ESO

An image from the European Southern Observatory shows a three-galaxy merger known as the Cosmic Bird or the "Tinker Bell Triplet." Click on the image for a bigger view, or click here for more from ESO.

When historians look back at 2007 - the 50th anniversary of the start of the first space race - they may well pick this date as the start of a second international space race.

The past year's developments may not have brought one event as dramatic as Sputnik's launch back in 1957. But when you start looking at the highlights, the big picture points to a complex international effort aimed at pushing forward on the final frontier.

The past year provided plenty of examples of scientific cooperation as well as strategic competition in space. Which trend will dominate in 2008? That's one of the big questions ahead.

2007 marks the 10th anniversary for our annual Year in Space roundup, in which we ask msnbc.com's users to help us pick the top developments of the past year and the top trends for the year to come. Last year, I think the voters got it exactly right: You said this year's big trend would be the proliferation of international space missions, including the first lunar probes sent out by China and Japan.

Those missions signaled a friendly space race aimed at scientific exploration. But the past year brought more worrisome developments as well, headed by China's shootdown of one of its own satellites in January. Beijing has insisted that its space aspirations are totally peaceful; nevertheless, the incident sparked fresh concerns about future anti-satellite battles.

Highlighting the strategic value of its satellites, the Pentagon conducted its own tests of a satellite rendezvous system this summer and moved forward with plans for a new generation of spy satellites. Russia's leaders, meanwhile, harbored suspicions about what the Pentagon was up to.

Speaking of Russia, that country's space program appears to be slowly rebuilding as well, fueled by oil money as well as renewed national pride, in part spurred by the Sputnik anniversary. Forward-looking highlights include last month's announcement on the construction of a new Far East spaceport and the upcoming Russian-Chinese mission to a Martian moon.

When the subject turns from global competition in space to cooperation, the best symbol is shining in the sky most nights nowadays. The international space station grew brighter over the past year, thanks to newly installed solar panels - and the orbital outpost is due to become even more international next year with the arrival of Europe's Columbus orbital laboratory and the first pieces of Japan's Kibo lab.

NASA / ESA

CLICK FOR AUDIO SLIDE SHOW: Watch visual highlights from the past year in space.

The space station isn't the only place where science is going international: Ground-based and space-based astronomy is an increasingly international game as well, illustrated by the picture of a "cosmic bird" gracing the top of this page. The picture, showing a rare triple merger of galaxies 650 million light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius, was taken by a telescope built in Chile and managed by Europeans. The resulting image was fleshed out using additional data from South Africa, Finland and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

Every week brings astronomical revelations from international collaborations - ranging from the two most famous U.S.-European space probes, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Cassini orbiter at Saturn, to what's essentially a scientific Olympic village of telescopes on Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano.

So where does the United States stand in this arena? For now, NASA is still setting the pace - but the agency's top officials are looking over their shoulders. Administrator Mike Griffin's recently observed that "China will be back on the moon before we are," and America's space effort is facing what could be a troubling spaceflight gap between the scheduled retirement of ths shuttle fleet in 2010 and the first flight of the Orion crew vehicle in 2013 or later.

Congressional watchdogs have already raised questions about NASA's plans for Orion's launch vehicle. What's more, the newly passed omnibus spending bill could cause problems for the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, or COTS, which is NASA's $500 million Plan B for resupplying the space station.

The worst-case scenario could leave California-based SpaceX as the only NASA-funded company building an orbital spaceship for the 2010-2013 time frame, space industry consultant Charles Lurio observed. "As much as I like SpaceX, and I like them a lot, we can't leave them in the field as the only one tackling the most ambitious and most visible symbol of a new space project," Lurio told me.

Griffin has already signaled that he won't abandon COTS.

"We will, of course, comply with the laws that are passed, but we certainly will redress this issue with Congress," he said in an agency statement. "NASA will fight for this program, which is critically important to America's future as a spacefaring nation. COTS is intended to help spur the development of commercial space capability, particularly transportation services to and from the international space station, which would enhance strategic U.S. access to Earth orbit and ultimately provide substantial savings to taxpayers."

Looking beyond COTS, I'd have to say that the past year has been tougher than expected for spaceflight entrepreneurs. July's fatal accident at a Mojave rocket test site cast a pall over Scaled Composites' efforts to develop the SpaceShipTwo rocket plane for Virgin Galactic's space tourism service. The timetables for spaceship development had to be set back, not only for Virgin Galactic, but for other companies as well. Perhaps next year will be the breakout year.

And speaking of next year ...

Every December since 1997, we've presented five prospects for the top space stories of the year that's ending - and five potential trends for the year to come. It's up to you to decide the winner in each category. The international space race may have served as an overarching theme for the year, but there are plenty of highlights (and lowlights) to choose from:

• China rising: Beijing shoots down a satellite in January, sends a probe to the moon in October, gets a picture back in November (which sparks a mystery). The Chinese have even bigger space aspirations for the months and years ahead, including their first spacewalk during Shenzhou 7, set for next October.

• The Wrong Stuff: An astronaut love triangle breaks into the tabloid headlines in February. A contract worker kills a hostage and himself at NASA's Johnson Space Center in April. The incidents focus attention on meltdowns, alcohol use and other human failings at the space agency.

• The Right Stuff: Space station astronaut Sunita Williams runs the first marathon in orbit in April. Longtime teacher Barbara Morgan finally gets into orbit in August after a 22-year wait. Spacewalkers save the space station during a dramatic repair operation in November.

• Final financial frontier: NASA's plan to go back to the Moon runs up against budgetary realities, and some space science missions are put in peril. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama suggests deferring space spending to help fund education. Congress restores money for space science, but raises concerns about NASA's private-space initiative.  Rocketplane Kistler falls behind in the private space race, but others get a second chance.

• Extrasolar explosion: Astronomers add to a long list of intriguing planets detected beyond our solar system. Among the standouts: a huge planet in a distant star's habitable zone, a world that's had its atmosphere analyzed from afar, the heavyweight champ of extrasolar planets and what may (or may not) be the most Earthlike planet yet.

• ... And more: Among the other highlights were physicist Stephen Hawking's excellent zero-G adventure in April, James Doohan's posthumous date with spaceflight in April (and the recovery of his ashes in May after a long search), Bigelow Aerospace's Genesis 2 launch in June, Armadillo Aerospace's assault on the X Prize in October, Comet Holmes' star turn in October and November. There's also the continuing success of NASA's Mars probes. If I've left anything out, let me know by leaving a comment below.

Now for the top trends of 2008:

• Assault on Mars: The Phoenix Mars lander is due to touch down in May, beginning a search for water and life's other building blocks in the Red Planet's north polar region. Meanwhile, the never-say-die Spirit and Opportunity rovers seem likely to start their fifth Earth year of exploring the Martian surface.

• Fixing Hubble: NASA's final Hubble servicing mission, set for August or later, could be the most-watched shuttle flight ever. 

• Space station spurt: If future shuttle flights follow NASA's timetable, the international space station will grow to include those European and Japanese laboratories by the end of the year, setting the stage for doubling the outpost's crew capacity in 2009.

• New Space gets real? The dawning of the age of commercial passenger space travel has been two years away for at least a decade now. Will the next year bring the rollout of an actual passenger-worthy spaceship? Or will the new age still be two years away in 2009? 

• Next step at Saturn: The Cassini orbiter's four-year primary mission at Saturn is due to end in July, and everyone expects the mission to be extended for a closer look at two Saturnian moons: Titan, which has mountains and hydrocarbon lakes; and Enceladus, which boasts geysers of water ice. Don't forget to vote for Saturn's greatest hits by Dec. 30.

• ... And more: A total solar eclipse will draw astronomers from around the world to the Arctic, Russia, Mongolia and China on Aug. 1. After this year's partly successful test flight, SpaceX is scheduled to launch its Falcon 1 rocket on what could be its first orbital flight in early 2008, and then give the larger Falcon 9 its maiden launch later in the year. If I'm forgetting anything else, just let me know below.

Now it's your turn.

Go to our Live Vote page and register your vote for the top space story of 2007 and the top trend for 2008. I'll amend this item on Jan. 2 to reflect the winners.

I'm not planning any new postings to the Log between now and then, although I'll be checking in on the comments and passing along your perspectives - not only on the year in space, but on the Weird Science Awards and our annual science and religion symposium as well. So here's wishing you a Merry Christmas, a joyous Kwanzaa, a Blessed Muharram and a Happy New Year. And a fantastic Festivus for the rest of us.

Update for 2:45 a.m. Dec. 22: I fixed a reference to COTS to read "million" instead of "billion" - let's hope I don't get a lump of coal in my stocking because of that gaffe.

Update for 9:30 p.m. Jan. 16: I listed the winners in a different posting on Jan. 2, but just to keep the record straight, the top stories of 2007 were China's space ambitions and the explosion in extrasolar planets. The top trend to watch in 2008? Paying a final service call to the Hubble Space Telescope, naturally. Thanks to all who voted.

• NY08: World Science Festival
• COPUS: Year of Science 2009
• 2009: The International Year of Astronomy 
• The Guardian: The shape of things to come 
• The year in science, part 1
• The year in science, part 2
• The year in science, part 3
• The year in science, part 4

In recent years, the holiday season has sparked plenty of reflection on the interplay between religion and science. We're also heading into the prime political season, with science-related issues ranging from climate change to stem cell research. So you'd think scientific discourse would play a role on both those fronts this season. That's not the case this year – and some of the people who think deep thoughts about science and society are wondering why not.

It's not for lack of trying: This time last year, there were a good number of high-profile books about science and religion sitting on bookshelves, ranging from Richard Dawkins' provocative screed, "The God Delusion," to E.O. Wilson's "The Creation" and Francis Collins' tale of conversion, "The Language of God."

Just in the past few weeks, a high-profile coalition of scientists, politicians and other interested parties assembled under the aegis of Science Debate 2008 to call on the presidential candidates to devote a debate to the scientific and technical issues facing the nation.

MikeHuckabee.com via MSNBC

CLICK FOR VIDEO: GOP presidential hopeful Mike    Huckabee appears in a Christmas TV ad. Click on   the image for a discussion of Huckabee's strategy   on MSNBC's "Hardball With Chris Matthews."

So far, however, the scientific perspective is virtually nowhere to be seen in the values debate. Instead, political candidates are in full holier-than-thou mode. One of the holiest (at least according to BeliefNet's God-o-Meter), GOP candidate Mike Huckabee, scoffed at the idea that his views on evolution should carry any weight in the presidential race.

It's a situation that cries out for a reality check from someone with the stature of the late celebrity astronomer Carl Sagan, who died exactly 11 years ago today after a long battle with bone marrow disease. If he had lived, Sagan would be 73 years old now - just a couple of years older than Sen. John McCain.

Sagan's name has come up as the kind of person who could moderate Science Debate 2008 - if the idea could ever get off the ground. "I'd have loved to see Sagan host this," one commentator opined in response to Matthew Chapman's essay on the debate movement.

Ann Druyan, Sagan's widow and the keeper of the "Cosmos" flame, agrees that her husband would have been engaged in the political debate - just as he was during the debates over nuclear war and global warming back in the 1980s. The current times are similarly dire, she said.

Cornell Univ.

Carl Sagan, 1934-1996

"I just can't imagine how Carl would have felt, knowing this sad, dreary lie that we've been on for at least the last seven years, maybe longer," she told me.

Druyan, who is one of the most spiritual atheists I know, said she is increasingly concerned about the latest turn in the scientific/religious/political debate. "What I've been thinking about mostly is how worried I am about what's happened to our Constitution, and the separation of church and state," she said.

Naturally, she's particularly struck by the way Republicans are overtly courting religious believers this time around - including devilish discussions.

"The thing that is, I think, so very, very worrisome is that so many people will not realize how dangerous it is for candidates for the presidency to really pander to the religious resentments of people," she said.

Druyan would love to see someone of Sagan's stature try to turn the agenda toward scientific topics - and that's why she was one of the first advocates to sign up in support of Science Debate 2008. "I really feel like it's been so long since we had an exponent of science, doing it the way Carl did it - without tearing anybody down, but being very direct," she said.

She doesn't think the confrontational approach taken by Dawkins and other militant atheists is doing the trick. In fact, that approach runs the risk of closing off the dialogue and drawing even sharper battle lines. "The frontal assault on religion has not resulted in the degree of communication that was possible even a few years ago," she said.

Despite Druyan's gloom, there are positive signs as well - for instance, the success that former Vice President Al Gore has had in raising awareness about what he calls the climate crisis. Such consciousness-raising efforts may well have contributed to the Bush administration's turnabout at this month's climate talks in Bali.

"I don't understand why Gore doesn't run for president," Druyan said. "I really feel that he would be one candidate who probably the majority of the people in the country would embrace." (Though judging from the feedback to my recent posting on Gore and science advice, I'm not so sure.)

At Cosmos Studios, where Druyan presides as founder and chief executive officer, the news is also positive: For instance, Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" series will be rebroadcast starting on Christmas night on the Discovery Science Channel.

"It's incredibly gratifying," Druyan said. "It's hard to imagine another 30-year-old science series that could be broadcast in prime time."

Druyan also has been working on a totally new TV series that would serve as a successor to "Cosmos" - and she said there would soon be further details to report on that project. She said it wouldn't cover the same territory as the original "Cosmos," but instead would expand Carl Sagan's universe.

"There's just something beautiful about this transgenerational aspect - no generation getthing the total answers to everything, but building on the previous generation," she said.

Around this time of year, we traditionally open a forum to discuss what's ahead for the kinds of deep subjects that science as well as religion address. Feel free to reflect - but please make sure you don't attack the comments of others, or stoop to lecture people about their evil ways, or copy-and-paste long stretches of scripture.

To get an idea of the lay of the land, here are the topics from our past Yuletide symposia on science and religion:

• 2002: How do you reconcile science and religion?
• 2003: Is pop theology good or evil?
• 2004: Does it always have to be science vs. religion?
• 2005: Debating stem cells and evolution ... and the "debate."
• 2006: What is the future of faith?

For more about Sagan's legacy, check out Druyan's blog posting to The Observatory, as well as the blogathon under way at Joel's Humanistic Blog. And to learn more about where the candidates stand on scientific issues, check out Popular Mechanics' "Geek the Vote" interactive.

• PsyBlog: 10 weird psychology studies
• L.A. Times: So a fruit fly goes to a bar ...
• Univ. of Florida: To curious aliens, Earth would stand out
• The Guardian: Holiday data delivery by a jolly old statistician
• The Onion: What inventions have we overlooked this year?

Viking

Controversial genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter tells his story in "A Life Decoded" (and a Cosmic Log Q&A session).

It's been almost seven years since dueling teams of scientists unveiled the first draft of the human genetic code, but the implications of that achievement are only now beginning to kick in. And it's also been only recently that the most colorful players in the great genome race have had their stories told, in more ways than one.

One one side, there's James Watson, the co-discoverer of DNA's double helix, who got the ball rolling for the Human Genome Project in the early '90s. On the other, there's J. Craig Venter, who turned the quest into a real race with his privately backed DNA decoding effort.

Watson had his full genome deciphered this year, as did Venter. Both scientists published their memoirs this year as well. Watson's life may have had more drama lately, thanks to his comments about race and intelligence. But when it comes to dramatic life stories, it's hard to top the tale Venter tells in "A Life Decoded."

Can you name any other world-famous scientist who started out as a surfer dude and self-confessed slacker, faced death in the Vietnam War and came close to literally drowning himself in despair - then returned to the States, went back to college and eventually climbed his way up to the highest echelons of genetic science and commerce?

What's more, Venter is not one to rest on his genetic laurels: He has mounted a years-long expedition on his 100-foot sailing ship, called Sorcerer II, to catalog new species in the world's oceans. His gene-cracking operation is registering growth on a geometric scale. And oh, by the way, he's working to create synthetic life in the lab.

Venter's brand of bio-hacking could lead to next-generation biofuels and pharmaceuticals, produced by custom-made microbes. The idea has already touched off an international patent dispute as well as a deep ethical debate.

During a recent interview, Venter talked about his work with genomics (natural as well as synthetic) and about the implications of the genetic revolution for future health and social trends. He also reflected on Watson's recent troubles - and revisited the tale of a deadly sea snake he killed long ago in Vietnam with his bare hands. Here's the edited Q&A:

Cosmic Log: OK, so you've decoded the human genome. What have you done for us lately?

Venter: Heh, heh. Well, we re-decoded the human genome, which is perhaps the most important thing right now. We just published the first complete version of the human genome, the diploid genome - in contrast to half the genome being done at the turn of the decade. People thought doing the 3 billion base pairs would be sufficient, but it turned out that it grossly underestimated human genomic structure and diversity. So we just had now the complete one - which includes the sets of chromosomes from, in my case, both my parents. It totally changes our view of what's out there, in the sense that we look like we're 1 to 2 percent different from each other instead of 0.1 percent. That's a huge change.

Now we understand that not all the variations are the simple single nucleotide polymorphisms that people thought represented human variation. These were roughly 1 in 1,000. The assumption was that we all had the same human genes, and that we just differed from each other in one letter out of a thousand. Now we know that we in fact don't all have the same gene sets, and that we differ quite substantially in those genes. Forty-four percent of my genes had what we call heterozygote variations. The two chromosomes differed from each other in terms of the gene structure. So there's a huge degree of human variation if we all have two different versions of genes to that same extent. You can imagine that there could be billions and billions of variations.

Does this variation have implications for diseases? I know that you've looked pretty thoroughly at your own genome. What are some of the things in your genome that explained characteristics that you do or do not have? You sprinkled examples of this liberally throughout your book.

Well, the point of that is to show the complexity of interpreting the human genome, based on a sample size of one - or a sample size of two, because in fact we have both my parental chromosomes, at least one of them [for each]. Our goal is to get 10,000 or more human genomes over the next decade and really try to understand what all these variants mean.

I certainly list some risk factors that I have for cardiovascular disease in some genes. With the gene Apo E, for example, I have a heterozygote mutation, which means one of my parents gave me a heightened risk, and the other one didn't, for heart disease and perhaps Alzheimer's disease. But there are literally hundreds and hundreds of genes that contribute to heart disease.

I also have positive alleles for some of the genes. For example, there's a gene that's associated with caffeine metabolism. Caffeine can definitely cause arrhythmia in some people that can lead to heart attacks. There are some variants of this gene that can result in very slow caffeine metabolism. I have two copies of the gene that actually lead to very fast caffeine metabolism, so I can drink far more caffeine than the average person, with a much lower risk.

Aha, did you find that to be the case in reality?

Absolutely. It's an experiment I do every day.

Is there such a thing as too much information? Are there some people who don't want to know what's in their genes?

In my experience, there are two groups of people: those who really want to know, and those who are afraid to know. I haven't heard of any people who want to go halfway and see just some of their genes. Some of the same people who are afraid to know are also afraid to go to the doctor's office, because they might get bad news by being diagnosed with a disease. But one of the major things that I'm trying to teach people is that knowledge is power. If you know this information early enough, you have a chance actually to make a change that's meaningful to you. If you get the information too late because you waited to go to your physician, you're in a different category.

You've made some changes because of what you saw in your genes, isn't that correct?

Yes. Some of these changes are just the common-sense everyday advice we're all given about improving your diet and getting more exercise. But even though I knew through my father's early death from heart disease that I have a family history of this, when you see it in your own genetic code, that takes it away from testimonials and likelihoods – and affects you very differently.

And you're taking a cholesterol-lowering drug?

I'm taking a statin to lower cholesterol and blood lipids. ...

In the near future, the information [on genetic risk factors] will be changing exponentially as we get multiple human genomes and can understand variation across the genome, and how it affects disease outcomes. Only then will we truly know how to interpret that information. It will also tell us how important environmental factors are. The reason I'm not at all afraid to have my genome out there is because I know that, at best, it's only half the picture. The environment is equally as important, and perhaps the best way to get at the environmental component is to understand what's genetic. Therefore, we'll know everything else is environmental.

When the human genome project and your efforts first came to fruition, a lot of people had expectations that this would really revolutionize in the short term how medicine worked. It seems as if it's taking longer than perhaps the hype had advertised. But it sounds as if the long-term revolution is still building up steam, at least from your point of view.

Well, it's an unfortunate aspect of things. We're seeing that a little bit with stem cells as well. It's a similar kind of effort, convincing Congress and government funders to fund things. Things get hyped and promises get made that science can't possibly in the short run deliver on.

I kept saying that the human genome race was a race to the starting line, not a race to the finish line. But if you're part of a large bureaucracy with a large budget, you see hitting that milestone as your finish line. So unfortunately, it did get hyped. And we have to worry that things like gene therapy and stem cell therapy have been equally hyped.

Understanding stem cells in the long run is going to be critically important for understanding our physiology and disease - almost equivalent to the genome, perhaps. But I'm not expecting or suggesting that anybody should be promising short-term cures.

It's interesting that you mention gene therapy and stem cells. The recent advance with induced pluripotent cells appears to have relied on some of the techniques that have been used in gene therapy. Do you think that hints at a convergence of all these different technologies, rather than seeing this as genetics vs. cell-based therapies?

Well, it wasn't gene therapy, it was just transferring genes into those cells. I think gene therapy is one of those simplistic notions that sounded really good to everybody, because if something was broken, and you knew what it was, you could go in and fix it. I think the real issue is that we have 100 trillion cells, and it's hard to get the right genes under the right regulation into the right cells for the effects we're looking for.

Gene therapy would be great if you're dealing with individual cells outside the body - so-called ex vivo gene therapy. Or if we were a giant amoeba with only one cell, it would probably be pretty effective. But that's not the case.

The scientific community is as capable as the rest of the world of coming up with naïve ideas. I think that was clearly one of them.

Talking about one-celled organisms, toward the latter part of the book you talk about the quest for the synthetic genome. Maybe you can bring us up to date on where that is, and where you hope to go with the synthetic genome.

All this work actually started in 1995 when my team and I sequenced the first two genomes in history from living organisms, and we were trying to understand the differences in operating systems for cells. One cell required 560 genes, the other around 1,800 genes. We just asked questions like: Is there a minimal operating system? Was that it? Is there a basic system that would help us understand basic cell biology?

Another question was, is gene order important? If we had the same genes in the genome, only they were shuffled in a different order, would we still get the same species? The only way to answer these questions would be to chemically make the chromosome in the lab so we could make all the variants.

That's what started the field of synthetic genomics, and we've been spending the last several years trying to perfect ways to accurately make DNA in the laboratory to go down this route. There are two aspects to it: One is, can we make large molecules of DNA? And we seem to be progressing well in that fashion. The second question is, what do you do with it? DNA is an inert chemical that needs to be booted up in a cell system. It was easy to do that with viral DNA. We could just inject that into E. coli, and the bacteria started making phage particles based on the DNA that we injected.

Earlier this year we published a paper on gene transplant, which I think is going to be the enabling step to go to this next stage. We purified a chromosome from one bacterial species, eliminated by digestion all the proteins associated with it, so we're down to just naked DNA. And we transplanted that chromosome into another bacterial species, and then selected for cells with the new chromosome.

What happened is, the original chromosome got digested by enzymes and the new chromosome took over the cell. All the characteristics of one species completely went away, and the species got transformed into the new one based on the chromosome we put in. So it's the ultimate in identity theft.

That showed that we could transplant a chromosome. We're now trying to get it to work with a chromosome we've made in the laboratory; to see if we can boot up a cell with it. There are a lot of barriers to this, a lot of technical and other hurdles to overcome. But now that we know we can both make chromosomes and transplant them, it's more of a question of when, not if, this will be possible.

Along the route to doing this, we saw that there were possibly additional benefits to society other than answering basic science questions. We decided these same approaches could perhaps be useful for reprogramming cells to do much more what we'd like them to do. For example, making large amounts of biofuels, the same kinds of fuels used in our gas tanks and diesel tanks now, but derived synthetically by bacteria from sugar as a starting point.

You could do this instead of taking the carbon from the ground and burning it – something that is contributing to what many of us are worried is the biggest threat to long-term stable societies and humanity. That is, possibly dramatic climate change from the continued placement of carbon in our atmosphere from burning fossil fuels.

Are there other applications that you are eyeing for this technology, or would you say the possibility of synthesizing alternative fuels is a big enough bite for you to take?

It's certainly a grandiose challenge. Fundamentally, anything that comes from the petrochemical industry is fair game for this technology. DuPont is already having some success with extensively modified bacteria that they are using, starting with sugar as their raw material, to make propanediol, one of the key components of their new Sorona polymer.

DuPont argues that Sorona is going to be the first billion-dollar biotech product other than a pharmaceutical. It's got pretty interesting properties. They claim it produces carpets that are completely stain-resistant, and also clothing that will be stainproof as well, because nothing will bind to this chemical. When you spill something on there, you can just wash it away. Certainly every male over 50 has to be excited about that.

Anything we make in terms of pharmaceutical chemicals, plastics, bioremediation … we'll be limited more by our imagination going forward than we will be by the types of metabolism that we've been discovering during the Sorcerer II expedition out there in the oceans, for example. We know only a tiny fraction of the biology on our own planet, and I think this is going to be the century of harnessing that knowledge, that new information.

You've mentioned how many new strains of microbes were harvested during those voyages in your book. Are there more scientific findings yet to come out of that project?

It's ongoing even as we speak. Earlier this year, we doubled the number of all known genes that have been sequenced. We hope to double that number again in 2008. We're at the early part of the discovery curve.

One of the biggest surprises is how little actual biology we know on our own planet. Discoveries are there, even for students just taking a cupful of seawater or soil and examining what's in it. We've been finding new microbes in the air. Here it is, 2007, and scientific discoveries are easier to make than ever before in history.

I wanted to touch upon this issue of genetic determinism, and the trouble that another pioneer in the field, James Watson, got into recently. I feel that you and Watson sometimes live almost parallel lives, just in terms of how you both can be outspoken - and you both tend to create controversy, whether you like it or not. It all caught up with Jim a few weeks ago. Have you drawn any lessons from Watson's experience, watching it from outside?

Well, one of the jokes I've made is that people are comparing our genomes - and I said recently that I applauded him for also making his genome publicly available. It helps to overcome this notion on the part of some government researchers that this information has to be locked up and seen only by a few people. We're trying to demystify it and make it so it's not so fearful.

People wanted to know what my concerns are about comparing my genome with his, and I've joked that it might be too similar.

You know, I don't think he personally believed what he was saying [about race and intelligence], but to some extent it doesn't matter. There is not going to be a genetic or skin color association with intelligence, or with disease. People find that some populations have a 63 vs. 52 percent incidence of hypertension or prostate cancer or other diseases, and claim that there's now a race-based determination. It's simply not the case.

Race is a social concept, it's not a scientific one. Our genomes - all 6.5 billion of us, soon to be 9 billion - are all going to be based on the same group of Africans that we all evolved from in very recent history. We'll see that continue. Anyplace you find populations that have been isolated - we call those ethnogeographic differences - anytime that there's inbreeding, you'll see certain traits that tend to get more emphasized in those populations vs. others. That's why people in certain regions start to look more alike after several generations.

We're all part of a continuum. I am 100 percent certain that if we could determine the genome of everybody on this planet, there would be no bright line that distinguished this social concept of one race vs. another.

What's one of the lessons that you think people will draw from your own book?

... It shows that I have a very unusual history for a scientist. I've been told my story gives a lot of hope to parents about their own kids, when those kids don't know where they want to go at an early stage of their life. I think I've shown that can have a positive effect.

I was particularly taken by the story about the snakeskin - the snake that you killed and skinned while you were stationed in Vietnam. Do you still keep that snakeskin around, and is there anything that it tells you about what the road ahead is going to be like?

It is certainly framed and in my office. It's a constant reminder, perhaps, that things can come up and bite you from any source.

• The Scientific American 50 Awards
• New Scientist: News review 2007
• Edge: Third Culture holiday reading
• The Australian: Bumper year for science 
• Voice of America: Global warming tops science stories
• The year in science, part 1 
• The year in science, part 2 
• The year in science, part 3 

This month, Mars has been more than ready for its close-up - and fortunately, the Hubble Space Telescope was ready as well, snapping pictures of the Red Planet during its orbital approach. If the skies are clear, you can have your own close encounter with Mars tonight - the closest encounter possible until the year 2016.

Tonight marks the very night when Mars stops coming closer and starts moving away from us in its roughly 26-month orbital cycle - at 6:47 p.m. ET, according to this handy list of the planet's oppositions and close approaches.

This year, Mars comes as close as 54.8 million miles - not as close as the historic pass-by of 2003 (34.6 million miles), but still a night-brightener. It shouldn't be hard to pick out the butterscotch-colored, steadily glowing jewel in the sky, but if you need help, just consult Space.com's sky chart.

NASA / ESA / STScI / Cornell / SSI

CLICK FOR VIDEO: The Hubble Space Telescope took this picture on Dec. 17. In the southern hemisphere, the dark triangular shape to the right is Syrtis Major. The dark horizontal lane to the left is Sinus Meridiani. NASA's Opportunity rover landed at the western end of this region in 2004. Click on the picture to watch a video clip narrated by Alan Boyle.

The Hubble telescope has been capturing Mars up close for more than a decade, since before NASA's first Mars rover ever bounced down to the surface. Today, two rovers are surveying the planet from ground level, three orbiters are mapping the globe from above, and another lander is on the way. So is it really worth Hubble's precious time to be taking pictures from afar?

"It's often surprising to people that, despite the fact that we have this armada of orbiters, landers and rovers on Mars, we can still do useful and unique scientific observations of Mars from Earth," said Cornell astronomer Jim Bell, who is a member of the Hubble observation team as well as the lead scientist for the panoramic color cameras on NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers.

Because of its far-seeing perspective, Hubble still provides the best all-at-once global views of the planet. Although the orbiters can produce much higher-resolution mosaics, they're just too close to see the whole planet at once.

"They're only seeing a bit at a time - strips of data taken at the same time of day," Bell told me today. "You don't get an overall perspective."

The Hubble views show how all the parts of a planet work together: dust storms and icy clouds, the permanent ice caps and the ebb and flow of seasonal frost. The latest pictures document thin, bluish clouds of water ice that are appearing just as springtime is coming to northern latitudes. That's a view that Hubble really hasn't seen up close before, Bell said.

"This data set really fills in what had been a missing gap in coverage during Mars' year," he said.

Scientists are particularly interested in how water moves around between Mars' surface ice and the atmosphere due to the planet's seasonal changes. "There's an enormous amount of water-ice cloudiness in the wintertime," Bell said. "How that super-cloudy season changes from the wintertime through the spring and the summer is still a subject of scientific debate."

NASA's Phoenix Mars lander, currently zooming toward a May landing in Mars' northern polar region, could help answer questions about the planet's water cycle - which naturally lead to the even bigger questions about past or present life.

Thanks to his double role, Bell gets to work with the big picture as part of the Hubble team, plus the up-close-and-personal views taken by the panoramic cameras, or Pancams, aboard the Spirit and Opportunity rovers. The Pancams are the instruments that have been capturing the stunning color views cataloged on NASA's Web site for the rover missions, as well as in Bell's coffee-table book, "Postcards From Mars." For the latest Pancam views, you can also check out the imaging team's Web site at Cornell University.

The rovers' primary mission was slated to last just 90 days - but almost four years later, they're still going strong, and so are the cameras.

"We haven't detected any degradation," Bell said. "Nothing seems to be wearing out."

Even though the rovers have been surprisingly resilient, Bell and his colleagues on the rover science team are handling them with exceeding care. Right now their top priority is to check out a safe haven for Spirit.

Just as spring is coming to Mars' northern hemisphere, winter is coming to the southern hemisphere, where Spirit is located. The solar-powered rovers almost didn't make it through a huge dust storm earlier this year, so the team wants to make sure that Spirit is in a good sun-facing position for the coming winter.

"We've been focusing on taking pictures of the region where we will have to park the rover very soon," Bell said. "The rover could spend most of 2008 at this one location."

Meanwhile, Opportunity is carefully making its way down the slopes of Victoria Crater, taking lots of pictures as it goes. "We're being very methodical at each location," Bell said. "We've been using the photography to try to relate the specific areas where the rover is to the layers that we see elsewhere in the crater."

Will the rovers still be taking pictures when Mars has its next close approach to Earth, in early 2010? Four years ago, no one would have predicted that, but Bell has given up trying to guess how long the rovers and their cameras will last. "There's nothing that we can use as a predictor to say, 'Oh, man, the end is coming,'" he said.

To keep tabs on Mars exploration until the bitter end, check in with our special report, "Return to the Red Planet." And for great views of Mars as well as Hubble's glories, take a tour of our space gallery.

• Edge: God vs. science
• N.Y. Times: Laws of nature, source unknown
• Washington Post: Synthetic life forms on the horizon
• The Space Review: The truth, it is out there 

CLICK FOR VIDEO  NBC's TODAY show  reports on cloned cats.

Between the radiation-proof underwear and the glow-in-the-dark kitties (yes, yes, I know they're actually UV-fluorescent kitties), 2007 has been a banner year for weird science tales. That's fantastic for Cosmic Log - which, after all, was created to chronicle "the follies and mysteries of mankind." But which stories belong in the top 10 for weirdness? To resolve that question, we're going to need your help - so keep reading, then register your vote for the year's weirdest science story.

Here's how the Weird Science Awards work: You'll find a list of 31 stories below, organized chronologically. Feel free to review the nominees, then head over to this Web page and vote for the weirdest. If there's a weird science story that I've omitted from 2007, add it as a write-in comment. I'll even add your nomination to the official voting list if you get at least 10 other people to support it with their own comments. (I have done this already with Dennis McClain-Furmanski's nomination, as detailed below.)

The top five stories as of noon ET Jan. 2 will win the awards, along with another five stories chosen by editors at msnbc.com. We'll publish an online award gallery by mid-January - and if one of the stories you nominated ends up in the top 10, you'll be credited in the gallery. That's your payoff for helping us chronicle the scientific follies and mysteries of 2007. 

And the nominees are:

• Grave-sniffing breakthrough announced (Jan. 23)
• Virgin Komodo dragon gives birth (Jan. 24)
• Prehistoric Romeo and Juliet discovered (Feb. 6)
• Pigeons flown by remote control (Feb. 27)
• The world's most explosive tongue (March 6)
• Porn fails to get panda in the mood (March 27)
• Joan of Arc relic turns out to be a hoax (April 5)
• Did T. rex taste like chicken? (April 12)
• Melody deciphered in 'Da Vinci Code' chapel (May 2)
• Radiation-proof undies marketed (May 22)
• Nessie caught on tape? (June 1)
• The real reason why chickens cross the road (July 10)
• Backward research goes forward (July 17)
• Checkers computer becomes invincible (July 19)
• Poker-playing humans almost beaten at their own game (July 25)
• Orbital billboard unveiled (Aug. 3)
• Scientists talk to owls on cell phones (Sept. 7)
• Activists want ape declared a person (Sept. 27)
• See-through frogs created (Oct. 1)
• Viagra cures hamsters' jet lag (Oct. 4)
• Elephants run from bees (Oct. 8)
• No sex for 40 million years? No problem (Oct. 12)
• Meteorite sparks international flap (Oct. 19)
• Case of the missing crab lice (Oct. 19 plus follow-up) 
• Some Neanderthals were redheads (Oct. 25)
• Bloodsucking beast was just a coyote (Nov. 2)
• Chimps smarter than college students? (Dec. 3)
• Moon photo mystery solved (Dec. 4)
• Mongolian 'Mickey Mouse' caught on tape (Dec. 10)
• Rodents bred so they can't smell fear (Dec. 13)
• Cloned cats that glow?! (Dec. 13)

Remember, if you don't see your favorite weird story listed here, you can always make a write-in nomination and get your friends to second it. For write-ins, use the comment box below. Make sure you register your preference using our ironically unscientific Live Vote before Jan. 2, by clicking on this link. You can also check back on the Live Vote to see how the balloting is shaping up. We'll declare our winners before the Iowa caucuses.

Update for 2 p.m. ET Dec. 18: There's been a crush of supporters for the "case of the missing crab lice," so I've added it to the list. I haven't approved the comments from all the seconders (or is that ninthers and tenthers?), but I do want to thank everyone for the write-in campaign. Now if only the presidential campaign were that simple. ...

Update for 8 p.m. ET Dec. 18: Marc Abrahams, the guy behind the Annals of Improbable Research and the Ig Nobel Prizes, sends along his recommendations:

"Hi, Alan! A nice group you've got there. I'm happy to see that Kees Moeliker's crab lice are crawling onto the list.

"Here's one about the Tim-ness of Tims and the Bob-ness of Bobs: a press report, essentially presenting a press release and the study.

"Here are two others:

"'Recalculating the Economic Cost of Suicide,' Bijou Yang and David Lester, Death Studies, no. 4, April 2007, vol. 31 pp. 351–61. Professor Lester reports: 'These authors argue that estimates of the net economic cost of suicide should go beyond accounting for direct medical costs and indirect costs from loss of earnings by those who commit suicide. There are potential savings from (a) not having to treat the depressive and other psychiatric disorders of those who kill themselves; (b) avoidance of pension, social security and nursing home care costs; and (c) assisted-suicide. By combining all of these costs and savings, it is concluded that the net economic cost of the 30,906 completed suicides in 1990 entailed an economic gain for the society of roughly $5.07 billion in year—2005 dollars.'

"'Sleepy Driver Near-Misses May Predict Accident Risks.' Nelson B. Powell, DDS, MD; Kenneth B. Schechtman, PhD; Robert W. Riley, DDS, MD; Christian Guilleminault, MD; Rayleigh Ping-Ying Chiang, MD, MMS; Edward M. Weaver, MD, MPH. Sleep, vol. 30, no. 3, March 1, 2007, pp. 331-342."

The same rule applies: Marc's suggestions would have to win over 10 supporters in the comments section. Or you can just enjoy the Timness of Tims and the Bobness of Bobs - and leave it at that.

• 'Nova' on PBS: 'Missing in MiG Alley'
• L.A. Times: The gene decoder at work
• Chemistry World: The world's smallest Advent calendar
• Science News: Early human may have carried tuberculosis

Earlier in the week, we talked about children's books on scientific topics - but of course, science isn't just for kids. In fact, there are so many science-oriented volumes out there that it'd be unfair to give you a top-10 list. Instead, we'll start out with seven pairs of recently published books that address topics ranging from climate science to space history to ghost hunting. Then you can chime in with your own favorites for holiday giving (and anyday reading). You might even win a prize.

• Climate science

"Storm World" by Chris Mooney.
"Apollo's Fire" by Jay Inslee with Bracken Hendricks.

OK, so you've read Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" and you now believe that the climate crisis is real. Or do you? "Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics and the Battle Over Global Warming" revisits past debates over the roots of monster storms, and puts some extra perspective on the current climate debate. So what can we do about climate worries and energy woes? "Apollo's Fire: Igniting America's Clean Energy Economy" lays out a vision that echoes the Apollo moon effort of the '60s. (For another perspective, you can also check out Robert Zubrin's "Energy Victory," the subject of a recent Log item.)  

• Deep history

"Before the Dawn" by Nicholas Wade.
"The Far Traveler" by Nancy Marie Brown

It's always dicey to try to reconstruct the story behind prehistory, but these two books do a slick job of it, even if the purists complain. "Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors" weaves a tale from the gleanings of archaeologists and geneticists, going back to before the dawn of humanity, let alone history. It won a book prize this year from the National Association of Science Writers (with yours truly as one of the judges). Another member of NASW, Nancy Marie Brown, has written a tale titled "The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman." The story of Gudrid, a Viking pioneer who sailed to the New World, may sound like historical fiction - but it's actually based on Icelandic sagas and recent archaeological findings.

• Ghost hunting

"Memoirs of a Monster Hunter" by Nick Redfern.
"Ghost Hunters" by Deborah Blum.

You'll find a contemporary travel guide to the paranormal in "Memoirs of a Monster Hunter: A Five-Year Journey in Search of the Unknown." But for the classic retelling of the greatest scientific investigation of the spirit world (and how it ultimately fizzled), check out "Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death." I loved the audiobook version and discussed the science of spooks with Blum on Halloween.

• Medicine

"Cell of Cells" by Cynthia Fox.
"Good Germs, Bad Germs" by Jessica Snyder Sachs.

Stem cells are emerging as one of the biggest stories in medicine nowadays. "Cell of Cells: The Global Race to Capture and Control the Stem Cell" takes the story through the South Korean cloning scandal - but it was written too early to catch the current upswing in cell reprogramming research. Another book that fleshes out the scientific issues behind contemporary medical news is "Good Germs, Bad Germs: Health and Survival in a Bacterial World." Science book reviewer Phillip Manning tells me that "Good Germs, Bad Germs" is on his list of recent favorites.

• Scientific biography

"Einstein" by Walter Isaacson.
"The Reluctant Mr. Darwin" by David Quammen.

Another one of Manning's favorites is "Einstein: His Life and Universe," the first weighty biography to draw upon a fresh batch of personal correspondence released from the Einstein archives. For a taste, check out my Q&A with author Walter Isaacson. Thinking about Einstein brings to mind another controversial theorist in the scientific pantheon: the title character in "The Reluctant Mr. Darwin: An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution."

• Scientific memoirs

"Avoid Boring People" by James Watson.
"A Life Decoded" by J. Craig Venter.

James Watson, the co-discoverer of DNA's double helix, may be on the outs nowadays - but you could never accuse him of being boring. He recaps his exploits in "Avoid Boring People: Lessons From a Life in Science." He addressed some of those lessons in this Cosmic Log Q&A, which was conducted just before his comments about genetics and race got him in trouble. One of Watson's rivals in the genome game, J. Craig Venter, tells a different side of the scientific story in "A Life Decoded: My Genome, My Life." Stay tuned in the days ahead for my Q&A with Venter.

• Spaceflight

"Live From Cape Canaveral" by Jay Barbree.
"America in Space: NASA's First 50 Years."

This has been a banner year for books about spaceflight, in large part because of the 50th anniversary of the Space Age's start. NBC News correspondent Jay Barbree retells the Space Age saga with his trademark "aw, shucks" flair in "Live From Cape Canaveral: Covering the Space Race, From Sputnik to Today." If it's cool pictures you're looking for, "America in Space: NASA's First 50 Years" should fill the bill. Writings by several authors, including Neil Armstrong's foreword, add context to the NASA picture project. And if you're interested in the future of spaceflight, you should look into Michael Belfiore's progress report, "Rocketeers: How a Visionary Band of Business Leaders, Engineers and Pilots Is Boldly Privatizing Space."

Now it's your turn: What science-oriented books hold an honored place on your bookshelf - or on your holiday wish list, for that matter? Feel free to leave your suggestions below, and if your pick becomes a future Cosmic Log Used Book Club selection, I'll send you a DVD of "Flatland: The Movie."

• National Geographic: Top 10 news stories of 2007
• Bad Astronomy: Top 10 astronomy pictures of 2007 
• AIP Physics News Update: Top 10 physics stories of 2007
• The year in science, part 1
• The year in science, part 2

AFP / Getty Images

CLICK FOR VIDEO: Photos from South Korea's Ministry of Science and Technology show cats with a gene for producing red fluorescence protein. The cats appear normal in visible light, at left, but their skin glows red under ultraviolet light, at right. Click here or on the image to watch the video from NBC's TODAY show.

South Korean scientists say they have cloned cats whose genes have been altered so that they glow in the dark - taking advantage of a technological twist that could someday be used to make more dramatic genetic changes in all sorts of creatures.

A research team at Gyeongsang National University, headed by Kong Il-Keun, produced several kitty clones in January and February, the government-managed Korea.net news service reported Wednesday. This week the scientists showed off the cats, which now weigh about 7 pounds (3 to 3.5 kilograms) and glow a dull red under ultraviolet light.

"The ability to manipulate the fluorescent protein and use this to clone cats opens new horizons for artificially creating animals with human illnesses linked to genetic causes," the Ministry of Science and Technology said in Wednesday's report.

The procedure for cloning a cat has been around for six years, and Kong himself first performed that particular feat back in 2004. What's noteworthy about the newly reported twist - other than that glow-in-the-dark kitties are really cool - is that scientists fiddled with the donor cat's genetic code, then passed those changes on to the clones.

Here's what the researchers say they did: They took skin cells from Turkish Angora female cats and used a virus to insert the genetic instructions for making red fluorescent protein. Then they put the gene-altered nuclei into eggs for cloning. The cloned embryos were implanted back into the donor cats, which effectively became the surrogate mothers for their own clones.

Four kittens were born by Caesarian section, but one of them died during the procedure, according to the Korea Times. The fact that the kittens' skin cells glowed under ultraviolet light served as evidence that they were really gene-altered clones.

Assuming that the results are confirmed, Kong's cats would join mice and pigs in the glow-in-the-dark clone menagerie. The implication is that if you can pass along the easy-to-recognize coding for fluorescent markers through cloning, you could eventually pass along more complex genetic coding.

Theoretically, you could add in the coding for an endangered species, producing cloned hybrids to boost the gene pool for Sumatran tigers, Iberian lynxes and the like. You might even stick in the coding to give other creatures human diseases, so that they can be studied without raising the level of ethical concern that comes with human experimentation. (I realize that there's a different set of ethical concerns about such trangenic experiments, however.)

Most provocatively, animal clones might be genetically altered to produce human body parts. Does that sound like a way-out science-fiction plot? Well, it's already happening, and sparking an unsettling debate.

This week's report doesn't mean that glow-in-the-dark pets will be waiting under the Christmas tree anytime soon. There are a few caveats surrounding these cats:

• This research came to light through press releases rather than peer-reviewed articles, and many of the details still have to be published and replicated. It doesn't help that South Korea was ground zero for the biggest scientific scandal in cloning just a couple of years ago. You'll want to wait for confirmation before you put too much stock in Kong's glowing reports.
• Even if the results are confirmed, they represent just one more small step in the long march of genetic progress. Those cool fluorescent proteins merely serve as a guide for more substantive genetic modifications.
• Even if glow-in-the-dark cats become routine in the laboratory, that doesn't mean they'll hit it off as housepets. Glow-in-the-dark fish have been offered commercially for several years - but they're still illegal in California and many countries, due to concerns about genetically modified organisms. What's more, it costs tens of thousands of dollars to produce just one run-of-the-mill, non-glowing cat clone - a price tag so hefty that it's not commercially viable.

To my mind, the best place to look for a cute little ball of glowing fur is your local pet adoption center - plus an outlet that sells glow-in-the-dark cat collars. What do you think? As always, feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

• N.Y. Times: DNA pioneer's genome blurs race lines
• Danger Room: Document reveals military mystery's power
• Daily Mail: How illusions cause plane crashes (via Daily Grail)
• Advertising Age: Hearing voices? It may be an ad
• CollectSpace: The Altair has landed | From 2006: The Altair era?

Houghton Mifflin

Science-oriented books for kids include "Prehistoric Actual Size" (not shown here at actual size).

In the old days, a kid's prime source for science information was the "How and Why Wonder Book" series, or maybe a bookshelf's worth of encyclopedia volumes. Today, the printed word has to compete with computers – and that's led to a new generation of children's books on science that follow fresh formats. Check out some of the freshest goodies in this week's special report from the journal Nature, then tell us about your own favorite science books for children.

In Nature's roundup, Harriet Coles observes that publishers have gone to gimmicks ranging from pop-up pages to companion CD-ROMs in order to keep young readers engaged - and keep the grown-ups buying books.

"Some cultural commentators say that books are enjoying their final years of supremacy," Coles writes. "Whether this is the case or not, recent competition from the new media has only been a good thing for children's science publishing."

Among the books that push the envelope are:

• "The Global Garden," which uses almost every trick in the book (cartoons, pop-ups, lift-up flaps) to trace the origins of food and the global economy.
• "Famously Foul Experiments," one of the books in Nick Arnold's "Horrible Science" series, which uses simple do-at-home activities to give kids a feel for key experiments in the history of science.
• "The Story of Everything" by Neal Layton, an elaborate pop-up book about the scientific view of origins, ranging from the big bang to the rise of life and civilization.
• "Actual Size" and "Prehistoric Actual Size," picture books by Steve Jenkins in which the pictures show natural curiosities and fossil specimens as big as they are in life.
•  "Math Doesn't Suck," in which one-time "Wonder Years" child star Danica McKellar, a.k.a. Winnie Cooper, adds a jolt of girl power to mathematical subjects.
• "Why Is Snot Green?" by Glenn Murphy, a Q&A book that doesn't shrink away from grossology (Do rabbits fart?) or the deep questions (Will computers ever be cleverer than people?).

Sometimes, the best gimmick turns out to be a really cool story, as in "Moon Man" (in which a youngster investigates whether the Apollo moon landings ever took place), or "The Fossil Girl" (a graphic novel that delves into the childhood of pioneer paleontologist Mary Anning), or "George's Secret Key to the Universe" (a collaboration between world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking and his daughter Lucy).

Nature's list is a bit Anglocentric - which is understandable, considering that the journal is published in Britain - but almost all of the books cited are available from your favorite U.S. bookseller as well. And once you start searching for titles, you'll find other promising prospects as well.

If you need further suggestions, try grazing through 12 years' worth of book recommendations from the National Science Teachers Association, or this roundup from About.com. When it comes to sumptuous science books, for kids or grown-ups, DK Publishing is one of the big players. And the "Magic School Bus" series has built up an inventory that rivals the old "How and Why" repertoire.

Now it's your turn: What science books would you recommend for the preschool-through-12th-grade set? You don't have to confine yourself to the latest crop - classics such as "Flatland" will count as well. Just leave your suggestions below. In a later posting, we'll give you an opportunity to talk about science books for the older set.

• Archaeology Magazine's top 10 discoveries of 2007
• Discover Magazine's top science stories of 2007
• Popular Science's best of What's New for 2007
• Slashdot on Time's top 10 scientific discoveries

ESA / Hubble

CLICK FOR VIDEO Joe Liske and Robert Fosbury discuss the alien haze. Click on the image to watch the "Hubblecast."

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have spotted evidence of high-level haze in the air of a planet 63 light-years from Earth, by analyzing the starlight shining through the very edge of the alien atmosphere. Scientists even think they know what sunsets on this planet would look like: big and red.

The research team's leader, Frederic Pont of the Geneva University Observatory in Switzerland, says the hazy world is "the first extrasolar planet for which we are piecing together a complete idea of what it really looks like."

The planet that's the focus of the research revealed today, and written up for the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, is a "hot Jupiter" - actually, a planet slightly larger than Jupiter, whipping around its parent sun every 2.2 Earth days at a distance of just 3 million miles (5 million kilometers). Atmospheric temperatures would be around 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit (700 degrees Celsius), which would cook earthly smog right out of the air.

So how do astronomers know there are hazes covering the planet, known as HD 189733b? Pont told me that he and his colleagues relied on a clever "trick": Using Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys,  the astronomers looked for incredibly subtle variations in the light coming from the star that HD 189733b orbits. When the planet passes in front of the star's disk, the brightness dips ever so slightly. What's more, the spectrum of some of the light shifts, reflecting the chemical composition of the starlight shining through the very edges of the planet's atmosphere.

This transit trick has been done before - in fact, an earlier study led researchers to conclude that  HD 189733b's atmosphere contained sodium, potassium and water vapor. Pont's team expected to find those ingredients in their results as well, and they were surprised when they didn't. Instead, the spectral signature indicated that a different kind of air existed at altitudes of about 600 miles (1,000 kilometers).

Pont said water vapor may well exist at lower atmospheric levels, but his results imply that the planet is covered at its upper levels by a global haze - similar in broad terms to the sulfurous haze covering Venus, or the hydrocarbon haze covering Saturn's moon Titan.

"In narrower terms, the planet is so much hotter that the composition of the haze is certainly different," Pont said. Scientists suspect it consists of tiny particles of iron, silicates and aluminum oxide dust.

Pont can't predict precisely what color the planet would take on if you were to look at it from space. But based on the scattering characteristics of the haze, he and his fellow researchers predict that visitors looking up through the atmosphere from below would see a gorgeous red sun filling the sky - like an Athenian sunset writ large.

For Pont, the coolest thing about his research isn't that he can visualize an alien sunset, but that he can help fill out a complete picture of an alien atmosphere from hundreds of trillions of miles away. "For this planet, we are measuring the whole spectrum, little by little," he explained.

In fact, HD 189733b is the first planet beyond our solar system to have its temperature mapped, complete with a weather report. Scientists believe that the planet has one huge super-hurricane whipping around its sunlit side - which doesn't make it much of a romantic place for seeing a sunset.

Future telescopes could use even cleverer tricks to "sniff" the air of smaller and smaller alien planets. "It's one step toward studying the atmosphere of Earthlike planets," Pont said.

Someday, we may well find an Earth-sized planet that has just the right mix of oxygen, nitrogen, water vapor and other chemical markers for life as we know it. Then what? Do we start sending radio signals ... or spaceships? Leave your suggestions for the search for other Earths below.

• Discovery.com: Warming creates more night shining clouds
• The New Yorker: What IQ doesn't tell you about race
• Boing Boing: Spider attacks shuttle
• Daily Grail: Secrets of the afterlife

DESY

Artwork shows the hypothetical track of the elusive Higgs boson in a particle detector.

The year-in-review season is in full swing - which makes it a fine time to assess how we did with our predictions for the top science stories of 2007.

The year's top two picks - political science and particle physics - turned out to be much in the news, though not always for the reasons we expected.

In particle physics, setbacks for Europe's super-duper-collider have turned one of science's most out-there quests into a real horse race. And the scientific world experienced plenty of political twists and turns, including a dramatic upswing in climate change awareness (expected) and a thrilling new twist in stem-cell research (unexpected).

Looking ahead in political science
Next year could get even more interesting: Just in the past week, a new movement called "Science Debate 2008" has been gaining momentum.

Science Debate's backers are calling for a public forum in which the presidential candidates share their views on environmental issues, medicine and health, and science and technology policy.

Such a debate could provide new grist for the campaign mill, as evidenced by the few times when science-related issues have peeped out: for example, what rising GOP star Mike Huckabee really thinks about evolution, or what the Republican hopefuls have to say about the climate cover-up, or how Barack Obama would shift funding from the space program to educational programs, or what specifics Hillary Clinton has in mind when she talks about a "renewed commitment to scientific integrity and innovation." The candidates would get a chance to expand upon their energy policy statements or even their remarks about UFOs.

It'll be interesting to see how developments in stem cell research and environmental/energy technologies affect the next year's politicking. Will scientific advances - such as continuing progress with reprogrammed cells - make the political choices easier, or harder? Which of the candidates are best qualified when it comes to science policy? What questions would you ask them to clarify your own choices? Feel free to leave your suggestions as comments below.

Looking ahead in particle physics
Meanwhile, Europe's Large Hadron Collider may have missed its originally scheduled November startup, but the chances still look good that it will begin scientific operations for real by mid-2008. Among its targets: the Higgs boson, the only particle predicted by physics' Standard Model that has not yet been found; a deeper understanding of the universe's matter-antimatter balance; and evidence of extra spatial dimensions - beyond the three we know about.

America's Fermilab is also rumored to be closing in on the elusive Higgs boson, which is thought to be responsible for the property of particle mass. A little competition is a good thing, for physicists as well as politicians, so it'll be interesting to see whether the scientists at Fermilab can steal a little of the subatomic thunder from the Large Hadron Collider's debut.

When you throw in all the speculation about the nature of neutrinos and dark matter, you'd be justified in keeping particle physics toward the top of the list of scientific mysteries to be tackled during 2008.

What other topics would you add? Synthetic life, for instance? Again, feel free to add your suggestions below - but keep in mind that we'll be doing a separate end-of-the-year roundup for space science later this month. In the weeks ahead, I'll pass along the links to any "top science" lists that come my way - including the annual roundups from Science, Wired, Scientific American, Archaeology and more.

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Diamond Sky Productions / NASA / CICLOPS

This montage features 64 images of Saturn and its moons taken by Cassini.

The end of the year is prime time for award nominations, and the imaging team behind the Cassini orbiter is getting into the act by offering 73 "People's Choice" nominees in three categories of Saturn imagery, with the winners selected by Internet voting. It's all part of a months-long buildup to the end of Cassini's four-year primary mission at the ringed planet – and what everyone hopes will be the start of a years-long extended mission.

The imaging team - known formally as the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations, or CICLOPS - had plenty of eyes looking at the hundreds of pictures and videos from which these finalists were chosen. The CICLOPS Alliance, an informal group of Cassini fans, helped pick the cream of the crop.

Finalists include the winner of last January's Saturnian People's Choice award, a backlit view of our solar system's second-biggest planet with Earth appearing as a speck in the black sky. That online contest was run by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This one is purely a CICLOPS production.

Unlike the previous contest, this one has separate categories for color pictures, black-and-white pictures and video. You have until Dec. 30 to vote for your three favorites, and the winners will be announced Dec. 31.

Carolyn Porco, the head of the imaging team, said in an e-mail that she and her colleagues wanted to find out which images "grabbed people the most" as the primary mission nears its conclusion. As a reward, three voters will be selected at random to win a color poster showing the image of their choice:

"We at CICLOPS would like everyone to help us spread the word about Cassini's accomplishments in the past nearly four years, by encouraging friends and family to vote for their favorite Cassini image. We've been told the choice is torturous - every image is a jewel! - but it's for a worthy cause, and there's always the possibility of winning the prize at the end.

"And we also wish one and all a very happy and peaceful holiday season!"

Cassini's $3.4 billion primary mission is due to end next July, but no one at CICLOPS is thinking about winding the operation down. Instead, they're busily laying plans for a mission extension that's likely to be formally announced early next year. "The mission extension, when we get one, will be for two years," Porco said.

The extended mission is expected to follow up on the scads of intriguing data already turned up about Titan and its hydrocarbon lakes, as well as Enceladus and its ice geysers. Additional study of those Saturnian moons could set the stage for a future mission such as TANDEM (the Titan and Enceladus Mission), which is under consideration by the European Space Agency as part of its "Cosmic Vision" plan for space science in the 2015-2025 time frame. NASA has a similar planning process under way, conducted by the Outer Planets Assessment Group.

The bottom line is that you can look forward to future greatest hits from Cassini and its successors, for years if not decades to come.

In the meantime, cast your vote - then check out the latest flying-saucer images of Saturnian moons. You can also take a spin through our own collection of Cassini's greatest hits as well as cool Saturn pictures that were taken before Cassini started orbiting the planet.

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Odyssey Moon, a commercial consortium based on the Isle of Man, is the first official entrant for the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize – and the team's leader says he hopes to mount more than one private-sector mission to the moon. There'll almost certainly be other teams joining the moon rush, for the prize as well as future profits.

The idea behind the Google Lunar X Prize is to reward the first privately backed team to send a rover to the moon, then transmit video and data back to Earth. That meshed perfectly with the aspirations of Robert Richards, Odyssey Moon's founder.

Richards, an executive at Optech and a co-founder of International Space University, said he and his colleagues want to turn lunar trips into a sustainable, money-making venture.

"We'll develop a repertoire of services, tools and technologies that we can apply to future missions," he told me. "This is not a one-time thing, and this is not a stunt."

That's pretty ambitious talk for a group that has only recently finished all the paperwork for the richest-ever X Prize. But Odyssey Moon can lean on some seasoned players in the space business - including its chairman, Ramin Kadem, former chief financial officer of the Inmarsat satellite communications company.

Odyssey Moon timed its announcement to mesh with the Space Investment Summit in San Jose, Calif., being held just as NASA is getting ready to launch the shuttle Atlantis to the international space station. One of the key players in the shuttle program, Canada-based MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates, has been tapped as Odyssey Moon's prime contractor.

MDA can draw upon its experience as the builder of the robotic arms used aboard the shuttle and the space station, as well as the Radarsat imaging satellites and other space hardware.

"We understand the commercial space world, and we have the technical heritage and expertise to support Odyssey Moon's plan and make it happen," Christian Sallaberger, a vice president with MDA's Information Systems Group, said in an announcement about the lunar venture.

Richards said more collaborators could be added to the team as the project proceeds.

"We're under way," he told me. "We've got some financing behind us. We're not out there asking for money. ... We're certainly open to discussions about collaboration. Our doors are by no means closed, but we do have our own business plan in place."

Although Richards is willing to reveal some details of that business plan, other details are still being held back. For instance, he declined to say who his financial backers are. When I asked whether they were angel investors, high-rolling archangels or institutional investors, he would only say that "there's a mix of all of those in our plans."

He also said the launch-vehicle provider had not yet been selected. "We'll be looking for the most inexpensive but reliable system available," he said.

He was, however, willing to reveal why Odyssey Moon is headquartered on the Isle of Man - which he half-jokingly called the "next space superpower." Richards explained that the corporate, regulatory and tax policies on the island, tucked in the Irish Sea, are extraordinarily friendly to the space industry.

Although Odyssey Moon is the first team to complete its registration for the Google Lunar X Prize, it won't be the last. The X Prize Foundation's Will Pomerantz has said 350 teams from around the globe have inquired about the prize.

Among the favorites would have to be the CMU Moon Prize Team, which includes Carnegie Mellon University's robotics whiz, Red Whittaker; and David Gump, founder of the now-defunct LunaCorp venture and current president of t/Space. Whittaker is ready for another big project after his Tartan Racing Team won the $2 million DARPA Urban Challenge last month. 

Richards said he hopes lunar commerce will someday become as big as, say, the satellite communications industry - and he hopes Odyssey Moon will be at the front of the pack.

"One thing that Odyssey Moon believes is that there will be a moon rush," he said. "There will be a number of players that will be creating new, innovative plans, solutions, hopes and dreams for opportunities on the moon. We intend to help provide the means of getting there, the mobility and the tools and services that will help those people do what they want to do."

Is Richards' vision sheer lunacy, or is there something more to it? Feel free to weigh in with your moon musings below.

Update for 1:45 a.m. ET Dec. 6: Red Whittaker is announcing that he's teaming up with Raytheon to go after the Google Lunar X Prize, under the aegis of a recently formed venture called Astrobotic Technology.

Raytheon is the company behind the guidance systems used in NASA's Apollo moon effort, as well as the Patriot missile, the Pentagon's missile defense system and many other space-related technologies. "We have great confidence in Raytheon's ability to co-develop a spacecraft that can land on a dime," Whittaker said in the Astrobotic announcement.

The announcement said Astrobotic plans to have Raytheon work on the lunar-lander project on a contract basis, with 15 or more engineers on the case. Mike Booen, Raytheon vice president of advanced missile defense and directed energy, was quoted as saying the company was "delighted to work with Dr. Whittaker on this extraordinary lunar project."

"Development of a lunar lander is a natural extension for the company's space-proven technologies," Booen said.

Yet another competitor, Allen Newcomb of Team BonNova, told me via e-mail that he still intends to go after the Google Lunar X Prize "with a vehicle based on our Lunar Lander Challenge vehicle, the Lauryad."

Newcomb is referring to the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, a $2 million competition for rocket vehicles that can do on Earth what a real lunar lander would do on the moon. Armadillo Aerospace just missed winning a prize in that contest this October.

"We are concentrating on development and testing of the Lauryad for next October's prize flight and have added two very experienced engineers to the team," Newcomb wrote. 

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