WGBH

Our own planet twists the fabric of space-time, as shown in this animation from "The Fabric of the Cosmos."

Theoretical physicist Brian Greene admits that the world he describes in his new public-TV documentary series, "The Fabric of the Cosmos," is nothing like everyday experience. He's not even sure some of the things he describes are for real. For example, how can we possibly know other universes exist? Believe it or not, there are ways to find out.

The four-part "Nova" series makes its debut on PBS stations on Wednesday night with an episode that delves into the mysteriously substantial properties of empty space. "As it turns out, empty space is not nothing," the Columbia University professor says at the start of the show. "It's something. ... So real, that empty space itself helps shape everything in the world around us, and forms the very fabric of the cosmos."

That episode is already available for watching over iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch devices, as well as through Amazon Prime instant video. And if you miss seeing it on TV on Wednesday, you'll be able to catch up with it later online. Over succeeding weeks, Greene addresses not only space, but also the nature of time, the weird world of quantum mechanics and the possibility that our universe is just one bubble in the cosmic ocean (or raisin-bread loaf, or cheese wedge) of the multiverse.

Most of the substance in "The Fabric of the Cosmos" comes from Greene's book of the same name — but the part about the multiverse is more speculative, and is derived from Greene's follow-up book titled "The Hidden Reality." So of course that's where I had to start when I had a chat with Greene this week. Here's an edited transcript of the Q&A:

Cosmic Log: You must get this question all the time: What sort of proof do you have that any of this stuff is true?

Brian Greene: Well, the first three episodes — focusing on space, time and quantum mechanics — are much more closely tied to observations and experiments that have already been done. Much of what we describe in those programs is firmly rooted in science that is now largely accepted, even though it's weird. The fourth program is different in that regard, because as the last program in the series, it is looking beyond what we currently know, and surveying the landscape of possibilities that may in the future become accepted science. But not yet.

That's the multiverse. The multiverse is hard to test because we have access to this universe, and the theory proposes that there are other universes. We can't directly see them. We can't visit them. So how would you ever prove that idea?

In the program, we tackle that issue head-on. We describe how the multiverse naturally emerged from investigations that were rooted in observations and experiments: things to do with questions of the origin of the universe, the cosmic microwave background radiation, issues surrounding the puzzles of the big bang that can only be resolved through an inflationary view of the universe — which then yields the multiverse. But it won't be a satisfying explanation until we have some kind of direct confirmation.

To my mind, there's really one main way that could happen in the near future: In this proposal, different universes are like different expanding bubbles in some larger cosmic environment, like bubbles in a bubble bath. And when bubbles in a bubble bath expand, they can run into each other. Similarly, expanding universes can collide. The math indicates that if and when they do, the collision can send ripple-like disturbances through the microwave background radiation — the heat signature left over from the big bang. Those temperature differences of that particular sort are something that people are looking for. Some even claim they've seen the first tentative signals of the pattern. I'm highly skeptical about that, as everybody should be. But this could be a way to subject an idea that seems so foreign to an observational test.

Q: There's also been some talk about possible observations at the Large Hadron Collider that might suggest energy was "leaking" into other dimensions.

A: Yes, the notion that there are extra dimensions provides another way in which you could have other universes. Our universe might be one piece of bread in a big cosmic loaf, where the other "slices" are displaced from ours in a new direction, and are actually other universes. One way to check that idea would be to have a very energetic collision of particles in our universe, on our slice of space. The math shows it's possible for energy from those collisions to be ejected off our slice and migrate into the wider cosmos. We would notice that here by seeing that energy was not conserved. The energy after the collision would be a little less than it was before, because some of the energy would have crossed beyond our universe.

The point is that there are strange ideas about the universe that can nevertheless yield evidence, if we know where to look.

WGBH

In "The Fabric of the Cosmos," physicist Brian Greene graphically shows how the "Mona Lisa" ... and even Brian Greene ... could exist in more than one universe.

Q: One of the points of the series is that there's a deeper level to reality that what we see in everyday life, suggested by mathematics and physics. You use all sorts of animations and graphics to convey a sense of the underlying fabric of the cosmos. Do you have some favorite tricks that you've used in the TV series?

A: When you're dealing with subjects that are abstract ... these are mind-bending ideas, but what do you point the camera at? That's a funny thing, because everything we do takes place within space, within time. The concepts of space and time are so profoundly interwoven with reality as we know it, and yet science has revealed that there are features of space and time that run completely counter to our intuition — if you examine them on non-human scales, that is, scales that are very tiny, or very big, or when you're moving very fast, or if you're near a very strong, massive gravitational object.

Since we can't actually go to those exotic realms, we use animation to show what it would be like if you could shrink down to a billionth of a billionth of a meter ... or what it'd be like if you could travel at just a tiny fraction less than the speed of light ... or what it would be like to hover near the edge of a black hole and then come back to Earth. And we use animation to show the largest bird's-eye view of the cosmos if some of these multiverse ideas are correct. That really gives you a visceral understanding of the concepts.

Q: In fact Einstein used these types of thought experiments as well when he worked on his theories of relativity. He imagined what it would be like to ride a light wave, or to be falling through space in an elevator...

A: If only Einstein had the tools of animation, who knows how far he would have gone!

But there's a serious point here: When I do my own work, I'm constantly trying to build a mental image of what's going on. I'm never comfortable if my understanding is just completely in the equations. I feel like I have a storehouse of imagery built up just from the scientific research itself, which then leads to a form that will work in a book or on TV, which requires dressing it up in various ways. The whole idea of trying to visualize abstract equations is something that many of us do as part of our second nature, as researchers.

Q: Are there any favorite visualizations you keep coming back to?

A: Well, sure. A lot of my work has to do with extra dimensions of space. And I readily admit that I cannot picture anything more than three dimensions. So in my own work, I'm constantly doing what we do in the television program, which is to use lower dimensions as analogies — two-dimensional analogies that you can draw and manipulate. You use those as a guide to what's happening in higher-dimensional settings, where the equations of string theory reside.

You have to be careful. Sometimes a lower-dimensional analogy can be misleading. But you begin to build up the art of knowing what aspects of those visualizations you can trust when you're taking the leap to higher dimensions, and which aspects make you say, "No, no, no, that won't give me insight into my real interest."

Q: What do you hope viewers will take away from the show?

A: The main goal is for people to leave the program with a more complete sense that when it comes to the universe, what you see is not what you get. There are layers upon layers of reality that we are unaware of in everyday life. Intuition is built up from experience, and our experiences since we appeared on the planet has been largely dictated by what is beneficial for our survival. Understanding the quantum world, and understanding the possibility of other universes, and understanding the deep nature of time don't help you get the next meal. So there hasn't been any real evolutionary pressure for us to gain intuition about those things. But when we have the luxury of thinking about them mathematically, we learn that there's much more to the universe than meets the eye.

It's absolutely thrilling to learn that time for me is not the same as time for you; that out there in space, time is elapsing at a different rate near the edge of a black hole; that in the depths of space, there is unavoidable, ferocious quantum activity; that the world is governed by probabilities, not certainty; and then there's entanglement, the idea that what you do over here can have a direct effect on something over there. Wow!

Wow indeed. The TV show is just the tip of the iceberg: The "Fabric of the Cosmos" website offers tons of videos, interactives, intereviews and links to online resources. More than a dozen "Cosmic Cafes" have been organized nationwide to talk about space, time and the multiverse. And the World Science Festival has organized a screening of the first episode at Columbia University at 9 p.m. ET Wednesday, to be followed by a forum featuring Greene, theoretical physicist Leonard Susskind and Nobel laureate Saul Perlmutter.

Even though the in-person event sold out almost immediately, you can still tune in to live streaming video and join the discussion via Facebook or Twitter. I have an alternate suggestion: Watch the episode in advance, or save it for later, and tune in to "Virtually Speaking Science" at 9 p.m. ET Wednesday for my chat with interstellar-travel expert Marc Millis. Then, at 10 p.m. ET, switch on over to the World Science Festival's forum.

More cosmic contemplations from Brian Greene:

• A black-hole fairy tale for kids
• 'Fabric' takes on the space-time continuum
• Hidden universes revealed
• String theory gets time on prime time
• Elegant physicist makes string theory sexy
• Space.com Q&A on 'The Fabric of the Cosmos'
• Read an excerpt from 'The Hidden Reality'

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

Want to get a head start on a mind-bending TV miniseries about space, time and the multiverse? There's an app for that.

Eight years after PBS aired "The Elegant Universe," a series based on Columbia physicist Brian Greene's best-selling book about string theory, the public-TV network is gearing up for the sequel. "The Fabric of the Cosmos," a four-parter from the "Nova" documentary team, focuses on the mysteries surrounding all the cosmic stuff that surrounds us.

The show premieres on Nov. 2, and it'll be streamed on PBS' video website — but if you have an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch and are of a mind to download the PBS app, you can watch the first hour right now.

"Brian Greene's 'The Fabric of the Cosmos' is an amazing journey into some truly astounding theories of our universe," Jason Seiken, senior vice president for interactive, product development and innovation, said today in a news release. "On mobile, viewers get a sneak preview of the series' futuristic concepts and graphics leading up to the broadcast premiere and can continue their scientific exploration throughout the series."

It's been seven years since book version of "The Fabric of the Cosmos" was published, but the theme of the TV show is basically the same: Everything you know about space and time just might be wrong.

"We really see how our understanding of space and time from Newton until today has gone through remarkable changes," Greene told me back in 2004, "and most importantly, how so many things that we have in our intuition about space and time, their properties and so forth, are just not true to how the world actually works."

For example, consider space. Most of the universe is made up of empty space, and I'm not just talking about outer space. During the program, Greene uses computer graphics to bring the point home: If you could remove all the empty space from New York's Empire State Building, you would be left with a clump of smashed-together subatomic particles that was no bigger than a grain of rice — but still weighed hundreds of millions of pounds.

Greene isn't the only one gob-smacked by the weirdness of the space-time continuum. During the program, University of Maryland physicist S. James Gates says the nature of space "is one of the deepest mysteries in physics."

During the course of the miniseries, Greene manages to work in some of the ideas from "The Hidden Reality," the book that came after "The Fabric of the Cosmos." The last episode dwells on the concept of the multiverse — the idea that our universe might be just one of the myriads of cosmic bubbles floating in an larger extradimensional reality. Some of those bubbles might even be exactly like the one we inhabit — except, perhaps, that I'm the brainy physicist and Brian Greene is the befuddled journalist.

In this cosmic bubble, Greene and his brainy friends are planning lots of activities tied to the series. The World Science Festival, "Nova" and Columbia University have set up a special screening of the opening episode at 9 p.m. ET Nov. 2 at Columbia's Miller Theatre. After the show, the World Science Festival is planning a live webcast of a conversation with Greene and other guests, including newly named Nobel laureate Saul Perlmutter.

"Nova" has also teamed up with the American Society of Physics Students to create a special series of science cafes, focusing on the out-of-this-world ideas raised by "The Fabric of the Cosmos." Check out this map to find the nearest Cosmic Cafe. Maybe I'll see you at the Seattle event.

More about space, time and the multiverse:

• What? Could our universe be just one of many?
• Probe confirms that we live in a space-time warp
• Interactive: Looking beyond the big bang
• Can we dodge the arrow of time?
• Physics prize highlights cosmic puzzles
• Physicist introduces you to 'The Hidden Reality'
• YouTube: Brian Greene at New York Comic Con

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding me to a circle on Google+. And for something completely different, check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Are you looking for a million-dollar story? How about a dozen tales produced by folks who have been awarded more than a million dollars in the past week? Here's a roundup of award-winning tales with a scientific twist from the MacArthur Foundation's "genius" fellowships ($500,000 each), the National Academies' Communication Awards ($20,000 each), the National Association of Science Writers' Science in Society Journalism Awards ($2,500 each) and the Council for the Advancement of Science Writers' Victor Cohn Medical Science Reporting Prize ($3,000).

MacArthur Fellows:

Among this year's 22 fellows are two journalists who have been known to delve into scientific subjects:

MacArthur Foundation

Radio host Jad Abumrad at work.

Jad Abumrad is co-host and producer of Radiolab, a nationally syndicated public radio program that focuses on the intersection of science and society. His co-host is another well-known science journalist, Robert Krulwich. "The structure of Radiolab episodes often mimics the scientific process itself, complete with moments of ambiguity, digressions, reversals, and surprising conclusions that evoke in audiences a sense of adventure and re-create the thrill of discovery," the MacArthur Foundation said. It cited two examples of RadioLab goodness: "A Very Lucky Wind," which analyzed the seemingly improbable circumstances surrounding a balloon's journey across England; and "Cities," which took an up-close and personal look at urban demographics.

Peter Hessler is a writer for The New Yorker and National Geographic, as well as an author with several books about China under his belt. He has a special ability to weave "multiple narrative threads into richly illuminating depictions of people and places confronted with a staggering pace of change," the foundation said. One of his books, "Oracle Bones," takes its name from an article he wrote for The New Yorker about the tragedy of a modern-day Chinese scholar and the history of Chinese writing. Check out "Oracle Bones" to see how Hessler works his magic.

Check out today's story about the MacArthur awards, and don't miss this spotlight on University of Washington computer scientist Shwetak Patel.

National Academies Communication Awards:

Annual prizes are awarded in four categories — books, film/radio/TV, magazines/newspapers and online — by the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine, with support by the W.M. Keck Foundation. I won the online award in 2008 and served as a judge this year. Here are the 2011 winners, with quotes from the academies' news release:

Book: "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot, telling the story of the family behind the most famous cancer cells in medical history. "A compelling and graceful use of narrative that illuminates the human and ethical issues of scientific research and medical advances."

Film/radio/TV: "Changing Seas: Sentinels of the Seas," submitted by producer Alexa Elliott and WPBT2 Production Team. This series from South Florida Public Television focuses on the biological riches in the sea, and how human activities are harming (and saving) those treasures. "What Florida's bottlenose dolphins tell us about the health of coastal waters and our own exposure to chemical contaminants."

Magazine/Newspaper: "Target: Cancer," a series by the New York Times' Amy Harmon that looks at how cancer therapies are being tested. "The promises and realities of clinical drug trials as seen through the eyes of passionate researchers and worried, sometimes desperate patients."

Online: Dot Earth Blog by Andrew Revkin, a New York Times weblog examining the efforts to balance human affairs with the planet's limits. "Pioneering social media abut the issues of climate and sustainability with worldwide readership and impact." Revkin is the first person to win the Communication Award twice: He was a winner in the magazine/newspaper category in 2003.

For still more science you can read, watch or listen to, check out the list of finalists on the National Academies website.

Science in Society Journalism Awards:

NASAW awards prizes in four categories, for books, science reporting, science reporting for a local or regional audience, and commentary or opinion. Here are this year's winners, with quotes from the judges:

Book: "Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA," by Maryn McKenna. "This is really original reporting; it had wide impact, particularly in the medical community and the infectious disease community in a way that popular science writing often doesn't."

Science reporting: "My Father's Broken Heart: How Putting in a Pacemaker Wrecked My Family's Life," by Katy Butler for New York Times Magazine. "It's a memoir with broad societal impact, and that's rare."

Local/regional reporting: "Power Politics," by Barbara Moran for Boston Globe Magazine, chronicling the science and politics surrounding the decision to close Vermont Yankee, the state's only nuclear power plant. "In the midst of talk of nuclear renaissance, here's this thoughtful, fresh assessment of the nuclear power plant issue."

Commentary/Opinion: "Hot Air," by Charles Homans for Columbia Journalism Review. Homans examines the curious fact that a large number of TV weather anchors don't believe in the scientific evidence for climate change. "I felt this piece just dragged the dirty secret of the whole climate change debate kicking and screaming out into the public."

Victor Cohn Medical Science Reporting Prize:

CASW awards an annual prize for a body of work in medical reporting, and this year's winner is Ron Winslow, The Wall Street Journal's New York-based deputy bureau chief for health and science. Winslow joined the Journal in 1983 as a reporter covering electric utilities and nuclear power, and he's been covering health and medicine for more than three decades. "When I read a Ron Winslow story, I know I'm in completely trustworthy hands," one of the judges said. Among the stories submitted on Winslow's behalf were "Major Shift in War on Cancer," "A New Rx for Medicine" and "The Case Against Stents." Check out the Journal's Winslow file for the latest from Ron. (Disclosure: I'm on CASW's board, but was not a judge for this competition.)

The CLUB Club prize:

I'm awarding a less pricey prize of my own today, to Cosmic Log correspondent Rebecca Roberts for suggesting "1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created" by Charles C. Mann as a selection for the Cosmic Log Used Book Club. The CLUB Club recognizes books with cosmic themes that have been out long enough to show up at your local library or used-book shop. "1493" is unusual in this regard because it was published just last month, but online booksellers are already starting to offer used copies, so it counts.

The book follows up on Mann's earlier book, "1491," which was a CLUB Club selection back in 2006. This sequel focuses on the "Columbian exchange" that followed Christopher Columbus' landing in the New World. Mann makes the case that this marked the start of a grand round of globalization that has continued to this day.

Roberts mentioned the book after I served up 10 suggestions for science-minded summer reading.

"I heard an interview with the author, Charles Mann, on NPR ('Fresh Air With Terry Gross')," Roberts told me in an email. "It was one of those stories where I sat in the car listening until it was over. The part about the earthworms coming over in European ship ballast — that there weren't any earthworms here before, and then they swept through the country like a plague changing everything — I was fascinated. I could almost see computer-generated imagery of that happening as some sort of educational sequence on 'NOVA.' I have a couple of degrees and consider myself well-educated, but I think my mouth was hanging open a bit."

Roberts' suggestion earns her a book from the Cosmic Log shelf, and she's selected "Physics of the Future" by Michio Kaku as her prize. Congratulations to our latest CLUB Club laureate!

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

Astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson will be the host for the new "Cosmos" series.

Three decades after Carl Sagan's original "Cosmos," a new version is heading for the Fox TV network in 2013 ... with some fresh surprises in the mix.

One of the biggest surprises apparently has to do with the guy who helped get the series green-lighted by Fox: Seth MacFarlane, the creator of "Family Guy," a Fox cartoon sitcom that The New York Times calls, ahem, "bawdy and irreverent." But it shouldn't be all that surprising. "Family Guy" has been known to poke fun at scientists as well as the scientifically challenged, and because he was born in 1973, MacFarlane was at the perfect age to start drinking in Sagan's wisdom when the original "Cosmos" appeared in 1980.

The astrophysicist following in Sagan's footsteps for the new 13-episode series will be Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is director of New York's Hayden Planetarium as well as a seasoned author and TV host. Tyson said he and MacFarlane discussed the idea of re-energizing "Cosmos" as a follow-up to a Science and Entertainment Exchange session they both attended.

"It was his vision that any 'Cosmos' that's done today needs to reach the kinds of people who wouldn't otherwise think about science," Tyson told me. "Fox is not exactly known for its science shows. You put a science program on Fox, people will sit up and take notice."

Tyson put MacFarlane in touch with Ann Druyan, Sagan's widow and co-founder of Cosmos Studios, who will serve as an executive producer and writer for the new series.

Strong pitch
Druyan recounted how MacFarlane made a strong pitch for the concept with Fox executives. "He said that if he personally had to pay half of the cost of the pilot out of his own pocket, he would do it," Druyan told me. But it didn't have to come to that. Once Fox Broadcasting chairman Peter Rice started watching Sagan's recorded "Cosmos" shows with his family, he was hooked.

Now Druyan and astrophysicist Steven Soter are hard at work, writing the scripts for the new series. Both of them also worked with Sagan on the original "Cosmos."

"Steve and I have been thinking about this and working on this for many years," Druyan said. "This will be completely original, but it will be 'Cosmos.' ... We know 'Cosmos' when we see it, and this is 'Cosmos.'"

The original series delved into the nature of life (earthly and extraterrestrial), the universe and everything, all from the perspective of Sagan's "personal voyage" of scientific discovery. If you haven't seen it, you simply have to check out "Cosmos" on Hulu.

Thirty-three years after "Cosmos" came out, the book based on the series is still No. 1 on Amazon's astronomy best-seller list. Dryuan said she's "so proud and so happy" to hear that the original "Cosmos" is so revered, and that the new "Cosmos" is so anxiously anticipated.

"I think there's been a real hunger in our society of late for getting back to a time when the revelations of science can command attention on prime-time television," she said.

'Cosmos'-ness meets Neilness
Druyan was reluctant to reveal any of the new twists that she and Soder might work into the new scripts. "We want to save a lot of surprises," she said. But she assured me that Tyson would be much more than a Sagan clone.

"We picked Neil for his 'Neilness,' and we wouldn't dream of making him impersonate Carl," she said. "We picked him because he has that same kind of charismatic passion to communicate the wonders revealed by science. But we are writing this for him, in his voice. You'll be feeling the 'Cosmos'-ness of it, but I know Neil will be bringing what is so special about him to this presentation."

Cornell

Astrophysicist Carl Sagan (1934-1996) was the host of the first "Cosmos" series, which premiered in 1980.

The 52-year-old Tyson, who is seven years older than Sagan was when the first "Cosmos" premiered, voiced a similar sentiment.

"I cannot be Carl Sagan. I can only be myself," he told me. "But we both, from a very early age, were looking up and wondering about the universe. ... To the extent that we overlap, it's not that I'm cueing off Carl Sagan, it's that we're both cueing off a common experience that every astrophysicist has."

Tyson said one of the secrets of Sagan's success was his ability to play the role of a "tour guide" to the cosmos, rather than a teacher at the front of a classroom.

"What people remember the most about 'Cosmos,' and what it did best, and what I don't think has been duplicated, is the effort to convey the meaning of science to a citizen of planet Earth," Tyson said. "'Cosmos' brought science to the public in a way that meant something to their relationship to each other, to the world and to the universe."

Tyson said some of the tools that Sagan brought to the task will return in updated form for the new "Cosmos." For example, Sagan illustrated the long sweep of the universe's 13.7 billion-year existence by condensing it into a 12-month "Cosmic Calendar." If the universe began on Jan. 1, our solar system was formed on Sept. 1, life arose on Earth on Sept. 21 — and the human species made its appearance after 10 p.m. on the last day of the year.

"We have other stories to tell, to place on that calendar," Tyson said. And he can hardly wait to tell them.

"This new 'Cosmos' is overdue, and I'm honored to be a part of that," Tyson said.

More about 'Cosmos' and Carl Sagan:

• Gospels of science
• Carl Sagan's spiritual quest
• From 2005: 'Cosmos' reborn

"Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey" is due to premiere in 2013 on Fox, with same-night encores of each episode airing on the National Geographic Channel. The series will be produced by Druyan's Cosmos Studios. Executive producers include Druyan, MacFarlane, Cosmos Studios President Mitchell Cannold and Allan Butler of the National Geographic Channel.

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.

Science / AAAS

Reconstruction of a red apple with a green leaf in three dimensions using surface plasmon holograms

A new technique to produce full-color holograms that stay the same when viewed from any angle could usher in a day when we plop down on the couch and watch 3-D TV without optical illusions.

Current methods for creating 3-D images are based on producing a separate image for the left and right eyes. "Inside the brain we reconstruct the 3-D, so it is sort of an illusion," optical physicist Satoshi Kawata of Osaka University of Japan explains in a video made available to reporters.

He and colleagues instead made 3-D color holograms that can be viewed with the naked eye and don't change color no matter what angle they are viewed from. They did this by harnessing so-called surface plasmons, which Kawata describes as "the collective electron oscillations traveling on a very thin metal film."

The researchers coat the metal film onto a light sensitive material called photoresist that contains a hologram made with red, green, and blue lasers. The photoresist hologram rests on a thin glass plate. A corrugated layer of silver is laid on top of the photoresist to help guide the holograph's light waves.

The surface plasmons in the metal film are excited using white light. The angle of the incoming light determines which plasmons are excited and diffracted by the hologram, reconstructing the light waves reaching the viewers eyes so that the 3-D image appears.

"No one has thought to use plasmons for display applications, so it was fun for me," Kawata told Wired Science. "I just wanted to demonstrate that this could be done. But I hope people would be interested in thinking seriously to use this technology for larger-scale 3-D display."

Before it goes big time, however, the technology needs to be scaled up — the current images are a few centimeters across. In addition, the images are static, not moving picture such as film or TV.

A paper describing the research appears in the April 8 issue of Science.

Update for 6:20 p.m. ET: Check out videos of a hologram demonstration and an interview with Kawata, available via EurekAlert.

Tip o' the Log to Lisa Grossman at Wired Science

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).

Mark Ben Holzberg / Fox Broadcasting via AP

John Noble, left, plays a charmingly mad scientist who assists an FBI agent (Anna Torv, wearing the electrodes) and his own son (Josh Jackson, at right) on the Fox sci-fi show "Fringe." Jasika Nicole (seen in the background) also stars.

When it comes to mad scientists, it's hard to top Dr. Walter Bishop, the eccentric genius at the heart of the Fox TV series "Fringe" —but some of the most famous figures in scientific history have come pretty close. You could even argue that their eccentricity played a role in their scientific success.

At least that's what Baltimore science teacher John Monahan argues in his book, "They Called Me Mad: Genius, Madness and the Scientists Who Pushed the Outer Limits of Knowledge." Today, some of history's most prominent scientists might well have been diagnosed with mental conditions such as Asperger's syndrome or obsessive-compulsive disorder, he said.

"The popular wisdom is that you've got to be kind of 'off,'" he told me. "My take on it is, yeah, in a way, it did help them look at things from a different perspective, to see outside the box, to see stuff that other people hadn't recognized even though they were looking at the same thing. Those sorts of brain differences may be very important to being considered a genius."

And if the differences come out as charming eccentricities, as they do in the case of the fictional Dr. Bishop, so much the better. Here's a guy who spent years in a mental hospital ... who keeps a cow in his lab so he can have fresh milk on demand ... who fantasizes about pancakes as he does brain surgery ... and who blurts out, "Let's go synthesize some LSD!"

They called Tesla mad
No doubt we'll spot more of Walter's eccentricities in a series of new "Fringe" episodes starting tonight, and marvel over the madness of it all. But if Walter Bishop could travel back in time, he might find a kindred spirit in Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), a real-life genius who was equally as eccentric. For example, Tesla would stay in a hotel room only if its room number was divisible by three, and he reportedly became so attached to a pigeon he fed that he was devastated when the bird died.

Bishop may have invented a sparking and sizzling contraption that could thrust him and his "Fringe" teammates into a parallel universe (fictional!), but Tesla invented sparking and sizzling contraptions that opened the way for modern-day AC electrical current and future-day beamed power (fact!).

Tesla's life provides a textbook case on the potential pitfalls of a mad-scientist image. He was engaged in a years-long battle with another famous inventor, Thomas Edison, over whether AC or DC would win out as the standard for electrical distribution. "Edison would use publicity to portray Tesla as a mad scientist, a crackpot, in order to diminish the standing of AC," Monahan said. For example, Edison had an elephant and other animals electrocuted in an effort to show the public that AC was too dangerous. (Which doesn't sound like all that sane of a publicity strategy to me.)

Ultimately, the supposedly mad scientist prevailed. "Tesla won that battle," Monahan said.

Another mad-scientist duel took place after the development of the atomic bomb: After World War II, the Manhattan Project's scientific director, J. Robert Oppenheimer, didn't want the U.S. government to build a more powerful hydrogen bomb. But his rival on the research team, Edward Teller, persuaded the government to move ahead with the H-bomb project. Teller prevailed in part because he was able to tar Oppenheimer with the "mad scientist" brush, Towson University's Glen Scott Allen told the Why Files. (Allen has written his own book about scientific personalities, titled "Master Mechanics and Wicked Wizards.") 

Archimedes and Frankenstein
Monahan traces the real-life history of mad scientists back to Archimedes (287-212 B.C.), who is known for running out into the streets of Syracuse naked after figuring out the principle of buoyancy in his bathtub. The best-known fictional tale of a mad scientist came much later, of course, in the form of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's 1818 novel about Victor Frankenstein. Shelley's classic was inspired by experiments in galvanism, which involved animating frog legs (or even the corpses of criminals) by jolting them with electricity.

The tail end of the Frankenstein saga has a real-life parallel in the story of Joseph Priestley, the 18th-century English scientist and clergyman who is credited with the discovery of oxygen and the invention of carbonated water. Priestley's political and religious views got him into so much trouble that rioters burned down his house and his laboratory. Eventually, Priestley and his family fled to America, where the scientist spent the rest of his life.

"He ended up being literally driven from England by a torch-wielding mob," Monahan said. (For more on Priestley's life and times, check out "The Invention of Air" by Steven Johnson.)

The present and future of mad scientists
You probably wouldn't call Priestley "mad" in the psychological sense of the word. In fact, psychiatrist Arnold Ludwig reviewed the biographies of more than 1,000 famous people and reported that the lifetime prevalence of psychiatric disorders for the natural scientists on the list was 28 percent — lower than that for the general population. (The comparable number for creative writers and artists, however, was a maddening 73 to 87 percent.)

Other studies have suggested that the cluster of characteristics associated with highly creative people can sometimes look a lot like the signs of mental maladjustment — for example, unconventional beliefs, nonconformity and defocused attention.

"Psychopathology is by no means a sine qua non of creativity," Dean Keith Simonton, a psychologist at the University of California at Davis, reported in one research paper. "Instead, it is probably more accurate to say that creativity shares certain cognitive and dispositional traits with specific systems, and that the degree of that commonality is contingent on the level and type of creativity that an individual displays." 

The specialties of fictional mad scientists tend to change with the times. For Victor Frankenstein, it was reanimating stitched-together cadavers. For Walter Bishop, it's creating interdimensional portals. And Monahan expects that genetic engineering and nanotechnology will become the hot topics for tomorrow's mad scientists. "If I were going write a mad-scientist story set 100 years in the future, that's probably what I'd go for," he told me.

But Monahan wonders if mad scientists will eventually become as obsolete as Tesla's sparking and sizzling coils. In the old days, he said, cutting-edge science was primarily the domain of experimenters working in relative isolation.

"Now science is different," Monahan said. "Now, if you're a scientist, you're probably working for a university or a large corporation or some other large group. It's much more of a cooperative kind of thing. So when you look at the science now that's pushing the envelope — genetic engineering, nanotechnology, that sort of thing — really, it's more of a faceless kind of thing. You don't have this mad-scientist face on it. But the anonymous, corporate world that's behind that is just as threatening. A lot of folks are just as afraid of it nowadays, and you see that reflected in a lot of movies and TV shows."

Like "Fringe," for example. One of the frequent foils for Dr. Bishop and the gang is a mega-conglomerate named Massive Dynamic. (Slogan: "What Don't We Do?") If it comes down to a charmingly mad scientist against a faceless mad corporation, I'll go with the scientist. How about you? Feel free to weigh in with your thoughts about the way science is done, in fiction and in real life, by leaving a comment below. 

More about mad science:

• History reveals: Tesla totally awesome!
• Mad science? Growing meat without animals
• Mad scientists use tarantulas to terrify
• The 10 greatest fictional inventors of all time
• Science Olympiad: The Science of 'Fringe'
• The Mad Scientist Network
• Workman's Mad Science Club (with experiments!)

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the blog's Facebook page or following b0yle on Twitter.

BBC

Fans of the British television series Dr. Who have long wished for a sonic screwdriver of their own. Scientists at Bristol University are working to make their wishes come true.

Add the sonic screwdriver wielded by TV's favorite Time Lord in Britain's hit sci-fi series "Doctor Who" to the list of seemingly far-fetched gadgets and technologies wending their way to gift boxes in the real world.

The sonic screwdriver on the little screen is truly a remarkable device -- helping the Doctor do everything from opening doors to detecting land mines and controlling the space-and-time-traveling vehicle called TARDIS.

The device under development by engineers at Bristol University is more mundane than the fictional sonic screwdriver, but it's still impressive. It uses ultrasonic waves, which are beyond the scope of human hearing, to apply forces to objects.

Bristol University says the ultrasonic-wave generator is already being tested as a manufacturing tool to put parts together and, in the medical field, to separate diseased cells from healthy cells. The engineers are now figuring out how to spin the ultrasonic waves to create a twisting force similar to a tornado, which they say could be used to undo screws. Rotating ultrasonic fields could also act like the head of a real screwdriver.

"However far-fetched the Time Lord's encounters may seem, there are engineers and scientists out there who are using their skills to bring the magic to life," Professor Bruce Drinkwater, who is developing the technology, said in a news release.

Drinkwater is teaming up with a British science and engineering celebration called The Big Bang to use the buzz over the device to inspire young minds. The event is due to take place in London from March 10 to 12.

The screwdriver joins a host of other sci-fi concepts that are inspiring real-world technologies -- including the far-fetched wizardry that gets Harry Potter and his gang out of binds, and teleportation a la Star Trek. Follow the links below to check out what's within our grasp.

More technologies inspired by fiction:

• Reality check for 'Trek' tech
• Science spins within 'The Core'
• Harry Potter technology coming your way
• Harry Potter's hallowed high tech
• Air Force invests in 'Batman' technologies for special forces
• New Iron Man suit is faster, stronger than predecessor

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).

There's a certain grace to the interplay of DNA and RNA molecules ... and the scientists who study those molecules can be graceful as well. Evidence for that hypothesis is provided by the winners of this year's "Dance Your Ph.D." contest, led by Carleton University researcher Maureen McKeague. The journal Science has sponsored the contest annually since 2008 to reward efforts that transform research into interpretive dance. In this case, the reward was $1,000, and a rare chance to highlight complex chemistry with jazzy showtunes.

McKeague and her colleagues at Carleton's DeRosa Lab put together a medley to demonstrate a chemical technique known as SELEX, or systemic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment. The technique produces short segments of DNA and RNA called aptamers, in a process that mimics the natural phenomena of evolution and survival of the fittest. McKeague's mission is to find aptamers that can offer a cheap and accurate method to measure levels of the amino acid homocysteine in blood samples. High levels of homocysteine have been linked to cardiovascular disease.

Discoblog's Jennifer Welsh says the soundtrack for the dance of the molecules is "worthy of its own 'Glee' episode." I, for one, would welcome an episode in which the kids in New Directions take their inspiration from biology class. Failing that, I'd love to see a "Dance Your Ph.D." entry that incorporates tunes from "Rocky Horror Picture Show," a la "Glee." Let's take "The Quantum Mechanics of Time Travel Through Post-selected Teleportation" ... and then let's do the time warp again.

Watch videos from all four finalists in the "Dance Your Ph.D. Contest" at the ScienceNow website. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," Alan's book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.