web sites already offer online calculators that figure out how the benefits and costs add up for various plug-ins — and as more vehicles go on the market, there'll likely be more reality checks as well.

In the meantime, the rest of the automotive marketplace won't be standing still. Katzer pointed out that many of the past gains in vehicle efficiency went toward making cars bigger, more powerful and more comfortable. "If those improvements in the internal combustion engine and the drive train had gone to fuel efficiency instead, vehicles would be much more efficient than they are today," he said. "There's still quite a bit there that can be gained."

This report also appears in msnbc.com's Future of Energy section. Join the Cosmic Log team by signing up as my Facebook friend or following b0yle on Twitter. And pick up a copy of my new book, "The Case for Pluto." If you're partial to the planetary underdogs, you'll be pleased to know that I've set up a Facebook fan page for "The Case for Pluto."