HBO

A freshly hatched dragon perches on the shoulder of Daenerys in "Game of Thrones."

This the Year of the Dragon, and not just because of the Chinese calendar: Dragons play big roles in HBO's "Game of Thrones" TV series as well as the upcoming film version of "The Hobbit." Those fire-breathing, leathery-winged reptiles have been gripping the human imagination with their sharp talons for millennia, and it's worth wondering why.

Some folklorists trace the dragon myth back to a variety of sources in ancient China, Rome, Greece and India, and speculate that it had its genesis in the discovery of fossil bones from the strange creatures we now know as dinosaurs:

• Scythian lore described griffins with lionlike bodies and birdlike beaks. In the year 77, Pliny the Elder passed down the Scythian stories of gold-guarding griffins with peculiar ears and wings.
• During his travels in northern India, the first-century Greek philosopher Apollonius of Tyana reported that "no mountain ridge was without" a dragon to its name. The locals said they used magic to lure the dragons out of the earth and pry out the gems embedded in their skulls.
• Chinese accounts of "dragon bones" go back thousands of years — and as recently as 2006, ground-up dinosaur bones were being used in traditional medicine by villagers who believed they came from dragons. (The hard-to-crack dragon eggs depicted in "Game of Thrones" may well trace their lineage back to fossilized dinosaur eggs.)

Classical folklorist Adrienne Mayor, who relates all these tales in her book "The First Fossil Hunters," ascribes the reports to discoveries in fossil-rich regions such as the Altai Mountains in Central Asia, the Gobi Desert in China and Mongolia, or the Siwalik Hills in the Himalayas. Not knowing any better, adventurers interpreted the dinosaur bones as representing the remains of dragons, griffins and other mythical monsters.

The gold hoarding? That may have arisen because gold deposits were found close to the fossil beds along ancient Issedonian trade routes.

And the gems? "I think the Indian lore about special gems prised out of dragon skulls alludes to the crystals that can form on mineralized bones," Mayor wrote. "The detailed observations of the first modern investigator of the Siwalik fossils confirm my theory: large, glittering calcite crystals and tubular selenite crystals are common in the Siwalik fossils."

Hard-wired for dragons?
Anthropologist David Jones went even further in his book "An Instinct for Dragons," published in 2000: He proposed that the fables about winged, poison-spewing, fanged and clawed creatures combined three of the top threats to ancient pre-human primates: raptors like the one that may have preyed on a now-fossilized ape-boy known as the Taung child nearly 2 million years ago; poisonous snakes like the ones that may have driven the evolution of big brains and improved vision in primates millions of years ago; and big cats like the ones our pre-human ancestors had to watch out for in Africa.

"The world-dragon was formed by the nature of our own shadowy progenitors' encounters with the creatures who hunted them over millions of years," Jones wrote. The way he sees it, our brain came to be hard-wired with an instinctive fear of dragons.

Paul Jordan-Smith, a folklorist and storyteller who wrote a fiery critique of Jones' book for the journal Western Folklore, thinks the idea that our ancestors somehow evolved a dragon instinct just doesn't hold up. For one thing, Jones' claim that multiple cultures had the same conception of dragons as dangerous beasts is "demonstrably untrue," he said.

"My take on the mythic image of the dragon is that there is no one 'authentic' image, and no one 'true' meaning," Jordan-Smith told me in an email. "The dragon has been a guardian, a thief, a hoarder (like Smaug, in 'The Hobbit') and a dispenser of wisdom (especially in Chinese tales)."

For another thing, the dragon doesn't show up fully formed in ancient tales.

"It's interesting that dragons do not appear in cave paintings," Jordan-Smith wrote. "What does appear are the beasts that they hunted or that were dangerous. ... Where you do see constructs that aren't literal depictions, they're of humans merged with animals. And when you get civilization, you don't see dragons until much later. ... You don't get dragons until you get stories that have dragons in them."

Who's gripping whom?
But once dragons become part of a culture's mythic milieu, they don't fade away. Perhaps that explains why dragons hang around, in Chinese New Year festivals, in European fairy tales, and in American movies and TV shows. Here's what Jordan-Smith had to say about that:

"A dragon, like most mythic imagery, is 'plastic,' in the sense of being adaptable. It can look like whatever the singer of tales wants it to, can serve whatever purpose needed, and can mean just about anything. And some of the traditional qualities may not be incompatible with one another. A dragon that guards a treasure (or an abducted maiden) may be waiting for the right hero that will liberate it from its responsibility. A dragon that threatens to destroy a village may be a wake-up call to rectify misdeeds. Some dragons are enchanted and must be slain to regain their true form. But not all dragons are meant to be slain.

"And what of the hero? He must be changed somehow by the encounter, or else the game is not worth the candle. But what kind of change? In some cultures, to slay a fearsome beast was tantamount to assimilating its powers. ... In Tolkien's books, the Ring exerts its power so thoroughly that its wearer little by little becomes like Gollum. Perhaps there's a particular kind of danger, much more deadly than merely being killed. And perhaps when the hero slays the dragon, he himself is slain, to be reborn as the human incarnation of the dragon. For good or ill? Ask the storyteller."

Maybe it's not the dragon that has a grip on us. Maybe we're the ones who are hanging onto the dragon — and we don't want to let go.

More about dragons and 'Game of Thrones':

• Origin of Komodo dragons revealed
• Chinese villagers ate dinosaur 'dragon bones'
• Sword science plays a role in 'Game of Thrones'
• All about 'Game of Thrones' on The Clicker

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

All swords are not created equal, particularly when it comes to "Game of Thrones," the HBO series based on George R.R. Martin's character-rich sword-and-sorcery saga. When the series opens its second season on Sunday, some of the swords you'll see are made of cheap resin, others are metal blades just meant to look good — and a few of them have been custom-crafted using a technique reminiscent of the story's fictional, magic-laden Valyrian steel.

For Martin, swords are serious business.

"The one thing I can say is that he is very, very knowledgeable about history, including weaponry," said Chris Beasley, the proprietor of Valyrian Steel, the Michigan-based company that produces licensed replicas of "Game of Thrones" swords. "When designing the swords, and he is highly involved in the design process of our book replicas, he doesn't want something to look cool. He is more concerned with realism — who made it, why, and how?"

For example, let's talk about Valyrian steel. In the "Game of Thrones" TV series and Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" book series, the Valyrian blades were created ages earlier by a vanished civilization, using a blend of alloys forged with magic spells. There's actually a real-life analog, minus the magic, known as Damascus steel. Damascus swords are famous for their resilience and the intricate, flowing patterns that are imprinted on the blades, but the secret of their forging has been lost for centuries.

A few years ago, researchers found that at the microscopic level, Damascus steel contains carbon nanotubes — structures that seem like 21st-century technological magic dropped into the 17th century. The super-strong nanostructures are mixed in with softer metal in the sword. That solves the classic dilemma of sword-making: how to make a blade that is hard enough to do damage, yet supple enough not to break.

HBO

Young King Joffrey (Jack Gleeson) sits on an Iron Throne made from the swords of enemies.

Modern-day Valyrian steel
Today, swordsmiths use a process known as "pattern welding" that produces results similar to the lost art of Damascus steel. Multiple layers of steel, with different amounts of carbon and other elements, are forge-welded together to create a blade that combines strength and suppleness. When all the layers of metal are flattened and folded together, over and over, it's like having two blades — or, more accurately, 200 blades — in one.

Some of the best-known Valyrian blades seen in the "Game of Thrones" TV series, such as the swords nicknamed Ice and Longclaw, were made using the pattern-welding technique.

"Ice was the main weapon to get right," Tommy Dunne, the weaponmaster for the series, said in a Westeros.org interview. "From the concept to the construction, it was about three weeks to make, as the blade was hand-forged by pattern welding, and the blade was drawn using machine hammers. But as with any good weapons, there's some other secrets that will remain secret!"

Beasley's business also sells some swords made with pattern-welded steel. "Those could technically be used, but we never recommend it," he told me. "Our swords are limited-edition collectibles, and no sword is impervious to damage. If used, they will get nicks, and chips, and scratches."

Beasley recalls that Valyrian Steel's Longclaw replica originally sold for $600, but after the swords were sold out, one customer reported receiving an offer of $3,000 to $4,000 for his sword. "I wouldn't recommend that anyone risk damage to something so valuable," Beasley told me.

Needle at work
If real fake Valyrian steel is too expensive for your taste, you can shell out $170 for Needle, the kid-sized sword that pre-teen Arya Stark learns to uses with deadly effect in "Game of Thrones." Beasley said Martin had a hand in designing the replica.

"Reading the books, I and many others thought, 'OK, this is a small rapier,'" Beasley recalled. "George very quickly put that notion to rest. He said that Mikken, the Winterfell smith who made it, would never have seen a rapier in his life, so how could he make one? That is why the book version of needle is more or less a small, slim longsword, and not a rapier."

Martin was so pleased with the result that he had one of Valyrian Steel's Needles sent to the actress who plays Arya so she could practice with it. And she's not the only one.

"One customer did tell us that they use Needle in their offhand to increase strength and coordination," Beasley told me. "They keep it in their office, and when on the phone or otherwise occupied they just jab and thrust with their left hand." (Remind me not to burst into that office unexpectedly.)

New twists in an old trade
Some of the secrets from the golden age of swordsmithing may have been lost over the past few centuries, but technology is adding new twists to the trade. There's been a lot of research into the use of alloying elements such as carbon, manganese, chromium, nickel, titanium and molybdenum. Materials scientists also are developing metallic materials infused with carbon nanotubes, just like in the good old days of Damascus steel.

"In more modern times, steel can be precisely made, and the overall material creation process can be more scientific so that you can get precisely the steel with the hardness and flexibility you desire," Beasley said. "So materials science has probably made modern swords stronger than older ones, but construction methods have not changed — though, obviously, power tools and other equipment have replaced arm power."

Ah, power tools — I'll bet the swordsmiths of King's Landing would have shelled out hundreds of silver stags for a good belt grinder. Are you in a mood to geek out over the science and technology of "Game of Thrones"? Feel free to indulge yourself in the comment section.

Update for 6 p.m. ET March 30: Veteran sword designer Kit Rae, who has created replicas for a variety of swords made famous by Hollywood, agrees with the parallel between the Valyrian steel of George R.R. Martin and the Damascus steel of real-life swordsmithing. "George Martin's universe is a parallel to what I would guess is the 12th to 14th century in our history," Rae told me. "Around the 10th century, that's when we were really starting to get into properly quenched and hardened steel."

There is a difference between the fictional and the factual universe, however. In "Game of Thrones," it's no longer possible to make brand-new swords with Valyrian steel. In the real world, there's a wide spectrum of swords and knives being made with the "Damascus steel" label — ranging in price from less than $200 to much more than $1,000.

"There are people who will argue that we don't have the technology to make something that compares with what the master swordmakers in Japan or Europe did. That's a bunch of bull," Rae said. "We're actually much farther along than that. But in that regard, you get what you pay for." 

More angles on 'Game of Thrones':

• Teens rule in bloody 'Game of Thrones'
• 'Game of Thrones' headed to PS3, Xbox 360
• George R.R. Martin previews his next book
• All about 'Game of Thrones' on The Clicker
• Medieval knights may have had PTSD

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

msnbc.com

How do liberals and conservatives differ in their attitudes toward science? Statistics indicate that conservatives' confidence in science as an institution has declined dramatically since 1974.

An analysis of 36 years' worth of polling data indicates that confidence in science as an institution has steadily declined among Americans who consider themselves conservatives, while confidence levels have been at steadier levels for other ideological groups.

The study, published in the April issue of the American Sociological Review, provides fresh ammunition for those who complain that conservative views on issues such as climate change are at odds with the scientific consensus.

"You can see this distrust in science among conservatives reflected in the current Republican primary campaign," Gordon Gauchat, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Sheps Center for Health Services Research, said in a news release from the American Sociological Association. "When people want to define themselves as conservatives relative to moderates and liberals, you often hear them raising questions about the validity of global warming and evolution, and talking about how 'intellectual elites' and scientists don't necessarily have the whole truth."

It's not clear how much impact Gauchat's study will have on the debate over politics and science: Liberals are likely to see it as confirmation of what they already believe, while conservatives who are skeptical about the scientific elite are likely to greet these scientific claims with skepticism as well.

But the analysis represents a serious effort to flesh out political attitudes toward science with real data. Gauchat bases his findings on a statistical analysis of survey results from the General Social Survey, a long-running project that has weighed public confidence in social institutions since 1974. The GSS has been conducted annually or semiannually by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center, or NORC, with an annual average of 1,500 Americans taking part.

Gauchat cross-referenced attitudes toward the scientific community with various demographic categories, and found that two categories showed a significant erosion of trust in science: conservatives and frequent churchgoers. People who identified themselves as conservatives voiced more confidence in science than moderates or liberals in 1974, but by 2010, that level had fallen by more than 25 percent.

Gordon Gauchat / UNC-Chapel Hill / ASR

This graph shows the unadjusted mean values for public trust in science, classified by self-reported political ideology between 1974 and 2010. The figures are derived from the General Social Survey.

Why the drop? Gauchat suggested that the character of the conservative movement has changed over the past three and a half decades — and so has the character of the scientific establishment.

"Over the last several decades, there's been an effort among those who define themselves as conservatives to clearly identify what it means to be a conservative," he said. "For whatever reason, this appears to involve opposing science and universities, and what is perceived as the 'liberal culture.' So, self-identified conservatives seem to lump these groups together and rally around the notion that what makes 'us' conservatives is that we don't agree with 'them.'"

Meanwhile, the perception of science's role in society has shifted as well.

"In the past, the scientific community was viewed as concerned primarily with macro structural matters such as winning the space race," Gauchat said. "Today, conservatives perceive the scientific community as more focused on regulatory matters such as stopping industry from producing too much carbon dioxide."

Gauchat's findings run counter to at least one liberal stereotype about conservatives: that right-wingers are distrustful of scientists because they have less education. The figures do support a link between more education and more trust in science, but they also show that more highly educated conservatives are, if anything, more distrustful.

That trend fits best with the concept that "educated or high-information conservatives will hold hyper-opinions about science, because they have a more sophisticated grasp about what types of knowledge will conform with or contradict their ideological positions, and they will prefer to believe what supports their ideology," Gauchat wrote.

So what does this mean for the role of science in setting national policy? "In a political climate in which all sides do not share a basic trust in science, scientific evidence no longer is viewed as a politically neutral factor in judging whether a public policy is good or bad," Gauchat said. Heightened distrust could turn young people away from careers in science and engineering, and in the long run, that could hurt America's standing in a global economy that is becoming increasingly competitive on the technological front.

'The Republican Brain'
Gauchat took on this project to assess the claims made by science journalist Chris Mooney in his 2005 book, "The Republican War on Science" — and Mooney, who reviewed the paper before publication, said the findings confirmed those claims.

Wiley

"The Republican Brain" is the latest book from Chris Mooney.

"It's certainly gratifying to see this study come out," Mooney told me. "I appreciate that the author actually undertook to use data. I'm glad I wasn't just whistling in the wind when it came to Republicans and science."

Now Mooney is coming out with another book, titled "The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Don't Believe in Science."

"In the book, I'm really careful to say there's what we call 'nature' and what we call 'nurture,' and you can't explain anything in politics without both of them," he said. "Whenever you see change in a group over time, that's probably 'nurture.'"

Mooney said the factors Gauchat mentioned would fit in the nurture category, along with the GOP's "Southern strategy" to bring what were once traditionally Democratic states into the Republican fold. "This is tapping into the power of nurture, but I also say we've ignored nature for too long," he said.

In "The Republican Brain," Mooney weaves his case for "nature" in politics from a variety of studies tracing the brain-based differences between liberal and conservative views of reality. (You'll find some of them by following the links below.)

"You're starting to find things about fixity of belief, desire to have certainty, and you see that these things are also associated with conservatism," he said. "These traits are content-neutral. You could take today's conservatives, stick them in [Soviet] Russia, and they can be very pro-science."

Mooney said people may be born with brains that predispose them either to liberal-leaning traits such as "openness to experience," or conservative-leaning traits such as "conscientiousness."

"The research suggests that people are born with a predisposition, but it's only a predisposition," Mooney said. "'Just born that way' is a phrase that makes me uncomfortable, because it implies some sort of hard wiring. Genes aren't destiny."

If you haven't figured it out by now, Mooney considers himself a liberal, and he's doubtful that any amount of "nurture" could turn him into a conservative. But he said liberals could learn a lot from conservatives, specifically about loyalty to leaders and to their cause. Like conservatives, some liberals may find themselves at odds with the scientific consensus on some issues. Which issues, specifically? Mooney pointed to hard-line stands against hydraulic fracturing (a.k.a. fracking), nuclear power, childhood vaccination and genetically modified organisms.

"Liberals have wanted to believe that if the system were just fair, then everybody would agree with us," he said. "That's a liberal fantasy. Actually, it turns out that liberalism is not the only way of being. ... Liberals should realize that not everybody's like them, and liberals' instincts in politics could be exactly what you don't want to do."

I'm imagining there's a lot to disagree with here, whether you're a liberal or a conservative. Good thing there's a comment section below. To paraphrase Monty Python, this is the right room for an argument.

More about politics and science:

• Conservative or liberal? It may be in the genes
• Scientists say they've found the 'liberal gene'
• Brain scans show whether you lean left or right
• Study finds that political bias affects brain activity

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Do science and art mix? They certainly do in a couple of computer-generated visualizations that show how Earth's oceans flow and how our universe grew up.

The "Perpetual Ocean" animation was created by NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio, and tracks ocean surface currents around the world from June 2005 through December 2007. It was created using a high-resolution computer model that translates whatever satellite and ground-based readings are available into a global, full-ocean depiction of ocean and sea-ice circulation. The model is called ECCO2, which stands for Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean, Phase II. ECCO2 is used for quantifying the role of the oceans in the global carbon cycle and for other scientific applications as well. Plus, it's just a darn cool video.

The funny thing is that the video was done almost a year ago. "This visualization was created as a last-minute entry for the SIGGRAPH 2011 computer animation festival; however, it was not accepted," the studio said in its database description. Despite that initial dose of rejection, "Perpetual Ocean" has gone on to become viral in the past week, probably because it has just been uploaded to NASA Goddard's popular Flickr site.

This year's deadline for SIGGRAPH 2012 submissions is April 9 — and I'm betting that, this time, NASA isn't waiting until the last minute.

Stanford University, meanwhile, has just put out a video that highlights visualizations created at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory's Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, or KIPAC.

Researchers at the Visualization Lab use supercomputers to produce computer simulations showing the birth of the first stars, the spread of the cosmic web, the blast of a supernova and other astrophysical wonders.

"Creating these animations is a real joy these days, because computers and software are so much more powerful today," Stanford physics professor Tom Abel, the head of KIPAC's computational physics department, said in a Stanford news release. "Not long ago, it took us weeks to produce a single animation. Now we can do one in an afternoon."

Take a look at KIPAC's image and photo gallery, and whenever you can, go full-screen with the video.

More science you can watch:

• Watch the moon evolve in 3 minutes
• Scientific visions that take the prize
• Microscopic marvels star in movies
• Cosmic Log video gallery

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

NASA file

The five giant F-1 engines on Apollo 11's Saturn 5 rocket loom large during preparations for the 1969 launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center. Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos says his team has located the engines, which fell into the sea just minutes after liftoff.

Amazon.com's billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, says he's funded a successful effort to locate the mammoth rocket engines that sent the Apollo 11 mission on the first leg of its mission to the moon — and now he's planning to bring them up from the Atlantic Ocean floor.

It's shaping up as the latest high-rolling undersea adventure, alongside film director James Cameron's dive to the deepest spot in the Pacific, British billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Oceanic expedition and the Deepsearch submersible project backed by Google's Eric Schmidt.

Bezos' effort plays off his longtime fascination with outer space — a passion that is also driving his decade-old Blue Origin rocket venture. Like Blue Origin, the undersea recovery project is being funded from the dot-com billionaire's personal fortune.

Destined for museums
The five F-1 rocket engines were on the first stage of Apollo 11's Saturn 5 rocket, which dropped into the Atlantic just minutes after liftoff in 1969. In an online statement, Bezos acknowledges that the undersea artifacts, like other hardware associated with the space effort, still belongs to NASA — and he imagines that one of the engines would go on display at the Smithsonian. But in today's announcement, he says he's asked NASA to consider having another engine sent to the Museum of Flight — which happens to be in Seattle, Amazon.com's hometown.

Rocketdyne built more of the 18-foot-tall F-1 engines than were needed for the Apollo missions, and some of those surplus engines have been placed on display, either attached to Saturn stages or as standalone exhibits. One can be seen at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, for example, and there's another at the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia.

The idea of recovering Apollo 11's engines has been debated for more than 10 years, ever since Project Mercury's Liberty Bell 7 space capsule was raised from the Atlantic seafloor in 1999, said Robert Pearlman, editor of the CollectSpace website and an expert on space history and collectibles. NASA and the U.S. Navy had a good idea where the Saturn 5's first stage splashed down, which probably served as a clue for Bezos' search, he said.

In his statement, Bezos said the engines were located using "state-of-the-art deep-sea sonar," but it's not yet fully clear whether the sonar operation was done using deep-diving underwater robots — as was the case with the recent Titanic mapping project — or strictly with surface equipment. A spokesman for Amazon.com told me that no further details about the project would be shared today.

Pearlman was particularly intrigued to learn that Bezos was already in discussions with NASA about the potential disposition of the rocket engines. "If I were a betting fellow, I would say that Bezos is closer to mounting an expedition than the statement seems to imply," he said. "Which is really cool." 

Lessons from Liberty Bell
Curt Newport, the underwater salvage expert who orchestrated the raising of Liberty Bell 7, said bringing up the engines would pose significant challenges. He assumes that the engines are among other pieces of debris from the Saturn 5's first stage that are spread across the sea floor. "The information I found suggested that [the stage] broke up due to aerodynamic forces before it hit the water," he told me.

Verifying that the engines are from Apollo 11 rather than a different Apollo mission would require checking parts numbers against NASA's database, he said. And bringing up the engines would not be a trivial task.

"If they're intact, they're like nine tons each," Newport told me. "That is not going to be easy to bring to the surface."

Bezos said in his statement that the condition of the engines was not yet known.

Here's the full statement from Bezos, via his Bezos Expeditions website.

"The F-1 rocket engine is still a modern wonder — one and a half million pounds of thrust, 32 million horsepower, and burning 6,000 pounds of rocket grade kerosene and liquid oxygen every second. On July 16, 1969, the world watched as five particular F-1 engines fired in concert, beginning the historic Apollo 11 mission. Those five F-1s burned for just a few minutes, and then plunged back to Earth into the Atlantic Ocean, just as NASA planned. A few days later, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon.

"Millions of people were inspired by the Apollo Program. I was 5 years old when I watched Apollo 11 unfold on television, and without any doubt it was a big contributor to my passions for science, engineering, and exploration. A year or so ago, I started to wonder, with the right team of undersea pros, could we find and potentially recover the F-1 engines that started mankind's mission to the moon?

"I'm excited to report that, using state-of-the-art deep sea sonar, the team has found the Apollo 11 engines lying 14,000 feet below the surface, and we're making plans to attempt to raise one or more of them from the ocean floor. We don't know yet what condition these engines might be in — they hit the ocean at high velocity and have been in salt water for more than 40 years. On the other hand, they're made of tough stuff, so we'll see.

"Though they've been on the ocean floor for a long time, the engines remain the property of NASA. If we are able to recover one of these F-1 engines that started mankind on its first journey to another heavenly body, I imagine that NASA would decide to make it available to the Smithsonian for all to see. If we're able to raise more than one engine, I've asked NASA if they would consider making it available to the excellent Museum of Flight here in Seattle. (For clarity, I'll point out that no public funding will be used to attempt to raise the engines, as it's being undertaken privately.)

"NASA is one of the few institutions I know that can inspire 5-year-olds. It sure inspired me, and with this endeavor, maybe we can inspire a few more youth to invent and explore.

"We'll keep you posted."

Update for 2:15 p.m. ET March 29: In comments distributed to journalists on Wednesday, NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs had some nice things to say about Bezos' project but noted that the space agency has not yet been involved in formal talks about recovery of the engines.

"We read Mr. Bezos's blog post with the same excitement as I am sure others have today," CollectSpace's Robert Pearlman quoted Jacobs as saying. "We have not had any formal contact with Mr. Bezos about the Apollo engines but we look forward to hearing more from his team and the recovery expedition."

Jacobs said "the rules regarding NASA property in the ocean are the same as those that govern sunken ships and other government property, including our hardware on the moon and other celestial bodies. ... As Mr. Bezos points out in his blog, the federal government retains ownership until the property is properly disposed."

"However, we do not see that as any impediment to the recovery efforts of the Apollo engines," Jacobs wrote. 

He drew a parallel to the Liberty Bell 7 case: "Gus Grissom's Liberty Bell 7 spacecraft was recovered from the bottom of the Atlantic in 1999 through a private venture. Ownership of the spacecraft was eventually turned over to the Kansas Cosmosphere, where it remains on public display." (I originally wrote that Liberty Bell 7 was raised in 1997, but I was two years off.)

Jacobs sees Bezos' venture as a positive step for space history: "There has always been great interest in artifacts from the early days of space exploration and his announcement only adds to the enthusiasm of those interested in NASA's history," The Associated Press' Alicia Chang quoted him as saying.

Update for 10:30 p.m. ET April 1: In a statement released on Friday, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden indicated that he's totally on board with Bezos' plan:

"I would like to thank Jeff Bezos for his communication with NASA informing us of his historic find. I salute him and his entire team on this bold venture and wish them all the luck in the world.

"NASA does retain ownership of any artifacts recovered and would likely offer one of the Saturn V F-1 engines to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington under longstanding arrangements with the institution as the holder of the national collection of aerospace artifacts.

"If the Smithsonian declines or if a second engine is recovered, we will work to ensure an engine or other artifacts are available for display at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, as Jeff requested in his correspondence with my office. I have directed our staff to begin work to exercise all appropriate authorities to provide a smooth and expeditious disposition of any flight hardware recovered.

"I sincerely hope all continues to go well for Jeff and Blue Origin, and that his team enjoys success and prosperity in every endeavor. All of us at NASA have our fingers crossed for success in his upcoming expedition of exploration and discovery."

More about space history:

• Restored Apollo test capsule ready for next mission
• Bill would defend astronauts' right to sell artifacts
• New frontiers for shuttle souvenirs
• Flash timeline: Glory Days on the Final Frontier

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Yamada et al. / Nature Communications

Functional magnetic resonance imaging indicates regions of the brain in which activity correlated with increased sympathy toward a convicted criminal facing sentencing (green) and an inclination to reduce punishment (red). Common areas were found in a region known as the precuneus (yellow).

Sympathetic jurors show a characteristic pattern of brain activity when they decide to be lenient on a criminal, and the strength of that pattern can vary from juror to juror, researchers report. Such findings aren't of merely academic interest: Someday, this kind of neuroscience could well have an impact on the legal process itself.

The latest study, published today in the journal Nature Communications, is consistent with earlier research into the neurological roots of moral cognition. It's also in line with the well-supported view that mitigating circumstances can make a big difference when people consider how other people should be punished. This study, led by Makiko Yamada of Japan's National Institute of Radiological Sciences, bridges the gap by investigating how the brain turns information about mitigating circumstances into a legal outcome.

"Jurors are really like workers," Caltech neuroscientist Colin Camerer, one of the study's co-authors, told me. "They're chosen and instructed to do things with quite a bit of restraint. It's like you're 'hiring' these workers to do something that's literally life and death. But almost nothing is known about whether they're using their tools — brain activity — in an appropriate way."

To study that question, Yamada and her colleagues recruited 26 subjects to read 32 real-life stories about Japanese defendants facing sentences for murder. Half of the stories presented scenarios that were likely to elicit sympathy — for example, tales of life in poverty, or victimization by domestic violence, or a struggle with disease. The other half were "no-sympathy" scenarios.

After reading the stories, the subjects were put into MRI scanners and asked to modify a 20-year sentence for each defendant, either up or down. Then they rated themselves on how much sympathy they felt for the defendants, and how empathetic they considered themselves to be. Readings from three of the subjects were not included in the analysis because they moved excessively during the brain scans, and one subject fell asleep during the experiment. That left 22 people in the study.

The MRI results showed that brain areas known as the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, the precuneus and temporo-parietal junction were activated during a sympathetic response, and that the precuneus and anterior cingulate cortex were activated during sentencing. These regions are generally associated with mental deliberation and moral conflict, as well as emotional pain.

The jurors who were more inclined to be lenient tended to show more activity in the right middle insula, an area known to be involved in the mental perception of visceral states. Camerer said the most sympathetic subject, as measured by brain activity, exhibited a 28-year range in sentencing: six years for the most forgivable murderer, and 34 years for the least forgivable. The jurors with the least sympathetic brains kept their sentences in a 10-year range — for example, from 15 to 25 years.

"This kind of variability is similar [but] probably much less than that seen in experimental studies of translating moral judgments to large dollar sums in punitive-damage tort cases," Camerer said.

The researchers said the variability in brain function could become a factor in future court cases. "Not every brain maps sympathy to prison sentences in the same numerical way. ... Differences in these brain circuits between individuals suggest that differential juror responses might need to be considered unequally," they wrote.

Camerer said another intriguing issue has to do with how individual jurors activate or deactivate their emotions during a criminal case. When they deliberate over a defendant's guilt or innocence, jurors are expected to hold their emotions in check. But when jurors consider the sentence of a convicted criminal, their emotional response to mitigating circumstances should become part of the  process.

"I could imagine where, on appeal, the argument would be that some of these jurors didn't override their emotions adequately," Camerer said. "If that's permitted as a legal issue, how do you know? We say, don't ask the person, ask the brain."

In the future, will jurors find themselves subjected to brain scans before or after a trial? If you were a defense lawyer, wouldn't you want to know you had 12 sympathetic brains on your side? If you were a prosecutor, wouldn't you want to make sure that jurors didn't let their right middle insula unduly influence their right temporo-parietal junction? Or does all this sound way too Orwellian? Feel free to weigh in with your verdict below.

More on your moral brain:

• Behaving badly? Blame your brain
• How monkeys handle moral outrage
• Judges are less lenient when they're hungry
• Study: Morality can be altered with magnets
• Brain's 'cheat sheet' makes moral decisions easier
• Flash interactive: Road map to the brain
• Mental health coverage on msnbc.com
• Cosmic Log archive on the brain

In addition to Yamada and Camerer, the authors of "Neural Circuits in the Brain That Are Activated When Mitigating Criminal Sentences" include Saori Fujie, Motoichiro Kato, Tetsuya Matsuda, Harumasa Takano, Hiroshi Ito, Tetsuya Suhara and Hidehiko Takahashi.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

NASA

Snaky clouds of tracer chemicals hang in the sky over Virginia after today's five-rocket ATREX launch. The rockets released a stream of trimethyl aluminum, which is considered nontoxic but hazardous because it can ignite in the atmosphere. At high altitudes, the chemical trails took on a luminous glow that allowed scientists to track anomalous wind patterns in the jet stream.

A combination fireworks show and UFO invasion played out in the skies over the U.S. East Coast this morning, thanks to the five-rocket fusillade launched from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The rocket blasts were part of a $4 million mission called the Anomalous Transport Rocket Experiment, or ATREX.

The five suborbital sounding rockets were fired off over the course of five minutes, starting just before 5 a.m. ET, to track what's happening in the upper atmosphere. ATREX was designed to help scientists get a snapshot of strange ultra-fast wind patterns in the jet stream by releasing chemical tracers at different times on the edge of outer space, more than 60 miles high. Those tracers created milky white clouds that could be seen from Massachusetts to North Carolina. Here are just a few of the spooky snapshots. For more about the mission, check out the full story.

NASA Wallops

A time-lapse picture taken from near the launch site at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia shows the blazing ascent of the five suborbital rockets, plus the release of the chemical tracers at high altitude.

NASA Wallops

A wide-angle view shows ghostly clouds hanging over Virginia early this morning after the launch of five suborbital rockets for NASA's ATREX mission. The rockets released clouds of chemicals that were used to monitor wind patterns at high altitudes.

Jack Fusco via Space.com

Skywatcher and photographer Jack Fusco snapped this photo of the glowing clouds created by NASA's five-rocket ATREX launch from Seaside Park, N.J., north of the rockets' Virginia launch site.

Jeff Berkes Photography

Astrophotographer Jeff Berkes captured this view of the glowing cloud from West Chester, Pa. Berkes says he's driven hundreds of miles over the past week hoping to get pictures of the launch, which was delayed repeatedly. This time he had to stay at home, but he got an "amazing" view nevertheless. "Watching the rockets scream through the night sky was amazing," he said in an email. "It was even better to watch the tracers spread out from the rockets into the atmosphere. The colors were very intense for a short period and lasted about 30 minutes." For more of Berkes' work, check out his website.

More about the mission:

• Five rockets blast off at the last minute
• Launch madness: Photos at NASA's Flickr site

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

NASA file

The Viking 1 lander sent back America's first pictures from the Martian surface in 1976. This picture shows off the lander's U.S. flag and Bicentennial logo as well as the planet's landscape.

Thirty-six years after an experiment conducted by NASA's Mars Viking lander sparked controversial claims about the presence of life on the Red Planet, NASA's next Mars mission could conceivably hint that those claims were correct after all.

At least that's the hope held by the experiment's principal investigator, Gil Levin, who is keeping the Mars Viking flame alive even in retirement. He still thinks Viking was "the most remarkable unmanned mission ever," but he worries that its legacy will be lost amid the scientific shuffle.

"Twenty or thirty years from now, when the economy permits NASA to rise again, there will be missions to Mars, and they will find life, and they will take credit for it and not mention Viking at all," he told me.

It might not take 20 or 30 years to bring Viking back into the spotlight, however. NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission is due to deliver the car-sized Curiosity rover to the Red Planet in August — and although the space agency insists that Curiosity doesn't have the capability to detect life, Levin believes it could show that his experiment was on the right track when it detected the chemical traces of organic activity.

GilLevin.com

Gil Levin was principal investigator for the Mars Viking probe's Labeled Release experiment.

Hopes of confirming the presence of life on Mars were riding high when the twin Viking landers touched down on Mars in 1976. The scientific payload included the Labeled Release apparatus, designed by Levin and his colleagues, as well as three other life-detection experiments. The Labeled Release experiment, or LR, was set up to take a bit of Martian soil and add a drop of water containing nutrients tagged with radioactive markers. The air above the mix was then monitored to see if it gave off a radioactive gas such as carbon dioxide or methane. That could be read as an indication that organisms in the soil were metabolizing the nutrients.

If the experiment came up with a positive response, a duplicate soil sample — the control — was heated to a temperature that should have been high enough to destroy microbes, but not to destroy any strong chemicals that might have produced a similar response sans life. 

The good news for Levin and the other life-hunters was that the LR experiment came out positive, and the control experiment came out negative. The bad news was that two of the other experiments came out negative, but they were based on different assumptions about potential Martian life. The really bad news was that the fourth experiment, conducted by Viking's Gas Chromatograph - Mass Spectrometer device, or GCMS, didn't detect any organic molecules in the soil.

The failure to find any organics led most scientists to assume that there was nothing living in the soil. Most scientists assumed that the LR findings were just a fluke. But not Levin.

"If these results are precisely the same as the results from biological entities on Earth, that's hard to get around," he told me. Dozens of explanations have been put forward for the LR results — for example, that the Martian environment is so chemically reactive, due to ultraviolet radiation, that the nutrients were broken down without life playing a part. Levin, however, says those explanations don't match up with the results produced during the LR experiments and the control experiments.

Hoping for new evidence
This might have ended up as one of those cold cases where nobody totally convinces everybody. But Levin says Curiosity's impressive array of scientific equipment could provide some hot new evidence. It has a suite of instruments known as Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM, which is capable of detecting organic molecules in Martian soil or atmosphere. Another instrument suite, called ChemCam, can fire a laser blast at a soil or rock sample up to 23 feet (7 meters) away and use a spectroscopic imager to analyze the chemical composition of the vaporized material.

"I predict that one or more of these instruments, possibly all of them, will indeed find organic matter that the Viking GCMS missed," Levin said.

Finding organic molecules is not the same as finding life. After all, organic compounds have been detected within the interstellar stuff of distant galaxies, and it wouldn't be earth-shattering to detect them on Mars as well. But it would answer the main objection raised about the LR results.

Even more telling evidence could come from Curiosity's high-resolution cameras. Some of the pictures taken during the Viking mission showed colored patches on Martian rocks that were a fair spectrographic match for the color of lichen on earthly rocks. "The spectra were identical, but of course the images were not sharp enough to be able to make a conclusion, and everybody pooh-poohed it," Levin said.

Curiosity's color cameras will have much better resolution, and Levin said they "could detect sufficient detail to establish whether these might be lichenlike organisms." It might even be possible to take multiple looks at the same rocks, and track whether their appearance goes through the kinds of changes one would expect from lichen.

Levin said lichen, which is one of the hardiest types of organisms on Earth's surface, could conceivably have hitchhiked from Earth to Mars on meteorites. "Preserved, frozen, they could survive the entry to Mars and grow under Martian conditions," he told me.

The long search for life
The scientists who are in charge of Curiosity and the Mars Science Laboratory say that they're aiming for the same goal that Levin has in mind, but they argue that the search for life on Mars has to follow a step-by-step process.

"What the world needs to understand is that this is really the very beginning of a very systematic and deliberate form of exploration," Caltech's John Grotzinger, principal investigator for Mars Science Laboratory, told me. "The era of 'Star Trek' exploration is not over, but ... one must be more deliberate about it, because that's the way we do it on Earth, and we know that works."

Levin, however, thinks the evidence to come will show that Viking was working correctly 36 years ago. "To suggest that we should go back and start at a lower level ... means we throw away a billion dollars, in 1976 dollars. That's about $5 billion or $6 billion today that we don't have," he said.

He'd like to see a future Mars mission duplicate the LR experiment with a few added technological twists, including a check to see whether the active agent that Viking detected in the soil shows a preference for lefthanded or righthanded versions of the same molecule. Levin says that characteristic, known as chiral preference, would be strong confirmation of life, "since chemistry cannot distinguish chirality and reactions occur equally with both 'mirror images.'"

Levin also thinks the findings from Viking should be given another good, hard look.

"Let's convene a panel of astrobiologists," Levin said. "Let's have Levin present his data. Let's have the antagonists present their data. Let's examine this trove of data which we've never examined fairly."

Will that happen in Levin's lifetime? The researcher is now 88 years old, and nobody lives forever. But he's hoping that when the next episode in the saga of the search for life on Mars plays out ... maybe in the next few months ... the Viking missions will get their share of the spotlight.

"The stories increasingly omit any mention of Viking," Levin said. "I think Viking should be lauded rather than ignored."

More about Viking and the Mars saga:

• How the hunt for Mars life evolved
• Study suggests Viking found organics on Mars
• Were life's building blocks picked up on Mars?
• Did Viking probes find Mars life ... or kill it off?
• Did life on Earth actually come from early Mars?

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

NASA TV

Russian spacecraft stick up from their docking ports on the International Space Station during Saturday's encounter with a piece of space junk. Spacefliers took shelter in their Russian Soyuz lifeboats as a precaution.

The International Space Station's crew members took shelter in their Russian Soyuz lifeboats as a precaution during Saturday's totally harmless passage of a piece of space debris.

In a series of Twitter updates on Friday night, NASA said a hunk of junk from a Russian satellite was projected to fly past the space station at an estimated distance of 14.8 kilometers (9 miles), at around 2:38 a.m. ET Saturday. That was within the zone that required precautionary measures to be taken. The zone is called a "pizza box" because of its shape: 50 kilometers (30 miles) on a side, and 750 meters (a half-mile) above and below the plane of the station.

The appointed time came and went without incident. "Nichevo ... Nothing," one of the Russian cosmonauts said. The spacefliers had hoped to catch a glimpse of the object, but no visual sighting was reported.

NASA said the relatively small piece of debris was a leftover from the 2009 collision involving an Iridium telecommunications satellite and Russia's Cosmos 2251 military communications satellite. It was detected by radar on Friday, sparking the alert.

"Everything went by the book," NASA spokesman Rob Navias said after the all-clear was sounded. He said the station's controllers followed a "precautionary and conservative" approach by ordering the crew to take shelter.

The station currently has six crew members aboard: two Americans (Don Pettit and Dan Burbank), three Russians (Anton Shkaplerov, Anatoly Ivanishin and Oleg Kononenko) and Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers. The spacefliers were awakened a little more than an hour earlier than scheduled and put the station's control systems into standby mode. Then they took their places in the two Soyuz craft docked to the station and closed the hatches.

The crew members were prepared to descend back down to Earth if the piece of debris had collided with the 450-ton space station and dealt such a serious blow that the orbital outpost had to be abandoned. Instead, they merely reopened the hatches, returned the control systems to their regular settings and resumed a "normal and relaxing weekend," Navias said.

He said it was "serendipitous" that the precautionary measures were taken on the astronauts' day off, meaning that there would be "no impact to scientific research or any other crew work."

Not the first time, or the last
NASA issued a similar collision alert back in November, but called off the alert even before the astronauts' appointed time to get into the Soyuz space capsules. Last June, the crew actually did get into the Soyuz craft due to a collision threat, but the space junk whizzed past at a distance of 850 feet (260 meters). Astronauts took similar precautions in April 2009 and November 2008.

On other occasions, the space station has changed its orbital path slightly to eliminate the risk of collision with space debris. That's how NASA dealt with potential collision threats in January, involving debris from the Iridium satellite as well as from a Chinese satellite that was smashed up in 2007. But in order to use that option, the crew needs more than a day of advance warning.

Experts say there are more than 20,000 pieces of orbiting space junk more than 10 centimeters wide — that is, bigger than a softball. Lots more pieces are smaller, down to the size of a marble. "More than 500,000 pieces of orbital debris are tracked," NASA noted Friday night.

These bits of debris zip around the planet at speeds of 17,500 mph relative to Earth, and could cause serious damage if they were to hit the space station just wrong. NASA and the Defense Department keep close track of the bigger pieces, but the experts are worried that the space-debris problem will only get worse in the years ahead.

All sorts of schemes have been proposed to address the problem, including the idea of shooting water guns or lasers at pieces of space junk, or throwing nets over them. Last month, a Swiss venture announced that they were developing a "janitor satellite" to sweep up the trash. Do you have a better idea? Share it as a comment below. 

Update for 11:05 p.m. ET March 23: I originally said the "pizza box" zone was 25 kilometers on each side, but what I meant to say was that it extends 25 kilometers out from the space station on each side. That means the total dimension of the box is 50 by 50 by 1.5 kilometers, with the station in the center, as NASA explains.

Update for 12:55 a.m. ET March 24: When the space station crew was awakened this morning, Mission Control told NASA astronaut Dan Burbank that the debris was projected to come within 9 miles, which is closer than the initial estimate of 14.3 miles. I updated the figures to reflect that, but even the updated estimates had a measure of uncertainty. That's why the spacefliers took shelter.

More about space debris:

• Junk-tracking 'Space Fence' passes key test
• To control space junk, remove 5 pieces a year
• Time running out to salvage doomed satellite
• Europe creating its own space-debris tracker

Last updated at 3 a.m. ET March 24.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Wayne Jaeschke

Amateur astrophotographer Wayne Jaeschke captured this image of a "terminator projection" rising up from the edge of the Martian disk at about the 1 o'clock position on March 22. The inset photo is a 200 percent enlargement of the region around the projection. For more, check out Exosky.net, Jaeschke's website.

Amateur astronomers are puzzling over a seemingly anomalous cloud that has shown up on images of Mars taken over the past few days. Is it really a cloud, or a trick of the eye? Does it really extend 150 miles up from the surface, as some of the observers suggest? And what churned up all that stuff, anyway? The amateurs and the pros will be trying to resolve those questions before the phenomenon fades away.

"It's not completely unexpected," Jonathon Hill, a member of the team at the Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State University, told me today. "But it's bigger than we would expect, and it's definitely something that our atmosphere guys want to take a look at."

Hill and his colleagues will be looking at the area where the cloud was spotted using the Thermal Emission Imaging System, or THEMIS, which is one of the instruments on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter.

"In the command upload we're preparing to send today, we've included observations that will hopefully capture some of these recent clouds," Hill wrote in an email. "Our THEMIS camera on Mars Odyssey is capable of acquiring simultaneous visible and thermal infrared images, so our atmospheric researchers are pretty excited about the possibility of not only getting a good look at the cloud structures, but also their temperatures."

THEMIS will be checking out heightened cloud activity around Mars' shield volcanoes as well as around the southern site spotted by the amateurs. Pictures from a camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, called the Mars Color Imager, or MARCI, might provide further clues about the southern cloud feature. And amateur astronomers are sending out the alert for observers to keep a close watch on the Red Planet over the coming days.

There's been lots of buzz about the high-altitude cloud on Cloudy Nights and other online discussion forums for skywatchers. Sky & Telescope's Sean Walker says the puff of white was first noticed on March 20 by Wayne Jaeschke, an amateur astrophotographer from Pennsylvania. Since then, other observers have identified the feature in images going back as far as March 12.

All sorts of hypotheses have been proposed: Could it be debris kicked up by a meteoric impact? Is it a huge weather system? Is it merely a funny kind of glint caused by a combination of lighting and atmospheric conditions?

In an email, Jaeschke told me that the feature is "still there, although it has decreased in size over the past two days."

"This has led some to believe that it was some sort of transient-type event," Jaeschke said. So it's crucial to make as many observations of the area as possible over the next few days.

Wayne Jaeschke created this animated GIF image of Mars with the cloud coming into view on the upper right edge of the planet's disk. For more from Jaeschke, check out his Exosky website.

Walker says the feature is currently well-placed for viewing from the Americas. He says it should show up on the edge of Mars' disk around 1:10 a.m. ET Saturday, and 39.5 minutes later on each succeeding night. Consult the photos above for guidance on where to point a medium-size telescope — keeping in mind that these images are inverted to appear as they would through a telescope, with south pointing "up." Arizona State University's Hill says the area in question is called Terra Cimmeria.

Observation reports should be sent via email to Richard McKim, director of the British Astronomical Association's Mars Section. (The linked website includes McKim's email address, as well as a picture of the chap.)

Solving this mystery — if it indeed turns out to be an honest-to-goodness mystery rather than a mere quirk — may require additional data from the big guns of the astronomy world. But in any case, the episode illustrates once again how much amateurs can contribute to uncovering the wonders of the cosmos.

"When it comes to Mars, amateurs and professionals working together give you way more insight into ongoing processes, because with so many amateurs, you're continuously monitoring changes in the planet," Hill told me. "They provide a perspective and a context that we don't usually get."

More about amateur astronomy:

• Amateur takes stunning photo of new solar system
• Amateur astronomers discover a near-Earth asteroid
• 10-year-old Canadian girl discovers a supernova
• Astronomers sound death knell for supposed doomsday comet

Tip o' the Log to Sky & Telescope's Sean Walker and Kelly Beatty, as well as Wayne Jaeschke.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / MIT / SRS

This view of the lunar far side with Earth in the background was taken by the MoonKAM system on NASA's Ebb spacecraft on March 17. A little more than halfway up and on the left side is the crater De Forest. The crater is near the south pole and receives sunlight at an oblique angle when it's on the illuminated half of the moon.

More than 45 years after the first "Earthrise" picture, fourth-graders got to pick their own shot of our home planet peeking over the moon's horizon, courtesy of NASA's GRAIL mission.

The new views of Earth from the moon are included in GRAIL's first batch of student-selected images, snapped by the Ebb spacecraft's MoonKAM camera from March 15 to 18 and released today. Ebb and its twin, Flow, are orbiting the moon to study the lunar gravity field — and students get to choose what the small cameras on the washing-machine-sized orbiters take pictures of.

"MoonKAM is based on the premise that if your average picture is worth a thousand words, then a picture from lunar orbit may be worth a classroom full of engineering and science degrees," MIT planetary scientist Maria Zuber, GRAIL's principal investigator, said in a NASA news release. "Through MoonKAM, we have an opportunity to reach out to the next generation of scientists and engineers. It is great to see things off to such a positive start."

The first targets were selected by fourth-grade students from Emily Dickinson Elementary School in Bozeman, Mont. They earned that honor as a reward for coming up with the names for the spacecraft, Ebb and Flow, during a nationwide competition last year. (Before the names were unveiled, the probes were known merely as GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B.)

More than 2,700 schools in 52 countries are in the pool for target selection. Suggestions for picture-taking are funneled through the GRAIL MoonKam Mission Operations Center, at the University of California in San Diego. The MoonKAM program is led by Sally Ride, who became NASA's first woman astronaut in 1983 and is now president and CEO of an educational company called Sally Ride Science.

"What might seem like just a cool activity for these kids may very well have an profound impact on their futures," Ride said in today's news release. "The students really are excited about MoonKam, and that translates into an excitement about science and engineering."

Ebb is only the latest camera to snap that iconic shot of Earth over moon's horizon. The first such picture from a NASA probe came on Aug. 23, 1966, during preparations for the Apollo moon shots, when the unmanned Lunar Orbiter 1 sent a black-and-white picture back to Earth.

The best-known Earthrise picture is the one that Apollo 8's crew made famous in 1968, but even after the Apollo program ended in 1972, robotic probes have periodically sent back fresh views of our planet as seen from deep space. Japan's Kaguya orbiter, for example, captured a high-definition Earthrise on video in 2008.

Some experts believe seeing Earth from this perspective gives viewers more of an appreciation for its beauty and fragility, leading to a spiritual phenomenon known as the "Overview Effect." Will today's fourth-graders get a chance to experience Earthrise and the Overview Effect in person? I'd like to think so, but what do you think?

More views from space:

• GRAIL captures first video of moon's far side
• PhotoBlog: From the moon to the earth
• Slideshow: Pictures from the International Space Station
  
• Planetary Society: Images of Earth from planetary probes

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Philip Montgomery

Regional winners in the YouTube Space Lab competition are treated to a zero-gravity airplane flight during their visit to Washington.

Teenage scientists will get to have their bugs — specifically, spiders and bacteria — fly up to the International Space Station. That's the bottom line from the YouTube Space Lab contest, which reached its climax this morning at the Newseum in Washington when the organizers announced that Egypt's Amr Mohamed and the United States' Dorothy Chen and Sara Ma were the global winners.

"The idea of sending an experiment into space is the most exciting thing I have ever heard in my life," Mohamed said in a news release. "Winning YouTube Space Lab means everything to me, to my family, and to the people of the Middle East."

Mohamed's experiment focuses on how zero-gravity affects the way zebra spiders catch their prey. Previous experiments in space have shown that, after an adjustment period, spiders were able to adapt their web-weaving skills to microgravity in orbit. But the zebra spiders might have a harder time, because they depend on capturing their prey by pouncing on them rather than using webs. Will the spiders be able to adjust their jumps for zero-G? "I believe it is going to show a major behavioral change," Mohamed says.

It's all systems go for Mohamed's experiment because the 18-year-old from Alexandria won the 17-to-18 age category in the Space Lab contest, sponsored by YouTube, Lenovo and Space Adventures. The opportunity to have experiments flown up to the space station, and have the orbital activities streamed live via YouTube, was arguably the biggest draw for the five-month-long global Space Lab competition.

Chen and Ma, two 16-year-olds from Troy High School in Michigan, were judged the top entrants in the 14-to-16 group. They took a page from previous research indicating that salmonella bacteria became more virulent in zero-G, a finding that could lead to more effective vaccines against food poisoning. The two girls proposed an experiment to send another type of bacteria, known as Bacillus subtilis, to do its thing under controlled conditions on the space station.

On Earth, Bacillus subtilis has an antifungal effect, and Chen and Ma want to find out whether subjecting the bacteria to zero-G will make them even better fungus-fighters. Who knows? This may be the next frontier in the battle against athlete's foot.

"The idea that something that is your experiment being sent up into space and actually becoming a reality is incredible," Ma said.

Mohamed, Chen and Ma have the choice of traveling to Japan this summer to watch the launch of their experiments on a Japanese cargo craft heading for the space station, or going through a cosmonaut training program in Russia at a later time.

This week, they and the competition's other regional winners were shown a great time in Washington: They received Lenovo laptops, got a special tour of the National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center and met with lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

"We have a lot of top scientists who come before our committee," Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the West Virginia Democrat who chairs the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, told the kids. "But I think you're better than all of them."

The highlight of the trip was a weightless ride on a Zero G airplane. Here's a video ... from YouTube, naturally ... that recaps the past few days for the Space Lab winners:

Don't you think science-minded students should be as celebrated as, say, the singing stars on "American Idol"? Admittedly, watching bacteria multiply may not be as entertaining as Heejun Han's antics — but in the long run, what's more important?

Here's what physicist Stephen Hawking had to say on the subject: "Humanity's future relies on moving beyond Earth. Realizing this goal will require an entrepreneurial spirit and a new generation of scientists and astronauts. YouTube Space Lab is a wonderful initiative that helps inspire young minds around the world to take a greater interest in science and the future of space exploration."

Feel free to weigh in with your thoughts about how to foster the next generation of scientists and astronauts — and stay tuned to find out the fate of the zero-G jumping spiders and the fungus-fighting germs.

More about the next generation of scientists:

• Obama calls for boosting science education
• Formerly homeless teen praised at science fair
• Students help NASA control robots from space
• Solar cells that go anywhere win invention prize

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Software billionaire Paul Allen is pledging $300 million to establish a series of "brain observatories" at the Seattle research facility named after him, with the aim of mapping and manipulating the mouse brain.

The project's leaders say the insights gained could be applied as well to higher forms of life, including humans. "We believe that this project has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of the mammalian brain," Christoph Koch, chief scientific officer for the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and Harvard neuroscientist R. Clay Reid said in the journal Nature.

Details about the brain observatory project were laid out today at the Allen Institute in Seattle. In an advance interview, Koch cast the effort in terms usually reserved for the multibillion-dollar Hubble Space Telescope project or the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider.

"We're focusing a huge amount of resources on trying to understand this piece of highly, highly complex math and science. The most organized piece of matter in the known universe is the cerebral cortex, the one that makes you and me think and smell and hear and talk. That's what we're trying to understand," Koch told me. "Just as people spend a huge amount of time and effort to build these different observatories to look at the origin of space and time, we're going to build these observatories, these very sophisticated instruments, all of them using common standards, all peering at the brain — primarily animal brains, but also the human brain."

In a way, seeking out the secrets of the brain is harder than looking for the Higgs boson, because neuroscientists have not yet developed a model for brain function as robust as, say, the Standard Model of particle physics. "In that sense, neuroscience may never have the maturity of physics, partly because the system we're dealing with is enormously more complex," Koch said.

Allen Institute for Brain Science

This image highlights a coronal section of an entire mouse brain, which was stained to mark anatomical boundaries in many brain regions. This process reveals areas where the density of cell bodies is higher (stained in red) compared to the density of axonal projections, or connections between neurons (stained in green). Such anatomical maps will be among the products emerging from the "brain observatories" created by the Allen Institute for Brain Science.

The brain observatory project plans to start with the visual cerebral cortex of the mouse brain, because that's an area that neuroscientists understand relatively well, Koch said. Researchers from outside institutions could work with the Allen Institute's staff, using sophisticated instruments to light up the electrical circuitry of individual neurons, trace the connections between neurons, and watch how thousands of brain cells respond to specific stimuli.

All these techniques would be stitched together to produce a full physiological and structural characterization of entire brain regions. Such insights should lead to better computer models for brain function, which can be fed back into the experimental side of the project for validation. Having the firepower for computer modeling right next door to the experimental labs should produce "a virtuous circle that will be iterated until the model faithfully reproduces the data," Koch and Reid wrote.

From mice to humans
An estimated 60,000 neuroscientists are studying the brain at 10,000 labs worldwide, but the brain-observatory approach should be "very complementary" to those widely distributed efforts, said Allan Jones, the Allen Institute's chief executive officer. The institute's findings, including genetic atlases of the mouse brain and the human brain, are traditionally shared openly with other researchers, even before journal publication.

Koch compared the mouse brain to a set of 100 billion Lego toy blocks, organized into 1,000 different kinds of blocks. "First we need to understand how many different parts are out there, and then how they fit together," he said.

The insights gained from the visual cortex could be applied to further exploration of other functional areas of the mouse brain, and then to other mammalian brains — including our own brains. When it comes to cortical structure, "there isn't anything particularly unique about us," Koch said. "The principles are all going to be the same. ... If we understand them in a simpler system, then we are a long way toward understanding us."

Another aspect of the project is the development of lab-grown human brain cells that reflect the genetic components associated with neurological conditions ranging from autism to Alzheimer's. Stanford neuroscientist Ricardo Dolmetsch, a specialist in that technique, will be joining the Allen Institute later this year, as will Harvard's Reid.

During today's briefing in Seattle, Allen said his interest in brain research stems from his work in computer software, as a founder of Microsoft Corp. and other ventures. (Microsoft is one of the partners in the msnbc.com joint venture.) He noted that the most advanced software doesn't come close to matching the complexity of the human brain.

"There is really no greater challenge, with potentially huge impact, than understanding how brains work," he said. Allen said he was also motivated by the fact that his mother suffers from Alzheimer's disease. But he emphasized that the institute would focus on basic research rather than disease treatment.

"Our dream is to one day uncover the essence of what makes us human — to explore and understand how the brain makes us remember, forget, interact with each other and become the people we are," Allen said.

Ten-year plan
Allen's $300 million pledge will be spread out over four years to jump-start the Seattle institute's initial 10-year plan for the observatories. The software executive, whose net worth was recently estimated at $13.2 billion, founded the institute in 2003 with a $100 million contribution, and has donated an additional $100 million since then.

"My commitment today doesn't just continue the work of the institute," Allen said. "It greatly expands the scale and the scope of our mission."

The Allen Institute says it will use some of the money to double its staff to more than 350 employees over the next four years, as well as to develop new suites of instruments and new computer-modeling capabilities.

Leroy Hood, president and co-founder of the Seattle-based Institute for Systems Biology, said he was looking forward to collaborating with the Allen Institute's researchers on the brain observatory project.

"I think it's a terrific project," Hood told me. "Their approach to 'big science' and openness is exactly what's needed to move the field forward."

In addition to Allen's contributions to neuroscience, the billionaire has pursued a wide variety of interests beyond software, including ownership of the Portland Trail Blazers basketball team and the Seattle Seahawks football team, the establishment of the Allen Telescope Array, and financial backing for SpaceShipOne's prize-winning rocket venture and the Stratolaunch air-launch company.

Back in 2008, I set up a scale of financial denominations for big scientific projects, ranging from 1 allen (the estimated cost of the SpaceShipOne project, $25 million to $30 million) to 1 apollo ($100 billion or more). On that scale, Allen's contribution to the brain observatory project equals roughly 10 allens, or three-quarters of a rover (the $400 million Opportunity rover, that is, not the $2.5 billion Curiosity rover). Still more money will be needed for the out-years of the project, perhaps including government funding.

Is this project worth the price tag? How will it mesh with other potential neuroscience projects, such as the proposed billion-dollar European Human Brain Project? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

Update for 6:30 p.m. ET: At today's Seattle news briefing, I asked Koch what the top technology on his wish list would be. "We'd like to listen to every single nerve cell," he replied. "Right now, we can't do that." He envisions some sort of wireless receiver system that would have so much resolution that it could monitor individual neural impulses inside your head. Sounds pretty science-fictional to me, but what do you think?

Also, this week's issue of Nature includes a report on the $40 million Human Connectome Project, a five-year, $40 million initiative funded by the National Institutes of Health to map the brain's long-distance communication network. Some researchers wonder whether the project is really ready for prime time. "I would do the basic neuroscience before I started running lots of people through MRI scanners," David Kleinfeld, a researcher in physics and neurobiology at the University of California at San Diego, is quoted as saying.

Is this the decade of big-science brain research? That's one more question to chew over in the comment section.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Murray Close / Lionsgate / Everett Collection

Peacekeepers escort Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) in a scene from "The Hunger Games."

The technological divide between the rulers and the ruled is at the heart of "The Hunger Games": While the good guys struggle to survive, the bad guys employ fictional gee-whiz technologies inspired by real-life frontiers. And just as in real life, technology gets tripped up by unintended consequences.

That's not to say the post-apocalyptic North America of the book series and the much-anticipated movie, opening Friday, is anything close to real life. On one level, the technologies used by the villainous government of the nation known as Panem, ranging from force fields to extreme genetic engineering, serve as science-fiction plot devices and special effects. But on another level, the contrast between bows and arrows on one side, and death-dealing hovercraft on the other, accentuates the saga's David vs. Goliath angle — or, in this case, Katniss vs. the Capitol.

Here are a few of the technological trends that provide the twists in "The Hunger Games," along with real-world analogs:

What? No cellphones?
Much has been made of the fact that the starving, downtrodden residents of Panem's districts don't seem to have access to cellphones or the Internet. Instead, they have to huddle around giant television sets to find out what their overlords in the Capitol want them to see. But if you think of Panem as a fictional tweak of modern-day North Korea, "The Hunger Games" might not be that far off the mark: You've got a leadership capable of long-range missile launches, exercising virtually total control over what its impoverished populace sees and hears. Cellphones were outlawed until 2008, and even today they're confiscated from international visitors upon arrival. Internet access and international calling are limited to the elite.

The outlook for change is mixed: Today, a million North Koreans are said to be using mobile phones, but the State Department's Alec Ross told the Korea Times during a recent visit to Seoul that "it will be very difficult for technology to drive change in North Korea, given the extreme measures that North Korea has taken to create a media blackout." That's life in Panem ... er, Pyongyang.

Genetic engineering
The most vivid special effects are connected to genetic engineering of various organisms, including humanized animals. To minimize the plot-spoiler effect, the only "muttation" I'll mention in detail is the mockingjay, which figures so prominently in the advance publicity and provides the title for the third book in Suzanne Collins' "Hunger Games" trilogy. The geniuses at the Panem high command created genetically modified birds known as jabberjays that were able to listen in on rebel conversations and report them back to the authorities. When the rebels caught onto this, they started feeding the jays false information. And when the Capitol figured this out, they left the jabberjays to fend for themselves. Male jabberjays mated with female mockingbirds, resulting in birds that could learn and repeat musical notes but not human speech.

The twist illustrates a time-honored movie maxim about genetic engineering, enunciated in the first "Jurassic Park" film: "Life will not be contained." That may be putting it too simply, but the field has certainly raised a lot of questions about how to keep genetic genies in the bottle. This month, more than 100 groups issued a call to hold back on synthetic biology until new guidelines are drawn up.

Cross-species splicing is becoming more common: Jellyfish genes have been used to give a glow to mice and pigs. Other types of transgenic cloning have made cats and dogs glow in the dark. Experimental mice have been given a "humanized" version of a gene linked to speech, and there have been humanized sheep and cows as well. These real-life muttations aren't as scary as the tracker jackers, but the movie's genetic-engineering nightmares definitely strike closer to home than, say, vampire nightmares.

Force fields
When competitors fight each other in the Hunger Games, the arena is surrounded by some kind of force field to keep Katniss and the other kids from escaping. The invisible fence pushes back anyone or anything that's thrown against it. In real life, researchers have looked into building up short-lasting but powerful electromagnetic fields to repel projectiles directed against military vehicles, but they haven't yet reached the stage where a commander could truly issue the order to raise shields.

It's more realistic to expect that future spaceship captains will use electromagnetic fields to protect their crews from interplanetary radiation blasts. One such study is being funded at Johnson Space Center as part of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program.

For years, the U.S. military has been looking into another type of force field, known as the Active Denial System or "pain ray." This non-lethal system can direct a beam of millimeter-wave radiation at a crowd, producing an extreme burning sensation on the skin. The heat ray's victims instinctively back away from wherever they're standing to get out of the beam. Wired.com's Spencer Ackerman was among a group of guinea pigs ... er, guests ... who got a taste of the pain ray during a recent demonstration at the Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia.

Ackerman's conclusion was that the system isn't anywhere near ready for prime time yet, due to lingering concerns about health effects, plus the hours-long buildup time for the beam generator, plus the fact that the system doesn't really work that well under dusty, rainy or snowy conditions. Bottom line: It might be a while before the odds are ever in the pain ray's favor.

Hovercraft
The "Hunger Games" aerial hovercraft are like helicopters, only spookier. They transport cargo as well as people, and can be used for combat and covert operations as well. A real-life hovercraft might be something like the fan-driven vehicles that Moller International has been working on for decades, or a scaled-up version of the Martin Jetpack. Or who knows? Maybe the Capitol has perfected the superconducting anti-gravity effect that NASA looked into more than a decade ago. (Interest waned when it turned out that the Podkletnov Effect couldn't be reliably reproduced.) 

Surveillance society
The biggest shadow looming over Katniss and the other denizens of the Districts is constant surveillance. That's what the Hunger Games are all about: a reality-TV fight to the death, on the air 24/7, complete with sponsors and wagering. It's a popular concept in fiction, popping up in films such as "The Running Man," "Battle Royale" and "Series 7."

The Capitol's surveillance isn't limited to the games, however. Just as the contestants are being monitored inside the arena, Panem's citizens have to assume they're being monitored on the outside. In real life, meanwhile, tens of millions of surveillance cameras are being installed across the United States, and there's talk about giving domestic duties to camera-carrying robo-planes.

Hmmmm ... maybe this part of the science-fiction saga is getting a little less fictional. What do you think? Feel free to share your thoughts about the book and the movie, or about real-life parallels, in the comment section below.

More about 'The Hunger Games'

• 'Hunger Games' fire show is Hollywood magic
• Navy opens 'Hunger Games' arenas for robots
• 'Hunger Games' is also a social media game
• Stars say 'Hunger Games' movie violence justified

More movie reality checks:

• Invisibility and other 'Harry Potter' technologies
• 'John Carter' and the real-life Martian quest
• Virtual actor takes over in 'Tron: Legacy'
• Apollo 18 in fiction and fact
• 'Avatar' and the future of 3-D moviemaking
• Reality check for 'Star Trek' tech

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Matt Milless

Physics professor Chad Orzel and his dog Emmy go in search of the bacon boson and other scientific mysteries — a quest documented in Orzel's latest book, "How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog."

Teaching relativity to a dog may sound like a hopeless mental exercise, but physics professor Chad Orzel says it actually makes the job of teaching relativity to humans easier.

"It makes the whole thing seem much more approachable," Orzel explains. "If you think like a dog, dogs have fewer preconceptions about how things work."

And Orzel's dog, a German shepherd mix named Emmy, won't let him get away with hand-waving gobbledygook. "A lot of the things that she interjects with, those are points where people reading along would say, 'Wait a minute! That doesn't make sense!'" he said.

Of course, Orzel isn't really teaching relativity to his dog. Rather, Emmy serves as the straight man — er, dog — for a scientific dialogue that makes the equations go down more easily. Such dialogues are standard rhetorical devices that go back to Democritus, Socrates, Plato and all those cats in ancient Greece. It's a technique that Orzel used to crowd-pleasing effect in his 2009 book about quantum mechanics, "How to Teach Physics to Your Dog" — and now Emmy is back for more in the newly published sequel, "How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog."

"If you've already talked about quantum physics, relativity is the obvious way to go," Orzel told me. "It's the other great theory of modern physics."

Orzel, who teaches physics at Union College in New York, said that Albert Einstein's special and general theories of relativity can actually be boiled down to one sentence. "All of the weird stuff you hear about E=mc2, clocks running slow when they move, time moving at different rates near a black hole ... all of that weird stuff is just a consequence of the fact that the laws of physics do not depend on how you're moving," he said.

Basic Books

"How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog" isn't just for dog lovers ... or relativity lovers, for that matter.

And if there's one thing dogs know a lot about, it's moving. So Orzel casts his explanations of the weird stuff in terms a dog just might be able to understand: For example, when he refers to the speed of light in a vacuum as remaining constant, no matter how it's measured in a moving frame of reference, he doesn't use the standard example of moving rocket ships. Instead, Orzel talks to Emmy about bunnies, cats and dogs in motion.

At times, Emmy tries to jump into the driver's seat with her inquiries into the Unified Theory of Critters, or her plans to build the Superconducting Kibble Collider and search for the bacon boson. ("It's responsible for making other kinds of particles yummy," she explains in the book.) Then it's Orzel's job to tug on the leash and get Emmy's head back in the game. And after a chuckle or two, we're ready to press on as well.

"Because of the dog, I'm able to get away putting some stuff in there that I otherwise wouldn't be able to," Orzel told me. "You can put in some heavy stuff and lighten the tone quite a bit."

That's not to say Orzel has turned relativity into a romp in the park. The book still poses quite a few mental agility trials — particularly when it comes to the counterintuitive aspects of relativistic phenomena, such as the famous "twin paradox." But as much as possible, Orzel highlights the concrete, real-world examples of relativity at work, such as the fact that a height difference of just 12 inches has an ever-so-slight impact on timekeeping, due to the relativistic effects of our planet's gravitational field. The same effects have to be accounted for in GPS satellite navigation systems.

"That shows that this isn't purely some incredibly exotic thing," Orzel said. "It's something that happens in everyday situations. It's just that the effects are usually too small to measure."

So now that Chad Orzel and his dog Emmy have run circles around the two great pillars of modern physics — quantum mechanics and relativity theory — what's next?

"We'll have to see what the dog wants to talk about," Orzel joked. "A few people have asked about statistical physics, but I'm thinking I don't know if even the dog wants to do that."

More about Einstein and relativity:

• Right again, Einstein: New test nixes faster-than-light findings
• E=mc2 and other Einstein manuscripts are going online
• Interactive: Why relativity is right, and still relevant
• Special report: A Century of Einstein

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Noel Vasquez / Getty Images

Ashton Kutcher, seen here at a Los Angeles Lakers basketball game in February, is the 500th customer to sign up for a Virgin Galactic suborbital spaceflight.

Virgin Galactic says uber-celebrity Ashton Kutcher is the company's 500th customer to sign up for a suborbital trip into outer space.

"I gave Ashton a quick call to congratulate and welcome him," Virgin Galactic's billionaire founder, Richard Branson, said today in a blog post announcing that Kutcher was coming on board. "He is as thrilled as we are at the prospect of being among the first to cross the final frontier (and back!) with us and to experience the magic of space for himself."

Kutcher, who got his start in television on "That '70s Show" and is now one of the stars of the highly rated sitcom "Two and a Half Men," is said to have a net worth of around $140 million. So the $200,000 fare for a ride on Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo rocket plane, also known as the VSS Enterprise, shouldn't break the bank. He's as well-known for his online presence (with 9.8 million Twitter followers) and his gossip-column appeal (due to last year's breakup with Demi Moore) as he is for his filmography.

All this makes him arguably the highest-profile prospective spaceflier confirmed to be on Virgin Galactic's list — although Tom Hanks, Katy Perry, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are reportedly on the list as well. Beyonce and Jay-Z are among other celebs considering a flight. The stars are reportedly all paying their own way, except for physicist Stephen Hawking, who is receiving a free ride courtesy of Branson.

For Stephen Attenborough, Virgin Galactic's commercial director, getting to the 500-passenger point is as big a milestone as getting Ashton Kutcher to sign on. "It's great to get to No. 500," he told me.

It's way too early to put Kutcher's flight on the calendar. SpaceShipTwo is still in the midst of free-glide flight tests, with rocket-powered test flights expected to begin this year. Last year, Branson said he was holding out hope that he and members of his family will be able to take a ride into space as this year's Christmas present. That suggests 2013 could mark the start of commercial service, although Virgin Galactic and its partners at California-based Scaled Composites say the schedule is totally dependent on the outcome of tests at the Mojave Air and Space Port.

The current plan calls for commercial flight operations to be based at Spaceport America in New Mexico. SpaceShipTwo, which is capable of carrying six passengers and two pilots, would be linked up to its wide-winged WhiteKnightTwo carrier airplane and brought up to an altitude of 50,000 feet. At that height, SpaceShipTwo would drop from its mothership and turn on its hybrid rocket engine. The blast would take the craft beyond 62 miles (100 kilometers), the internationally accepted boundary of outer space — a commanding height from which Kutcher and his fellow passengers could see the arc of planet Earth and the dark sky of space above.

There'd be a few minutes of weightlessness, and then the passengers would return to their seats for the descent. After weathering up to 6 G's of acceleration, the fliers would glide down to the landing — and get their astronaut wings back at Spaceport America.

Attenborough said Virgin Galactic is already giving a lot of thought to determining who would fly when. One of the factors in the formula would give priority to customers "roughly in the order that they signed up," he said, but the schedulers also would consider customer preferences and the possibility of achieving firsts in spaceflight (for example, ahem, first prime-time TV star in space). "We're expecting to be able to keep everyone happy," Attenborough told me. 

How long do you think it'll be before Kutcher is clicking his camera on the final frontier? And do you suppose there'll be a deal to document everything for reality TV? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

More about celebrity spaceflight:

• Fly Justin Bieber into space, scientist says
• Bunnies in jetpacks? It's Playboy Club in space!
• Director James Cameron targets spaceflight
• Celebrities in space?

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer produced this infrared view of the entire sky.

How would the sky look through infrared eyes? The scientists behind NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer mission have served up that kind of view with an all-sky map of infrared wavelengths, centered on the glowing Milky Way.

The map was unveiled this week to mark the completion of WISE's infrared sky atlas, more than two years after the $320 million mission was launched. The telescope collected more than 2.7 million images in four infrared wavelengths and sent down more than 15 trillion bytes of data. The WISE spacecraft was shut down a year ago, after surveying the entire sky one and a half times, but scientists needed still more time to analyze and organize the data.

The images were combined into an atlas of more than 18,000 images. The atlas is accompanied by a catalog listing the infrared properties of more than 560 million individual objects, ranging from near-Earth asteroids to far-flung galaxies. Wednesday's release of the catalog meets the fundamental objective of a mission that was conceived in 1998.

"Today, WISE delivers the fruit of 14 years of effort to the astronomical community," UCLA astronomer Edward Wright, the mission's principal investigator, said in a NASA news release.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA

This annotated version of the all-sky infrared map points out some of the main attractions. In addition, Saturn, Mars and Jupiter can be seen as stretched-out red spots far off the galactic plane, at roughly the 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock and 7 o'clock, respectively.

Over the past two years, WISE's science team has discovered the first examples of an ultra-cool class of stars known as Y-dwarfs, found the first Trojan asteroid to share Earth's orbit, and came up with a downsized estimate of the number of asteroids with a chance of threatening our planet. But the WISE team isn't done yet: Scientists will spend years poring over the data contained in the newly released catalog. And you can try your hand as well, although for most people, this gallery of WISE highlights should suffice.

Weekend goodies:

 WISE's all-sky image served as this week's "Where in the Cosmos" picture quiz on the Cosmic Log Facebook page, and it didn't take more than a few minutes for Eloid Ruiz to report what the picture showed. Eloid will be receiving a pair of 3-D glasses with my compliments (and an assist from Microsoft Research's World Wide Telescope project). Stay tuned next week for the next "Where in the Cosmos" puzzler — and while you're waiting, tune in the Weekly Space Hangout, a week-in-review webcast hosted by Universe Today's Fraser Cain.

More wonders from WISE:

• Space bubbles offer peek at sun's evolution
• Pacman Nebula bares its teeth
• A gathering of glorious galaxies
• Star goes through shocking transformation

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

The aurora's glow makes for thrilling photographs, but let's face it: The shimmer of the northern lights is a big part of the appeal. Here are three time-lapse video views looking at the northern lights from above and below, plus still-photo highlights from the past day or two.

The International Space Station's view of the green and red aurora was recorded back on Jan. 22, but the clip is part of a batch of seven night-flight videos released on Thursday via the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. The shots were snapped as the station soared from the Pacific Ocean, west of San Francisco, northeast across the United States toward Saskatchewan in Canada. The camera is looking northward, and to my mind, the presence of the station's solar panels and robotic arm in the foreground is a plus, not a minus. For a sharper version, go directly to the high-resolution QuickTime video.

The aurora most commonly takes on a greenish hue, but when electrically charged particles from the sun interact with atomic oxygen at higher altitudes — say, up to 200 miles — the glow turns red.

The past week has been a godsend for aurora-watchers, thanks to a series of outbursts from an active region on the sun, but now the solar storms have settled down. Observers caught the tail end of the heightened activity on Thursday night in regions of Scandinavia, Iceland, Scotland, Greenland and North America, as well as Australia, New Zealand and Antarctica in the south. Check SpaceWeather.com as well as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center for updates. And check out this album of videos and photos from all over:

Iurie Belegurschi

Iceland's Iurie Belegurschi offers this stunning picture of the aurora with the Venus-Jupiter conjunction shining in the sky, off to the right. For more of Belegurschi's photography, check out his Facebook page.

Andrei Penescu

Andrei Penescu captured this view of the northern lights on March 15 from Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. "Tonight was very special because it was the first time I've seen the sky full of red auroras. ... It was the best aurora show I've ever seen!" Penescu told SpaceWeather.com. Check out the gallery at SpaceWeather.com.

Minoru Yoneto

A red and purple auroral display lights up the skies over Queensland, New Zealand, in this March 16 view from Minoru Yoneto. "The auroras danced until sunrise," Yoneto told SpaceWeather.com. Check out the imagery on SpaceWeather.com.

More auroral glories:

• Southern exposure for auroral lights
• Sky lights go wild, north and south
• Solar storm lights up northern skies
• Slideshow: The best of the northern lights
• Cosmic Log's auroral archive

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Is this truly the video that UFO skeptics have been dreading? Actually, a compilation of 17-month-old video clips from a Chilean military air show is stirring up predictable responses from both sides of the UFO debate, but no dread.

For those who are inclined to believe that some unidentified flying objects exhibit characteristics beyond what our technology seems capable of, the El Bosque case could represent the latest, greatest evidence for flying saucers.

"This is a very, very unusual case, and I'm hoping that this case will help move forward the recognition that there really is something here that's worthy of further study. ... It has the possibility of being a breakthrough case," said investigative journalist Leslie Kean, the author of the book "UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record."

But for those who think even the toughest cases can be explained away as video glitches, bugs or other tricks of the eye, the El Bosque case is just more of the same. 

"They're 'unexplained cases' only if you ignore the explanation," self-described debunker Robert Sheaffer told me. "That's what's going to happen in this case."

Genesis of an anomaly
The case goes back to an air show that was staged in November 2010, at Chile's Air Force academy, which is headquartered at the El Bosque Air Force Base in Santiago. Nothing untoward was noticed by anybody during the show itself, but Kean said an engineer at the nearby aircraft factory noticed an anomalous spot as he was sifting through video taken from the show, looking for an image that could be used as a poster photo.

The spot appeared to move quickly from frame to frame, and the engineer thought it looked enough like some sort of craft to notify the Chilean government agency in charge of investigating anomalous aerial phenomena, known by the Spanish acronym CEFAA.

The way Kean tells it, CEFAA investigators looked around for other video clips of the event and pieced together six additional views of the spot-shaped phenomena. Ricardo Bermudez, a retired Chilean Air Force general who is now CEFAA's director, told a UFO conference last month that his agency consulted with other officials, image-processing experts and "non-believer astronomers." CEFAA's conclusion was that the spots were caused by an object traveling through the scene at speeds in excess of 4,000 mph — so fast that it went unnoticed by air-show spectators.

"Humans inside this object could not survive," Kean and a co-author, former New York Times investigative reporter Ralph Blumenthal, wrote in a Huffington Post report appearing on Tuesday. "And, somehow, it made no sonic boom..."

Kean told me that the El Bosque case was notable for several reasons: "I think what's exceptional about this is that the investigation was thoroughly managed by a government agency."  Also, she said, "it's something you can actually see with your own eyes." The fact that the object shows up on seven videos from the same event, recorded from different vantage points, adds to the intrigue, she said.

The El Bosque case fits the pattern that Kean laid out in her book, in which she highlights UFO accounts from experienced pilots, military observers and government officials. Even measured by that standard, the Chilean case stands out, Kean said. "In some ways, I think it's more explosive than many of the cases in the book," she told me.

Skeptics unconvinced
In their article, Kean and Blumenthal wondered whether El Bosque would turn out to be "the case UFO skeptics have been dreading" — but experts on the other side of the UFO debate said their skepticism was unshaken.

"It's a tiny thing in a low-res video," astronomer Phil Plait, the myth-buster behind the Bad Astronomy blog, told me in an email. "If this is the best she can come up with, dread is not exactly what I feel."

Sheaffer, a columnist for The Skeptical Inquirer magazine and author of the book "UFO Sightings," joked about the reference to dread. "I'm shaking," he told me during a telephone interview. "You just can't see it on the phone."

Sheaffer said there wasn't yet enough data available to judge what really happened at El Bosque. "It's going to be like the Phoenix Lights in 1997. We're going to have to go and sit down and look at it," he said. (Coincidentally, Kean and Blumenthal's story came out on the 15th anniversary of the Phoenix Lights incident in Arizona.)

Some of the key missing points in the story have to do with the six other videos that are said to show the flying spot. Kean said that as far as she knew, those videos have not been seen by anyone outside CEFAA's investigative group. Another must-have for outside investigators would be the identity of the shooters behind the seven videos. If they turned out to be seven random people, with no relationship to one another, that would at least argue against the incident being an intentional hoax, Sheaffer said.

The fact that no one reported hearing or seeing anything out of the ordinary during the air show itself would suggest that the anomalous object is a trick of the eye — or, more accurately, a trick of the video.

For some of the denizens of the Above Top Secret online forum, the nature of the spot, or spots, was obvious: It's a bug, or bugs. An insect flying at regular speed through the foreground of the video could have been misinterpreted as an aircraft flying at super-fast speed through the background. One forum member posted several animated GIF images showing a similar effect. Different bugs could conceivably have flown through the viewing fields of different cameras, leading to the impression that the same super-fast craft was shown in each video — particularly if the six videos identified during CEFAA's follow-up were pulled out of a larger set.

"Maybe we'll find out it's a bug, but I seriously doubt it," Kean told me. She said she took Bermudez and his fellow investigators at their word. "All I know is that people who know way more about photo analysis than I have ruled that out," Kean said.

Even though Kean has made a name for herself as a UFO writer, she insisted that she's not wedded to a woo-woo explanation. "I just wanted to get this story out there," she said. "I'm hoping that some American scientists will now take on the analysis of this."

Update for 8:30 p.m. ET: I'm getting additional information from both sides of the debate. Leslie Kean sent me a follow-up email on the bug hypothesis:

"I went back to the CEFAA official re the bugs, and he said that's what they all thought at first when they got the first film (the one I posted). But when they went and got additional footage from very different vantage points which showed the same thing, they knew that was impossible.  I don't think they're that stupid to claim this is a UFO if it was a bug, given that so many experts looked at it."

And there's this from UFO skeptic Tim Printy:

"I am very skeptical of this story the more I read it. There are no high-quality videos available, and the frame grabs/brief clips I have seen appear to be vague and indistinct.  The idea they may be birds, insects or possibly a small Mylar balloon has crossed my mind but I can't tell much from the data at hand. 

"There are some big red flags for me:

"1) This happened over a year ago and people are still working on analyzing this? If the evidence was truly that good, it would take a few months at best to come up with a reasonable analysis to demonstrate it was something not of this earth. 

"2) It is being leaked out to various UFO blogs instead of publishing in a scientific journal. If it were good evidence, that is where it would appear, and not the Huffington Post.

"3) The videos are unavailable to be analyzed from outside sources. Perhaps they learned from the Mexican Air Force video debacle. Once the videos were revealed in sufficient length, many people identified the source of the images as being from oil wells in the gulf.  A lot of people had egg on their face from that one. NARCAP was initially involved with that one, but then later stated they could not properly analyze the video because of the provenance being questionable or some excuse similar to that. 

"4) The videos have no provenance. We don't know what has been done to them since the day of the event.

"Just my thoughts on this one. I can probably come up with a few more red flags, but I would rather wait for the report to appear or the raw videos to surface.  Meanwhile, I will hit my snooze button while the UFOlogists proclaim it the latest 'smoking gun.' So far all of these 'smoking guns' have turned out to be empty water pistols that have never fired a squirt."

More about UFOs:

• Were Soviets behind the Roswell UFO?
• UFO sighted in Russia ... right on time
• Jerusalem videos spark UFO buzz
• James Oberg: UFO book based on questionable foundation
• Leslie Kean: Skeptic misses point behind UFO book
• Share your UFO stories
• UFO cases that generate buzz
• Best places to spot UFOs
• Cosmic Log archive on UFOs

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.