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Researchers at the University of Seville have developed a technique based on chemical patterns for identifying the country of origin of beer.

Beer snobs wishing to know the provenance of their favorite European pilsners and lagers are in luck: Scientists have developed a new chemical test that can tell you where the brew originated.

Though such tests have long existed for products such as wine, spirits, coffee and tea, one hasn't been developed yet for beer, noted Jose Marcos Jurado, a chemist at the University of Seville in Spain.

"That surprised me because beer is one of the most consumed beverages in the world," he told me in an email today. 

Jurado and his colleagues developed a test that identifies chemicals in the beer that relate to various raw materials such as water and hops. A set of algorithms recognize data patterns in those chemicals that point to the beer's country of origin.

In experiments, the researchers tested their model on pilsners and lagers — blonde-colored beers — from Germany, Spain, and Portugal and found it to be accurate 99.3 percent of the time.

Some brewers manipulate the chemicals in their water to produce the style of beer they want. For example, brewers of pale ales around the world often try to match the salt content of the water in England's Burton-upon-Trent where the style was perfected.

Jurado noted that additions of salts could trick the part of the test designed to detect iron, potassium and phosphate, but the test also measures chemicals such as polyphenols from hops, a plant that gives beer its characteristic bitterness and aromas.

"It is always possible to fake a beverage," he noted, "and this model can fail." Though, he added, the addition of more chemical parameters to the test could make it even more tamper-proof.

And there might even be reason for doing so. There is a growing movement in Europe to put beers on a list of products with Protected Geographical Indication. This test could be used to certify the authenticity of listed beers.

"This practice [of chemical fingerprinting] is much extended in products like wine and its influence in marketing is well known," Jurado said. "We have given a first step in that direction, trying to point out the importance of these kinds of studies in products like beer."

Findings are published in the journal Food Control.

More on beer science and technology:

• Brewer to turn spent grains into energy
• Beer mystery solved! Yeast ID'd
• At ancient 'takeout' window, bullets and beer to go
• Ancient beer from shipwreck too salty to drink

ESA / IBMP

Crew members participating in the Mars500 simulated mission to the Red Planet strike a pose in their mock spaceship while wearing red-tinted glasses.

A top space official says Europe and Russia will follow up on their simulated 520-day mission to Mars with a real flight to Mars and back — although there's not yet any time frame set for the mission.

The pledge came on Wednesday from Jean-Jacques Dordain, head of the European Space Agency, during his visit to Russia's MAKS air show near Moscow. He said ESA and the Russian Federal Space Agency would "carry out the first flight to Mars together," according to a report from the RIA Novosti news agency.

Dordain was quoted as saying that the Mars500 simulation was a factor in preparations for a human mission to the Red Planet. Mars500's six crew members, all male, have been cooped up for 14 months inside an isolation chamber at Russia's Institute of Biomedical Problems. This week, the European-Russian-Chinese crew passed the 437-day milestone set by Russian cosmonaut Valery Polyakov aboard Russia's Mir space station in 1995. Polyakov holds the record for the longest continuous time spent in space, and if the Mars500 sextet had actually been in space, they would now be the champs.

Mission planners consider 500 days or so to be the most realistic time frame for a round trip to Mars, given the orbital mechanics involved in making the trip. The Mars500 experiment went through a simulated Red Planet landing in February, and the crew is due to come out of isolation at the end of the mission in November.

An actual mission to Mars would face many more hardships, including a prolonged period of reduced gravity as well as the potential for exposure to space radiation. There'd be lots of other logistical challenges, such as generating power on Mars (probably with a mini-nuclear reactor) and having enough food and water to sustain the crew. NASA's current vision for space exploration calls for sending a crew to Mars and its moons in the mid-2030s, and the first trips would likely involve just going there and back without landing on the planet itself.

The Voice of Russia website quoted Igor Lisov, an analyst for the Moscow-based journal Novosti Kosmonavtike (Cosmonautic News), as saying that any mission to the Red Planet would have to be an international venture with participation from Russia and ESA.

"If they decide to implement an emergency program, the mission may be carried out in 10 years," Lisov said. "If it is an ordinary one, then it will take 20 years. This is a long period of time."

Who do you think will take on a human mission to Mars? And when will it happen? Cast your vote, and feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

More about missions to Mars:

• Does Mars need women? Russians say no
• Simulation crew takes first steps on mock Mars
• How to keep spacesuits germ-free on Mars
• Counting down to a mission to Mars

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also add me to your Google+ circle, and check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Heribert Proepper / AP file

Ten European countries agree to develop an electricity grid to deliver wind power generated in the North Sea across Europe.

Ten European countries have signed an agreement to generate electricity from the waters of the North Sea and deliver it across the continent. Such a supergrid would boost the development of offshore wind farms in a notoriously rough and stormy region -- a resource that advocates say is "enormous."

"It even surpasses the energy equivalent of petrol reserves in the Middle East," according to a statement from the Belgian government announcing last Friday's signing.

The deal may provide the European Union with smoother sailing toward its ambitious goals of opening up electricity markets for cross-border competition and achieving a 20 percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions, Colin Macilwain pointed out in Nature News.

But first, engineers working on the estimated nearly $30 billion project must overcome technical challenges -- such as exactly how they'll ship electricity through undersea cables for hundreds of miles.

Traditional transmission grids operate on alternating current (AC), but a subsea grid would use direct current (DC), due to losses that occur when the aluminum or copper conductor is buried.

"In effect, the cable and surrounding earth form a capacitor, draining power from the AC lines, and rendering them useless over long distances," writes Macilwain. "So a subsea grid has to be DC -- posing a challenge for electrical engineers who lack the technological tools they have developed for AC power."

Another problem is that circuit breakers don't exist for high-voltage DC. One potential solution is a high-voltage DC converter being developed by Dragan Jovcic at the University of Aberdeen.

In addition to technical hurdles, the North Sea supergrid project must wrangle with political and regulatory issues. Some European nations, including Germany, are throwing more of their weight behind the Desertec project, which aims to bring solar and wind power generated in the Sahara to Europe.

Take a look at these stories for more about offshore wind power projects:

• Google joins $5 billion U.S. offshore wind grid project
• First German wind farm at sea opens
• Offshore wind power could alter ocean currents
• Offshore wind projects feel economic squeeze
• Feds OK first U.S. offshore wind farm

John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).