The results are in, and the latest laureates in the Robot Hall of Fame range from the absolutely lovable WALL-E cartoon character to the positively scary BigDog robo-runner. This year's class, announced during a Tuesday night ceremony at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, also includes the pint-sized, soccer-playing NAO humanoid robot and the PackBot bomb-disposal robot.

The Robot Hall of Fame was created in 2003 by Carnegie Mellon University to recognize excellence in robotics technology. More than two dozen machines, real and fictional, have been inducted over the past nine years, but the Class of 2012 is the first to be selected by popular vote instead of a panel of judges.

"More than any previous class of inductees, this group of robots selected by popular vote represents contemporary robotics — robots at the cutting edge of technology — rather than older robots of strictly historical importance," Shirley Saldamarco, the Robot Hall of Fame's director and a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center, said in a news release. "Two of our inductees, NAO and Packbot, are commercially available, and BigDog is still the focus of active research. Even our fictional honoree, WALL-E, is from a movie that's just four years old."

More than 17,000 people from around the world participated in the online vote during August and September, the Hall of fame said. The four laureates were chosen from 12 nominees in the categories of education/consumer, entertainment, industrial/service and research.

Unfortunately, for every winner there are two robots that would probably be saying "it's an honor merely to be nominated." If they could talk, that is. The also-rans include the fictional Johnny 5 from the movie "Short Circuit"; NASA's Robonaut 2 android, which is currently being tested on the International Space Station; and the deep-sea-diving Jason remotely operated vehicle.

Johnny 5, at least, can take solace in the fact that he was the runner-up robot in our People's Choice poll, which brought in more than 3,300 votes. Write-in votes were cast for other fictional fan favorites, such as B9 from "Lost in Space" (DANGER, WILL ROBINSON!); Bender, the alcohol-swigging, politically incorrect robot from the "Futurama" TV series; and the robo-crew from "Mystery Science Theater 3000."

To learn more about the new inductees, check out the videos below — and then click on the Web links for bios on the other machines honored by the Robot Hall of Fame.

2010 honor roll: NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers; Roomba floor-cleaning machine; da Vinci Surgical System; Huey, Dewey and Louie from "Silent Running"; T-800 Terminator from the "Terminator" film series.

2008 honor roll: Lt. Commander Data from "Star Trek: The Next Generation"; the Raibert Hopper, a pioneer in robotic locomotion; NavLab 5, an autonomous minivan; Lego Mindstorms educational robotics kits.

2006 honor roll: Aibo robotic dog; SCARA robotic arm; Gort from "The Day the Earth Stood Still"; David from the movie "A.I."; Maria from the movie "Metropolis."

2004 honor roll: Honda's ASIMO android; the animated Japanese "Astroboy" character; C3PO from the "Star Wars" saga; Robby the Robot from "Forbidden Planet"; and Shakey the Robot, a mobile robot that could figure out how to get around a room.

2003 honor roll: Mars Pathfinder's Sojourner rover; GM's Unimate assembly-line robotic arm; R2-D2 from "Star Wars"; HAL 9000 from "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.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. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Paleontologists are still debating whether dinosaurs met their doom quickly or gradually, due to a catastrophic cosmic impact — but thanks to a crazy YouTube video, you can watch the "domino-saurs" die out in a minute and a half.

The way it's portrayed by FlippyCat (a.k.a. Randy Granger of Winnipeg, Canada), a little gray block of dominoes from outer space sets off a chain reaction that spreads across the globe — killing off cute little baby dinosaurs, smashing a big old sauropod to bits and tumbling the bones of a dinosaur skeleton.

It always takes more time to build things up than to knock them down, and that was the case for the demise of the domino-saurs. "This took 38.5 hours of setup time, over about two weeks," FlippyCat wrote. Once you see the behind-the-scenes footage that follows the initial sequence, you'll understand why that is. And you'll probably continue clicking to see some of FlippyCat's other projects, including a domino interpretation of Psy's "Gangnam Style" viral video.

In reality, the death of the dinosaurs took much longer than a minute and a half, and some paleontologists suspect the biggest dinosaurs were already on the way out when that big asteroid hit Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago.

More about the dinosaurs' demise:

• 'Rock-solid' case: Asteroid killed the dinosaurs
• Theory about dino-killing firestorm questioned
• Some dinosaurs survived asteroid impact
• Were the dinosaurs done in by gas?

Tip o' the Log to Brian Switek at Dinosaur Tracking.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.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. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

As the impresario behind the Ig Nobel Prizes, Marc Abrahams is skilled at sniffing out what seems to be silly science — but often, there's a practical point behind the seeming silliness.

Take Elena Bodnar's bra, for example. No, really. Take it. The bra that Bodnar invented can be converted into two filter masks in the event of a Chernobyl-style radiation leak or other emergency. That combination of laughability and practicality is what earned the Ukrainian physician an Ig Nobel Prize for Public Health in 2009.

Abrahams recounts Bodnar's achievement and many other Ig-worthy innovations in a newly published book, "This Is Improbable," and he'll be adding to the store on Thursday night during the 2012 Ig Nobel Prize ceremony at Harvard University. The webcast gets under way at 7:15 p.m. ET. There'll be paper airplanes flying, Nobel laureates officiating, and opera singers premiering a work titled "The Intelligent Designer and the Universe."

You can expect this year's prizes to highlight improbable but not totally impractical scientific findings such as these nuggets from "This Is Improbable":

• Which ear is better for detecting when someone is telling a lie? If you can only afford to listen with one ear, make it the left one. A 1993 study published in the journal Neuropsychologia found that people did marginally better at discerning truth and lies when they heard it with the left ear only, as opposed to the right ear only. "It works, to the extent it works, only when a man does the lying," Abrahams writes. 

• How can you keep your stamina up when singing at a karaoke bar? A 2003 study published in the Journal of Voice found that karaoke singers who kept themselves hydrated and took one-minute breaks between songs were able to keep singing for more than 100 minutes, as opposed to the 85-minute average for those who weren't allowed to have rest or rehydration. However, the scientists found that there was no difference in the quality of the singing.

• What's the best way to choose up sides for a basketball team? If team captains take alternate turns, the captain who chooses first gets an unfair advantage. It's fairer to go with an ABBABAAB pattern: Captain A makes choice No. 1, Captain B chooses No. 2 and 3, A chooses 4, B chooses 5, A chooses 6 and 7, B chooses 8. The same rule applies to pouring cups of coffee from a coffeepot, by the way. The research was published by the journal Complex Systems in 2003.

• Which restroom stall should I choose? This is one of the great unresolved questions of sanitation science, along with the perennial controversy over toilet-paper orientation. One study suggested that in a four-stall restroom, the stalls on the end are most used. A different study saw indications that there was more action in the middle stalls. "The traces of these intellectual expeditions, deposited over many years in layers upon the ground, form a sort of mental compost," Abrahams writes. "It sits, ripening, for future scholars to uncover."

Abrahams chuckled when I brought up the restroom-stall research during a telephone chat this week. "I think back to that study, and it really doesn't matter," he said. "There are lots of decisions in life you're asked to make every day where it doesn't matter. No matter what stall you choose, there's paper in all of 'em."

But in some cases, even Abrahams derives practical benefit from the strange studies that wind up on the Ig Nobel list. For example, Stanford University philosopher John Perry won the Literature Prize last year for his theory of structured procrastination. Simply put, if you're avoiding the No. 1 task on your to-do list, do task No. 2, 3 or 4 instead. It's even better if the unpleasant task on the top of your list is something you don't really need to do after all.

"When I read that, it really did change things for me," Abrahams said. "I adopted that as one of my personal guides every day. All day long, I'm cheating myself, happily."

The lesson is that seemingly silly science can change your life. That came through loud and clear in last week's Golden Goose Awards, which honored the folks behind the development of lasers, glow-in-the-dark proteins and coral-inspired bone grafts. All three of those innovations sprang from research projects that were at one time or another written off as frivolous or useless. Who knows? Maybe the same story will be told about Thursday night's Ig Nobel Prize winners.

"When anybody looks at any of these people and what they've done, however stunning the story is that you're seeing, that really is just the start of a much better and longer story," Abrahams said. "Unless that person got killed while doing it."

More seemingly silly science:

• 2011 Ig Nobels: Pee pressure and beer-loving bugs
• 2010 Ig Nobels: Slime mold wins again!
• 2009 Ig Nobels: Bra inventor and milkologists
• 2008 Ig Nobels: Formula for Ig fame? Strippers and Coke
• 2007 Ig Nobels: Viagra-using hamsters and the 'gay bomb'
• 2006 Ig Nobels: The science of a blackboard screech
• 2005 Ig Nobels: Fake dog testicles win Ig Nobel acclaim
• 2004 Ig Nobels: Inventors of the comb-over honored
• Book excerpt: The world's wackiest research
• Funny science sparks a serious political spat
• Where do socks go? Silly mysteries solved
• NBC News' 2012 Weird Science Awards
• NBC News' 2011 Weird Science Awards
• NBC News' 2010 Weird Science Awards
• NBC News' 2009 Weird Science Awards
• NBC News' 2008 Weird Science Awards
• Still more whimsy from Cosmic Log

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.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. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Neil Armstrong's picture shines out from a TV screen during today's memorial service in Washington.

Even his friends acknowledge that it wasn't easy to make Neil Armstrong laugh: One of his crewmates on the historic Apollo 11 mission in 1969, Michael Collins, recalled this week that history's first moonwalker "always seemed serious and businesslike, but you could make him laugh if you tried."

Armstrong could make others laugh, too: That came through in a couple of the memories his friends shared today at the national memorial service at Washington National Cathedral. Here are two tales that sparked laughs amid the tears:

Apollo 17 commander Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon, recalled that Armstrong was once asked how he felt when he was guiding the Eagle lunar module down to the moon's surface with only 15 seconds' worth of fuel left. The way Cernan remembered the story, Armstrong thought for a moment and answered, "Well, when the gauge says empty, we all know there's a gallon or two left in the tank." When the laughter subsided, Cernan added, "Now there is a man who has always been in control of his own destiny. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is vintage Neil Armstrong."

Former Treasury Secretary John Snow, a golfing buddy of Armstrong's, said the astronaut was notorious for sizing up his shots meticulously, to the point of calculating how dew on the green would affect the roll of a putt. "You'd sometimes wonder, 'Neil, are you ever going to hit the ball?" Snow said. "He couldn't help being the engineer."

For more about the lighter as well as the heavier side of Neil Armstrong, check out the complete video of today's ceremony on Ustream, NASA's Flickr photo gallery and this memorial video:

More about Neil Armstrong:

• Nation bids farewell to first moonwalker
• Neil Armstrong chose burial at sea
• Here's how to honor Neil Armstrong
• Lunar pioneers and VIPs pay respects
• PhotoBlog: Tributes from family, friends, nation
• Neil Armstrong, first to walk on moon, dies at 82
• Armstrong family request: Wink at the moon
• Neil Armstrong would still choose to go to the moon

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.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. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Daily Echo via BNPS.co.uk

Eight-year-old Charlie Naysmith shows off the piece of ambergris he found on the beach at Hengistbury Head on the coast of southern England.

An 8-year-old boy in England could be up to $63,000 richer, thanks to a piece of solidified whale vomit he picked up on the beach. The chunk may look like a yellow-brownish rock, but it's actually a primo piece of ambergris, an expensive perfume ingredient that is, um, spewed out by whales.

Charlie Naysmith stumbled upon the loaf-sized lump at Hengistbury Head, on the southern coast of England, the Bournemouth Echo reported over the weekend.

As far as Charlie was concerned, it was just a seaside curiosity. But after doing some research, he and his family determined that the curious lump could be worth somewhere between £10,000 and £40,000 ($15,850 to $63,350).

"We have discovered it is quite rare and are waiting for some more information from marine biology experts," the boy's father, Alex, told the Echo.

Charlie is reportedly thinking about using the money to build a house for animals. But first, he and his parents might want to get that expert opinion. It turns out that the ambergris trade can get pretty sticky.

'Floating Gold'
Ambergris is a waxy, bile-like substance that builds up in the intestines of sperm whales, apparently to ease the passage of hard material such as squid beaks through a whale's digestive tract. It's often characterized as whale vomit, and although that's fine as a family-friendly description, the stuff is more widely thought to come out of the whale's back end rather than its front end.

Fresh ambergris smells like fresh whale poop, but after a long period of seasoning and hardening in the ocean, it takes on a more delicate odor. It's been variously compared to the aroma of tobacco, the scent of an old wooden church, the fragrance of seaweed, or the smell of rubbing alcohol without the pungency.

"The problem with trying to describe the smell of ambergris is that it really only smells like ambergris," Christopher Kemp, a biologist and neuroscientist who's written a book about the substance, told Bloomberg Businessweek's Eric Spitznagel.

The title of Kemp's book? "Floating Gold."

The scent of ambergris is what makes it so valuable. The substance has been used as an incense, fragrance, flavoring, remedy or aphrodisiac in many cultures, going back to ancient Egypt and China. Herman Melville devoted a whole chapter of "Moby Dick" (Chapter 92) to a discussion of ambergris and how highly prized it was in 19th-century society. "Who would think, then, that such fine ladies and gentlemen should regale themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of a sick whale!" Melville wrote.

More recently, ambergris — or ambrein, a compound extracted from ambergris — has been used as a fixative or fragrance amplifier rather than the main ingredient in perfumes. Ambergris' selling price has been quoted at $10 to $50 per gram, depending on the quality of the specimen. (The Echo estimates that the lump found at Hengistbury Head weighs about 600 grams, which suggests that Charlie shouldn't count on building a $63,000 house for his animals.)

Underground trade
The bad news is that the trade in ambergris isn't what it used to be, in large part due to the endangered status of sperm whales. By some accounts, it's illegal to sell the stuff in many jurisdictions, including the United States. There are some traders who dispute that interpretation of anti-whaling laws, but the stigma has driven perfume companies to look for plant-based substitutes such as labdanum, or synthetic scents such as Ambrox. (University of British Columbia researchers reported earlier this year that a balsam-fir gene may provide a path to cheaper ambergris-like compounds.)

Maybe it's the whiff of illegality, or maybe it's just that the stuff is so expensive — but for whatever reason, there's a clandestine character to the modern-day ambergris market. One of the subjects Kemp interviewed for his book is a full-time dealer on New Zealand's North Island, named Adrienne Beuse. Last year, she was involved in a huge ambergris deal that probably saw hundreds of thousands of dollars change hands. "It was a lot of money — that's all I can say," one of the sellers said.

The way Beuse tells it, New Zealand's choicest hunting grounds for ambergris are ruled by a gang of aggressive collectors and traders — a gang that doesn't shy away from violence to defend their turf. "They're called the Beach Mafia up here," Kemp quotes Beuse as saying. "They claim a proprietary interest in the beach. They are defending, I guess in their minds, their territory. And it's worth a lot of money. If a piece worth $50,000 washes up, they don't want anyone else to find it."

It sounds as if Charlie is lucky to live in southern England rather than northern New Zealand. But he better watch his back.

More about whales:

• TODAY video: Humpback whale 'waves' at boaters
• Flash interactive: All about whales
• Whale poo: Miracle grow for the ocean
• Dog stars in killer-whale stress study

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.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. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Arthur Anker via Flickr

Zoologist Arthur Anker's picture of a Venezuela poodle moth has captured the curiosity of Internet onlookers.

It's been compared to a fluffy dog, a Pokemon character and a Power Rangers villain — but whatever it is, the Venezuelan poodle moth has captured the Internet like Mothra in a bad Japanese movie. Now it's up to the experts to figure out exactly where this moth belongs on the tree of life.

The first thing to emphasize is that the poodle moth is no phony concoction like the jackalope, dogerpillar or chupacabra. Its cute, furry, scary look is totally in line with what's expected for a neotropical ornamental moth. In fact, cryptozoologist Karl Shuker found a similar picture of a white, fuzzy critter known as Diaphora mendica, or muslin moth, a member of the lepidopteran family Arctiidae.

The Venezuelan poodle moth is even more bizarre-looking than your run-of-the-mill muslin moth. That's largely due to the details that zoologist Arthur Anker of Brazil's Federal University of Ceara captured in the photograph he took in the Gran Sabana region of Venezuela's Canaima National Park several years ago.

The nearly head-on perspective, without any sense of size scale, led my colleague Rosa Golijan to compare the bug to a Power Rangers villain — for example, Finster, the loyal servant of Rita Repulsa. However, if this showy critter is indeed a neotropical relative of the muslin moth, it's much more benign: Such moths feed on herbaceous plants and cause little trouble. They're also relatively small: The muslin moth's wingspan amounts to little more than an inch (28 to 38 millimeters, according to the UKmoths website).

Shuker would love to nail down the flying poodle's precise species name: "Is it indeed a member of Arctiidae, or are its taxonomic affinities elsewhere? Could it even be a species still undescribed by science? Thousands of new insects are discovered every year in the South American rain forests, so it would be by no means unusual if Art's Venezuelan poodle moth proved to be one, too," he wrote on the ShukerNature blog.

The fact that there are so many types of moths in the Arctiidae family — an estimated 11,000 species around the world, including 6,000 known species in the neotropical region — would make it tricky to classify this particular insect, unless there's an actual specimen in hand that can be sampled for genetic analysis. Nevertheless, we've put out our own inquiries with lepidopterists, and if we hear anything back on the bizarre case of the Venezuelan poodle moth, we'll let you know in an update.

More about bizarre bugs:

• Parasite named after reggae star Bob Marley
• World's biggest bug? That depends ...
• Monster bug? It's no joke
• Eight insects with the 'ick' factor

Tip o' the Log to GrindTV.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.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. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Hanna-Barbera / TriStar / Disney / Pixar

Rosie of "The Jetsons," Johnny 5 from "Short Circuit" and WALL-E are vying for a place in the Robot Hall of Fame.

For the past nine years, the Robot Hall of Fame has relied solely on expert judges to dole out its honors — but this time, the people will get their say. Should Rosie, Johnny 5 or WALL-E join other robotic greats such as R2-D2 and C-3PO in the hall of honor?

This competition isn't just for fictional robots: Internet voting is being conducted to select robot laureates in four categories, from a field of 12 nominees. The idea of factoring in the popular vote is a first for the Robot Hall of Fame, which was created in 2003 by Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

"The technology and art of robotics are advancing at an increasingly rapid rate, and so the Robot Hall of Fame also must evolve," Shirley Saldamarco, the hall of fame's director and a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center, said in an announcement kicking off the voting. "As more students, workers and consumers become accustomed to robots, it seems like a natural step to give the public a voice in selecting inductees."

The 12 finalists were nominated by 107 robotics experts, industry leaders and robo-aficionados. You can cast a ballot for one robot in each of the four categories by stepping into this online voting booth, between now and Sept. 30. The popular vote will be factored in with a survey of the robotics experts, on a half-and-half basis, to determine the winners.

The newly chosen robots will be inducted into the Hall of Fame on Oct. 23 at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, in conjunction with the RoboBusiness Leadership Summit. "We love robots, and we love to see their inventors and creators get the public recognition they deserve," summit chairman Dan Kara said.

The October induction ceremony also will pay tribute to the 2010 class of Hall of Fame robots: NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers, iRobot's Roomba vacuum cleaner, the da Vinci surgical system, the three robots from the film "Silent Running" (Huey, Dewey and Loui) and T-800, the character played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the "Terminator" film series. To get more information about the ceremony — and to buy tickets at $99 a pop — check out this Eventbrite webpage.

Here's the full list of this year's nominees in the four categories:

Education and consumer robots:

• Aldebaran Robotics' NAO, a 22-inch-tall humanoid that is widely used in education (and robo-soccer games) worldwide.
• iRobot's Create, a programmable robot based on the Roomba vacuum cleaner design.
• VEX Robotics Design System, a kit for designing and building robots for the classroom and for competitions.

Entertainment robots:

• WALL-E, the waste-collecting robot that's the hero of the 2008 animated film of the same name, presented by Pixar and Disney.
• Johnny 5, a prototype military robot that learns to reject destruction and embrace life in the 1986 movie "Short Circuit."
• Rosie, a robotic maid with a mind of her own who took care of her human family on "The Jetsons," a 1960s animated sitcom from Hanna-Barbera.

Industrial and service robots:

• iRobot's Packbot, which takes care of bomb disposal and other dangerous assignments for the U.S. military.
• Kiva System's autonomous warehouse robots, which speed the process of customer orders. (Amazon.com acquired Kiva this year.)
• Jason, a remotely operated vehicle built by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to explore the deep ocean.

Research robots:

• BigDog, a four-legged robot that's being developed by Boston Dynamics for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to walk, run or climb over rough terrain with heavy loads.
• PR2, a two-armed robot built by Willow Garage that can navigate human environments and has the dexterity to grasp and manipulate objects.
• Robonaut, a dexterous, two-armed robot developed by NASA and GM to help humans work in space. The latest version, Robonaut 2, was delivered to the International Space Station last year.

In addition to the Robot Hall of Fame voting, you can help us continue the tradition of choosing an extra Robot People's Choice for Cosmic Log. Feel free to make your suggestions below, and I'll try to get a sense of the people's will. If you're nominating a People's Choice robot, you should know that all the robots we've mentioned so far are ineligible, as well as the robots that have already been inducted into the Hall of Fame. Here's the list:

• 2010: Spirit and Opportunity; Roomba; da Vinci; Huey, Dewey and Louie; T-800 Terminator.
• 2008: Commander Data, the Raibert Hopper, NavLab 5, Lego Mindstorms robot kit.
• 2006: AIBO, Scara, David (from "A.I."), Maria (from "Metropolis"), Gort (from "The Day the Earth Stood Still").
• 2004: ASIMO, Shakey, Astro Boy, Robby the Robot, C-3PO.
• 2003: HAL 9000, Mars Pathfinder's Sojourner rover, R2-D2, Unimate.

That still leaves plenty of robots to nominate, including the newest star, NASA's Curiosity rover. Feel free to pass along your own People's Choice picks, or take issue with the Hall of Fame selections that have been made so far, by leaving a comment below.

More about robots:

• Gallery: Movie robots to be remembered
• Robots that pop popcorn and make sandwiches
• Gallery: Nine jobs that humans may lose to robots
• Robots get their own encyclopedia

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.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. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

They're not NASA, and now Mars Curiosity and the world knows it. And that's awesome.

The latest space-based viral video, titled "We're NASA and We Know It," celebrates all the angles of NASA's $2.5 billion Curiosity rover mission to Mars, from the crazy sky-crane landing to the Mohawk Guy's star-spangled hairdo. "I got stars on my 'hawk, and I ain't afraid to show it," the video's rapper declares.

That rapper may look like a blue-shirted NASA flight director, and it may seem as if the three-minute video was shot at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. But it was actually made in Seattle, by a informal comedy group called Satire, with Cinesaurus video wizard David Hudson as the Mohawk-haired star of the show.

The NASA gear was provided by Anne Ketola, who used to work at Mission Control in Houston, and the actors were green-screened to make it look as if they were sitting at JPL.

Even though NASA had no hand in making the video, the group received a high-level endorsement from the Curiosity rover herself.

"This fan-made video is AWESOME (and I know it)," the rover tweeted. 

Zachary Cohn, who's part of the Satire group as well as the LaughPong YouTube channel and Startup Weekend, said he and his collaborators are "pretty ecstatic" about the shout-out from Curiosity.

"Basically we just take pop culture topics that are being talked about a lot and make funny videos about them," he told me.

The Curiosity mission is extra-special for them. "We really support what NASA is doing," Cohn said. "We're all techie people, and we're all excited about the landing."

Cohn and his friends had a Mars landing party on Sunday night. They wrote the video script on Thursday, filmed it on Saturday, and launched it today. The YouTube video is just building up a head of steam, but it seems certain to win a place among these other science-related viral videos:

• Movie trailer for a Mars thriller
• Particle physics rap becomes YouTube hit
• The spirit of Carl Sagan in song
• Must-see science videos of 2011

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.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. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

It's been a crazy 24 hours for flight director Bobak Ferdowsi, and not just because he and the rest of his team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory landed an SUV on Mars. Ferdowsi has catapulted to Internet fame — thanks to his star-spangled Mohawk hairdo and the warm-hearted hotness he exuded during TV coverage of the Curiosity rover's landing.

He's picked up 20,000-plus Twitter followers, with most of those added just since last night. He's getting come-ons from fans of both sexes ("I'd let that be-mohawked NASA dude land his rover on my red planet any time," one admirer wrote). A Tumblr tribute site has been created in his honor. And there's a widely distributed LOL picture with the caption, "Becomes an Internet sensation ... Too busy landing a robot on Mars to notice."

Well, Ferdowsi has noticed.

"It's a little surreal," he told me this morning. "I'm still just getting over the 'We're on Mars' thing. That's the thing I can't believe."

As Ferdowsi strolls through JPL's campus in Pasadena, Calif., he can't resist going over to teammates for hugs. He's been working at the lab for nine years. For most of that time he's been preparing for the $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission, and particularly for Sunday night's successful landing. These people are not only his co-workers. They're his friends.

"What a wonderful moment to share together," he said.

Ferdowsi has a habit of adopting a fresh hairdo for each of the space missions for which he's at the controls, based on a vote by his teammates. For the Mars mission, they came up with a variety of fashion choices.

"We had a Martian red," he said. "One vote to shave my head. Natural black. Then we had the Captain America look."

He went with the Captain America Mohawk: black hair flecked with blue and red highlights, plus some bleached white stars on the side. He didn't ponder the effect of having his edgy 'do broadcast on NASA TV, and he was so wrapped up in Curiosity's entry, descent and landing that it took him a while to notice he was becoming a star himself. But then the messages and tweets started popping up on his phone.

"I'm looking down, and thinking, 'This is crazy,'" he recalled.

He was back at work today, trying to do his job while coping with media requests and watching the evolution of a meme.

"I am laughing pretty hard at some of the captions," he said. "I think it's hilarious."

I didn't have the nerve to ask him about his, um, personal relationships — but for all his admirers, here are a couple of factoids: He's 32 years old. He's originally from the Bay Area and still has family there. He earned his bachelor's degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from the University of Washington, and he went to MIT to get a master's degree in the same subject.

You can join the Bobak fan club by following @tweetsoutloud. But if his fans really want to get Ferdowsi's attention, they probably shouldn't tweet him a marriage proposal. Instead, they should talk about Mars.

"I hope that they are as excited about Curiosity as I am," the Mohawk Guy said.

Update for 7:35 p.m. ET Aug. 7: Is Mohawk Guy taken? In a follow-up chat with BuzzFeed's Chris Geidner, Ferdowsi reports that he's "dating somebody," and "she's awesome."

"She's put up with me working a lot of long hours on this project, and I am definitely looking forward to things being calmed down a little bit so I can actually hang out with her," Ferdowsi says. A photo on the MemeGenerator website shows Ferdowsi with his arm around a lady friend. The caption reads, "Behind every great Mohawk is a great woman."

Meanwhile, other Internet celebrities are welcoming Mohawk Guy to the fold. Felicia Day told Ferdowsi in a tweet that "your mohawk made my night" — to which Ferdowsi replied, "Your tweet made me blush." Wil Wheaton registered his yen for a NASA Mohawk Guy Fan Club T-shirt — and reportedly put in an order with CafePress. 

More about Mars:

• Mars orbiter spots rover in midair
• Curiosity rover scores touchdown on Mars
• Scientists want to look for Martian life
• Last-minute guide to the Mars landing
• What will we see from Mars, and when will we see it?
•  Why we're obsessed with Mars
• Mars probe provides radiation revelations

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.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. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Koby Barhad / RCA

Koby Barhad's concept for an installation called "All That I Am" suggests creating genetically engineered mice that reflect some of the traits associated with Elvis Presley. It's important to note, however, that no mice have yet been Elvisized.

A British artist’s plan to create a mouse with Elvis Presley’s DNA has set websites buzzing over the past week, but right now it’s nothing more than an art-school concept. And it's not clear whether the concept will ever go any further, due to ethical and legal concerns about blending human and animal DNA.

"The purpose of the work was to raise those almost frightening issues," artist Koby Barhad told me. Mission accomplished, Koby.

Actually, celebrity DNA is quite the commodity. A few years ago, a venture called MyDNAFragrance marketed several perfumes that supposedly reflected the DNA coding of Elvis as well as Michael Jackson and other dead celebs. (Sorry, those celebrity-themed fragrances, including "Blue Suede," are no longer available.) The DNA for that project came from University Archives' collection of historical hair. The Elvis hair that Barhad used came from another source: an eBay vendor who was selling strands for $22. (He says he also bought strands of hair attributed to Princess Diana and President John F. Kennedy.)

Barhad, a 35-year-old MFA student at London's Royal College of Art, said he didn't actually submit the Elvis strands for DNA sequencing. Instead, he conducted a practice run with the aid of a couple of researchers from Imperial College. The scientists analyzed DNA extracted from their own strands of hair, as well as from cheek swabs, to confirm that it would be possible to get some sort of genetic reading from the hair alone.

Barhad was particularly interested in seeing whether the DNA tests could identify a variant of the human ACTN3 gene that has been associated with athletic performance. "We proved that those particular scientists didn't have that gene," he told me. Theoretically, then, the DNA tests might be able to identify the genetic signatures of particular traits in Presley's DNA — although realistically, there's some question about how much the DNA might have degraded over the decades.

The next step in the concept would be to breed mice that reflected that genetic signature. Theoretically, you could insert a string of code from the Elvis genome into the desired mouse gene, through a procedure similar to that used to create lab animals with specific mutations. Barhad said another option would be to identify a genetic twist in the mouse genome that parallels the twist in the Elvis genome. For example, if Presley had a particular mutation of the ACTN3 gene, mice could be bred with a similar mutation.

Koby Barhad / RCA

Koby Barhad's concept envisions a stacked series of mouse cages that reflect different aspects of Elvis Presley's life.

The final step in Barhad's art project, titled "All That I Am," would put the Elvis-themed mice in a variety of postmodernistic cages that reflect phases of the rock star's life: One cage might have a funhouse mirror to enlarge the mouse's image, just as Presley's ego was enlarged by fame's mirror. Another would put the mouse on a treadmill, calling to mind how "Elvis worked himself to death" in his final years.

It's worth emphasizing that the Elvis mice do not exist, despite what some websites initially reported.

"I guess the project created a space to imagine a scenario we are all afraid of and want to experience at the same time," Farhad said in an email, "and that was the reason all the news [sites] published it as if I produced this specific mouse, instead of just suggesting it. The funny, or actually scary, thing is that a place in the U.S. ... already contacted me to buy the specific mice. So I think it kind of proves that it is much more real than I even imagined it would be. I'm still writing emails to everyone saying I didn't actually go as far as producing the clones."

In today's follow-up Skype voice call, Barhad said he had no intention of creating an Elvis mouse. "The thing I'm thinking of doing is having my own mouse" that would reflect his own genetic code, he said.

However, Barhad said he'd have to do some more research before going forward with that part of the art.

"Humanized" versions of genes, such as the FOXP2 gene that's associated with speech, have been inserted in mice for research purposes for years. But it's one thing to do that sort of thing under the stringent guidelines that govern genetic studies, and quite another to do it for an art exhibit — even if it's an exhibit designed to call attention to the controversy over transgenic DNA.

"I'm actually going over the law on that," Barhad told me.

Would it be wise for him do it? Or would Elvis observe that when it comes to splicing celebrity DNA, "only fools rush in"?

More about Elvis ... and DNA:

• Auction house all shook up over Elvis hair
• Arthur C. Clarke's DNA odyssey
• Looking for alien DNA
• Cows make humanized milk — but is it safe?

Tip o' the Log to Wired UK's Ian Steadman.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.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. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Warner Bros.

Batman fires an electromagnetic pulse using an "EMP Blaster," one of the weapons introduced in "The Dark Knight Rises."

Maybe Batman couldn't swoop to safety using his cape as a glider, and maybe psychologists would question his sanity — but even Hollywood's superheroes have to pay some attention to scientific realities.

Striking the right balance between scientific plausibility and dramatic flair is one of the keys to a successful superhero movie, says James Kakalios, who teaches physics at the University of Minnesota and also serves as a consultant for movies such as "The Amazing Spider-Man."

"Hollywood creators appreciate our contributions, for they realize that when the audience is questioning the physics of what they are watching or the authenticity of the laboratory set, that's a moment when they are not paying attention to the story," he wrote in a commentary we published on msnbc.com earlier today.

Here's another angle related to science and technology: Superheroes get extra points on the fan scale if they handle high-tech gadgetry like the EMP Blaster and flying Bat vehicle featured in "The Dark Knight Rises." (We can gloss over the fact that electromagnetic pulses wouldn't be as well-behaved as they appear to be in the movie, or that the kind of propeller-driven Bat shown in the movie is pretty much aerodynamically impossible. And don't get me started on Wayne Enterprises' "clean-energy" fusion reactor.)

Over the past four years, the National Academy of Sciences' Science and Entertainment Exchange has been bringing scientists together with screenwriters, producers and other folks in the entertainment industry to make movies and TV shows more plausible on scientific grounds, if not 100 percent accurate.

Some gaffes slip through — ranging from the constellations in "Titanic" to the distance calculations in "Prometheus" — but the prime directive is to make a connection between real-life science and movie magic. The scientists probably derive more benefit than the filmmakers, because they can use those movies and TV shows as teachable moments. Even the gaffes provide grist for the mental mill.

In an email exchange, Kakalios delved into some of the issues he deals with as an adviser on superhero physics. Here's an edited transcript of the Q&A:

Cosmic Log: Do you find that the spate of superhero movies is sparking scientific studies like the recent one about Batman's cape? Are people more questioning of superpower science because they're seeing more such movies, or have they become inured to the fantasy? Can scientific believability make the difference between a good superhero movie and a bad one? 

James Kakalios: "There certainly have been a lot of superhero movies in the past few years — a Golden Age for Geeks!

"The studios have a vested interest in making sure that the general public is very familiar with these heroes — which opens the door for scientists to leverage this interest and promote real science. David Marshall's article is a good example of using the interest in the new 'Dark Knight Rises' film as a platform to discuss classical mechanics, which typically will not make it into the mainstream press. I also liked the argument from a few years ago which suggested that Superman's powers can be accounted for by a single miracle exception from the laws of nature, involving an ability to manipulate inertia.

"Interestingly enough, Hollywood has been coming to scientists more and more, and early in the scriptwriting process.  They will sometimes use the 'real' science behind the characters as the basis for story lines. The goal is not to make the films 100 percent scientifically accurate, which is beside the point of a fantasy film, but to make it accurate enough that the audience is willing to maintain their suspension of disbelief and become engaged in the story."

Q: You describe the process of translating real science into a "Decay Rate Algorithm" for the latest Spider-Man movie. Are there other aspects of "The Amazing Spider-Man" that you had a hand in enhancing, or at least steering clear of some of the things that strain plausibility?

A: "I discussed with the filmmakers the physics of wall-crawling, at least the way a gecko lizard does it.  I also talked about the fascinating materials science of spider's silk. It's a combination of rigid nanocrystallites for strength, connected by flexible polymers which can stretch, held in a long, fluid-filled channel which uniformly distributes the forces along the length of the webbing.

"Materials scientists would love to be able to mass-produce such webbing, for then we would be able to make lightweight clothing that is stronger than Kevlar. In the past, scientists have crossed a spider's web-making genes with goats, and have raised goats that synthesize spider's silk in their milk. A real-life example of cross-species genetics!"

Q: Are there typical challenges to scientific believability that are associated with specific characters? What would be Spider-Man's scientific Kryptonite?

A: "Spider-Man would have to worry about Teflon surfaces — they would be non-stick for him as well!  Geckos cling to walls through a weak electrostatic force called the Van der Waals attraction. using millions of microscopic fibers in their toes (called setae). Fluctuating charges in these fibers induce oppositely charged fluctuations in the wall. As opposites attract, the fiber is pulled towards the wall. The closer to the wall, the better — which is why the fiber is so small, in order to enhance its surface area-to-volume ratio. The force is very weak, which is why there are millions of fibers to provide sufficient force to hold the gecko up.

"But if the molecules in the walls are such that they resist inducing such fluctuating charges, then the force is inhibited. While artificial gecko tape does stick to Teflon, the van der Waals force is weaker than for other surfaces, and may not be strong enough to hold Spidey up. Whether this is the case or not, it is a great opportunity to discuss real, cutting-edge research in the context of a superhero movie!"

Q: Could you touch on any superpower-like technologies that you've come across in the most recent round of superhero movies?

A: "The first thing I can think of is Captain America's shield, which is a unique alloy of steel and ... Vibranium!  The steel gives it rigidity and strength, and the Vibranium is a made-up mineral in Marvel comics. Found in the African nation of Wakanda, it is extraterrestial in origin, and absorbs all vibrations!

"That makes it the ultimate shock absorber, capable of deflecting even a blow from Thor's hammer, as seen in this summer's 'Avengers' film. The clang we hear when Cap bounces his shield off an opponent thus answers an age-old question in science: What would it sound like if you struck an object which absorbs all vibrations?"

For more insights into superhero science, check out Kakalios' book, "The Physics of Superheroes" — and use your powerful vision to take in the videos and Web links below:

More about superhero science:

• How far off are real 'superhero' powers?
• You, too, can be Iron Man ... almost
• Physics in the realm of Hollywoodland
• The science of Superman

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.