David Lillo / AFP - Getty Images

Comet McNaught shines above Chile in 2007. Will Comet ISON be as bright in 2013?

Next year's most eagerly awaited shows in the skies above might not happen — but that's exactly what makes them so eagerly awaited. There's nothing like uncertainty to build up the drama, and right now, Comet PANSTARRS and Comet ISON are surrounded by bright haloes of uncertainty.

The picture should be getting clearer in the weeks ahead for the comet formally known as C/2011 L4 PANSTARRS, which was discovered in 2011. It'll take a few more months to get a fix on C/2012 S1 ISON, which was first spotted this September. All we can say right now is, if the comets live up to their current high expectations, PANSTARRS could blaze as bright as Venus in March — and then, in November and December, ISON could outshine the moon to the "Comet of the Century."

"If Comet ISON can survive perihelion passage ... then we are almost surely in for a striking display in the morning sky as Comet ISON recedes from the Sun next December," veteran observer John Bortle said this month on the Comets Mailing List. "Its immense tail, partly the result of our extremely favorable viewing circumstances in this case and just as with the Great Comet of 1680, could well result in a tail of amazing length and surface brightness, even if tipped by only tiny, relatively insignificant head."

The best part is that these comets will be visible in the Northern Hemisphere, unlike the spectacles created by Comet McNaught in 2007 and by Comet Lovejoy a year ago. Why let the Southern Hemisphere have all the fun?

PANSTARRS and ISON are just two of the highlights coming up for skywatchers next year. Here's my top-10 list for 2013, plus some bonus picks from Space.com skywatching columnist Joe Rao:

Jan. 2-3 for Quadrantid meteors: If the weather's clear, the Quadrantid meteors should put on serviceable show this year. The Quadrantids are sparked by debris from asteroid 2003 EH1, and appear to emanate from an area of the sky known as Quadrans Muralis, around the northern tip of the constellation Bootes. The peak rate is expected to reach 80 meteors per hour, but the glare of a waning gibbous moon could interfere somewhat. "Unlike the more famous Perseid and Geminid meteor showers, the Quadrantids only last a few hours, so it's the morning of Jan. 3 or nothing," NASA says. Check out NASA's Quadrantids website for a video feed on the nights of Jan. 2-4.

April 25 for partial lunar eclipse: Three eclipses of the moon are coming during 2013 — and although none of them will be spectacular, they're worth keeping an eye on if you're in the right place. The April 25 partial eclipse will be visible from Europe, Africa, Asia and the Pacific. The other two lunar eclipses are a nearly imperceptible hint of a penumbral eclipse on May 25, and a somewhat deeper penumbral eclipse on Oct. 18-19 (visible, at least in part, from the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia). Even if you miss seeing these eclipses with your own eyes, there'll be plenty of photo galleries showing the moon in its best light.

March for Comet PANSTARRS: The comet is due to streak past Earth on March 5 and make its turn around the sun, known as perihelion, on March 9-10. The prime time for observers at mid-northern latitudes will come after perihelion, when PANSTARRS will be visible in the evening sky. On March 12, the comet is expected to share the sunset's afterglow with a beautiful crescent moon.

Issei Kato / Reuters file

Clouds cast a pall over an annular solar eclipse as seen from Hirai Daini Elementary School in Tokyo on May 21, 2012. An annular eclipse is due to occur on May 10, 2013, and in November there'll be a hybrid eclipse that morphs from annularity to totality.

May 9-10 for annular solar eclipse: A "Ring of Fire" eclipse will roll across Australia, Papua New Guinea and the South Pacific, with a partial solar eclipse visible from a wider swath of the Pacific. If past history is any guide, some of us in North America will be watching the event unfold on the evening of the 9th, via webcasts from the scene. 

May 24-28 for planetary party: Mercury, Venus and Jupiter mix it up in western skies over a series of nights in May, with Saturn and the moon adding their shine. The main event may well be the Venus-Jupiter conjunction on May 28 — but it won't be as spectacular as the double-planet feature we saw in February, because this one will take place so soon after sunset. 

June 23 for Supermoon: The moon goes full just after this year's closest approach to Earth, meaning that it'll look 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than it does at maximum distance. Last May's Supermoon made such a splash that I suspect this could turn into an annual moon-watching event. 

Aug. 11-13 for Perseid meteors: Annual meteor showers have their ups and downs, and the advance word is that 2013 will be an "up" year for the Perseids. The moon will be a mere crescent in the morning sky, cutting down on the glare. The flux of shooting stars is expected to be normal, peaking at around 100 meteors per hour.

Oct. 12 for moon observation: International Observe the Moon Night provides an opportunity for veteran skywatchers to show you the moon at its best — no, not during the full moon, but during the first-quarter phase. That's when you can get a good look at the moon's craters and shadowy mountains. Check in with the InOMN website for updates.

Nov. 3 for hybrid solar eclipse: This hybrid is a strange one, starting out as an annular "Ring of Fire" eclipse and turning into a total eclipse as the moon's shadow races across the planet. The track of annularity-totality runs across the Atlantic, goes through the middle of Africa and ends up in Somalia. If you can't afford a cruise or an expedition, keep a watch on the webcasts.

November-December for Comet ISON: Will ISON shine "brighter even than the full moon" a year from now? That seems hard to believe right now, but by next autumn, astronomers should have a good idea just how much of a phenomenon the comet could turn into. NASA's Curiosity rover may be able to snap a picture when ISON passes by Mars in September, and it could become visible to the naked eye in October. It's due to come well within a million miles of the sun at perihelion on Nov. 28 — and that will be the most dramatic moment for skywatchers. Some comets, like last year's Comet Elenin, break up when they slingshot around the sun. Others, like Comet Lovejoy, survive the encounter spectacularly. If ISON lucks out, we could well be raving about the Great Christmas Comet of 2013 by this time next year. (Just don't believe anyone who tells you it's a doomsday comet.)

Bonus round: Over at Space.com, Joe Rao's "13 must-see stargazing events for 2013" also include a close conjunction of the moon and Jupiter on Jan. 21, great evening views of Mercury from Feb. 2 to 23, and a holiday show featuring Venus in December. And don't forget the northern lights: Although auroral displays are hard to predict, the height of the sun's 11-year activity cycle should bring some great light shows to Earth's higher latitudes in 2013. 

Update for 8:50 p.m. ET: British educator-astronomer Stuart Atkinson has set up a blog titled "Waiting for ISON" to monitor the comet countdown. Atkinson is also in charge of "The Road to Endeavour" blog about the Opportunity rover on Mars; and The Gale Gazette, which keeps tabs on NASA's Mars Curiosity mission.

More about the coming comets:

• Video: A comet to watch in 2013
• Flash interactive: Inside a comet
• Comet PANSTARRS could be a stunner (or not)
• Comet ISON just might show up in daytime skies

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.

Long-ago lore still has the power to ignite modern-day controversies: Witness the tempests that were stirred up this year over the Maya calendar, the purported "Gospel of Jesus' Wife," a bone box linked to early Christians, a disputed dinosaur skeleton and the plan to clone a woolly mammoth.

It turned out that there was much more to each of these cases than met the eye. Or sometimes much less. Either way, we'll be hearing more about ancient mysteries in the year to come. Here's a status report on six of 2012's most controversial mysteries (and missteps) in the realms of archaeology, anthropology and paleontology.

Gospel of Jesus' Wife: Harvard historian Karen King stirred up a sensation in September with the unveiling of a papyrus that apparently quotes Jesus talking about "my wife." The claims quickly sparked questions about the murky origins of the papyrus, and the Vatican suggested that the controversial text was faked. Most other experts on textual analysis were similarly skeptical.

The Harvard Theological Review withdrew plans to publish a scholarly article about the papyrus in its January issue, and this month a spokesman for the journal said tests to authenticate the document were not yet complete. The Smithsonian Channel has delayed broadcasting a documentary on the find, pending further testing. Status: In limbo.

The Jonah box: In February, researchers announced that they used a camera-equipped robotic arm to study an ossuary, or funerary bone box, within a sealed underground tomb in Jerusalem. They said the box was engraved with a picture of a fish, as well as allusions to "Jonah" and resurrection. Their conclusion was that the inscriptions served as evidence that early Christians were buried in the tomb — but skeptics disputed that interpretation. Did the picture really show a fish, or was it an upside-down tower, or an urn? The controversy was stoked by the fact that the "Jonah box" team was also behind the even more hotly debated "Jesus Tomb" project a couple of years earlier.

Months later, the findings are still in dispute. One of the researchers behind the find is James Tabor, a religious studies professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.  He says some experts have told him privately that they agree with his interpretation, but they're reluctant to speak out because of the acrimony surrounding the original reports. One expert who has voiced cautious support for the "Jonah and the fish" interpretation is Princeton Theological Seminary's James Charlesworth. (That support, too, has come under criticism.) Tabor acknowledges that more evidence is needed. "What we really need to do is enter the tomb and bring those ossuaries out. ... But that would have to be maybe next year," he said today. Status: In limbo.

Maya calendar: 2012's most publicized ancient mystery has to do with the Maya calendar, and the fact that Dec. 21 apparently marked the end of a series of cycles — including the 394-year baktun cycle as well as the 5,126-year "cycle of creation." Somehow, those calendrical cycles got mixed up with worries about the end of the world. Did the ancient Maya really think the cosmos would blink out of existence when the calendar ended? And if they did, why should we believe them?

Nothing happened on Dec. 21, other than some New Age-style celebrations of the new age. But the controversy did attract some extra attention for archaeological finds — including the discovery of a calendar workshop that clearly referred to dates beyond 2012, and an inscription that refers to the end of a calendar cycle in 2012, but not the end of the world. Status: Case closed.

Heritage Auctions via Reuters

An 8-foot-tall dinosaur skeleton is tied up in federal court proceedings.

Disputed dinosaur: You could argue that the world's hottest dinosaur fossil is currently in federal custody in New York. The 24-foot-long skeleton, nicknamed Ty, was said to come from a tyrannosaur-like species known as Tarbosaurus bataar. Fossil dealer Eric Prokopi sold it for more than $1 million in May, but experts claimed that the bones must have been smuggled out of Mongolia years earlier. Federal authorities seized the skeleton and filed criminal charges against Prokopi.

The civil and criminal proceedings yielded some surprises: Prokopi's lawyers said the skeleton was assembled from bones that were gathered up from various sources, leading to a new nickname: "Franken-saurus." Government prosecutors, meanwhile, said they have photos and forms to back up their claims that the dealer was "a participant in the black market" in Mongolia. Just today, Prokopi pleaded guilty to the smuggling charges and agreed to give up the dinosaur skeleton. That means Ty will eventually be sent back to Mongolia. Prokopi could be sentenced to up to 17 years in prison, but today's plea may win him leniency from the court. Status: Case essentially closed.

Pyramids on Google Earth: Researcher Angela Micol made a splash in August with claims that Google Earth imagery appeared to show pyramid-type structures in the Egyptian desert. She suggested that these were previously unknown sites — but it turns out that archaeologists have known about them for decades, and have studied them up close. The most intriguing formations are natural mounds, topped by structures that may have served as watchtowers and/or wells, said Italian Egyptologist Paola Davoli.

Another formation that Micol saw in the imagery is thought to be an oddly shaped natural butte. Micol told me in September that she was working with contacts in Egypt to get a closer look, but there haven't been any new revelations lately. Status: Case close to being closed.

Cloning a woolly mammoth: Is it really possible to bring the woolly mammoth back to life, tens of thousands of years after the species went extinct? It's highly doubtful, but Korean and Russian researchers are still trying. The project, unveiled in March, would involve recovering viable cells from a mammoth specimen pulled from the Siberian permafrost, implanting the cells' genetic material into an elephant egg, creating a cloned embryo, then transferring the embryo to an elephant womb for gestation. Each of those steps is fraught with difficulty — and the South Korea scientist in charge of the project is none other than Hwang Woo-Suk, who was disgraced several years ago in a scandal surrounding faked cloning results.

Last month, The Siberian Times reported that samples of mammoth bone marrow, hair, muscles and fat tissue were taken from Yakutsk to Seoul, to find out whether living cells could be extracted. Sources at the lab in Seoul did not respond to phone or email inquiries this week, but even if the cells turn out to be viable, don't expect to see a mammoth resurrection anytime soon. Russian researcher Semyon Grigoriev said it would be "years before we learn to choose the suitable cells or to re-create an extinct DNA molecule." Status: Case not yet closed. Or should that be, "not yet cloned"?

Dinosaurs ... and more: Science writer Brian Switek (a.k.a. @Laelaps) rounded up the year's top stories in paleontology at his "Dinosaur Tracking" blog, just before shifting over to Phenomena, National Geographic's new online science salon. In an email, he highlighted a few of his favorite stories:

"I was particularly interested by Nyasasaurus (confirming an earlier origin for dinosaurs), Yutyrannus (showing that feathers were not just for small dinosaurs) and mammal bones adding new evidence that dinosaurs may have been endothermic," he told me. "In other fossil news, the two that jump to mind are: fossil turtles caught in the act of mating; and a new fossil shark species which shows that Carcharocles megalodon was not a giant ancestor of today's white shark, but a member of a different lineage altogether."

I've included the fossil turtle-sex tale in our annual roundup for the Weird Science Awards, but here are 30 more ancient mysteries that should keep you clicking into the new year:

Ten top paleontology tales from Cosmic Log and NBC News:

• Earliest-known dinosaur to walk the earth identified
• Four-winged flying dinosaur sported glossy black feathers
• Paleontologists find the king of the feathered dinosaurs
• Researchers re-create the love song of the Jurassic katydid
• This mammal-like predator reigned long before the dinosaurs
• Methane-emitting dinosaurs could have warmed the earth
• World's oldest panda fossils found, and not in China
• Researchers decide to downsize the dinosaurs
• Scientists say dinosaurs' feathers were meant for mating
• Ancient lizard that died with the dinos is named after Obama

Ten top anthropology tales from Cosmic Log and NBC News:

• New technique clears up Denisovan DNA mysteries
• Australopithecus sediba: This pre-human ate like a chimp
• Cave art is so old the Neanderthals could have done it
• Hunter-gatherers were 'friending' long before Facebook
• Ancient Lucy's kin could have swung from the trees
• Researchers reconstruct the real-life face of a 'Hobbit'
• Foot bones could help reveal origins of upright walking
• Tools suggest early humans were smarter than we thought
• New flat-faced human species possibly discovered
• China's Red Deer Cave People may have been different species

Top 10 discoveries from Archaeology magazine:

• Maya sun god masks (more from Brown University)
• Neanderthal medicine chest (more from Cosmic Log)
• First use of poison (more from LiveScience on NBC News)
• Aztec ritual burial (more from Discovery News)
• Caesar's Gallic outpost (more from LiveScience on NBC News)
• Europe's oldest engraving (more from Discovery News on NBC News)
• First pots in China (more from Harvard University)
• Scottish 'Frankenstein' mummies (more from LiveScience on NBC News)
• 2,000-year-old stash in Israel (more from LiveScience on NBC News)
• Oldest Egyptian funerary boat (more from Ahram Online)

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.

Sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll and the Apocalypse: 2012 had it all. But only 10 stories about the past year's strangest scientific research can make it into our Weird Science hall of fame — so we're going to need your help.

Past winners of the Weird Science Awards include glow-in-the-dark kittens and puppies, a 2,700-year-old marijuana stash, meth-crazy fruit flies, reattached rabbit penises and the corpse-dissolving machine. The Maya apocalypse came in for honorable mention last year and the year before, but this could be an even bigger year for end-of-the-world weirdness.

There are lots of other contenders from 2012, however. It's hard to beat the story about the sex-starved flies who drowned their sorrows in alcohol while researchers watched. That covers sex and drugs. It also can make you feel sorry for the scientists who had to watch all that fly-sized heartbreak. (They might want to compare notes with the researchers who studied why alcohol makes people feel good.)

The sixth annual Weird Science Award competition follows the precedent we've set in past years: We offer up 30 nominees from the past year, and it's up to you to pick the top 10. We've included a couple of studies that have won Ig Nobel awards — which are given annually to recognize "research that makes people laugh — and then think." That's a fine criterion for the Weirdies as well. Or you can go with research that makes you laugh — and then makes you wonder, "What on earth were they thinking?"

Write-in votes and second-guessing are encouraged; you can register them in your comments. If a write-in vote gets enough support from commenters, the research in question will be added to the ballot.

The 10 nominees that get the most votes as of noon ET Jan. 2 will be the 2013 winners of the Weirdy Awards. Later that day, we'll discuss this year's crop of weird science with Ig Nobel creator Marc Abrahams on "Virtually Speaking Science," a talk show that plays out on the Web and in the Second Life virtual world. Tune in at 9 p.m. ET Jan. 2.

Johan Ordonez / AFP - Getty Images

Maya shamans take part in a ceremony on Dec. 21, celebrating the end of the calendar cycle known as Baktun 13 - and the end of the hype over a 2012 doomsday. Click on the image to watch a video about the phenomenon.

Here are the nominees, in chronological order. May the oddest science stories be ever in your favor!

Leonardo da Vinci ... fashion designer?
'Rapunzel Number' brings math to ponytails
Legless amphibians could win weirdness prize
Sex-starved flies drown woes in alcohol
Earliest painting of transvestite uncovered
Zoo chimp devises elaborate plots to attack humans
Ancient 'Loch Ness monster' suffered from arthritis
MIT engineers solve stuck ketchup problem
Rock music compared to animal distress calls
Turtles' sex act frozen in time
Scientists explain why people wear pants
Three-hour sex sessions exhaust squid
Shark teeth have built-in toothpaste
Bizarre fish has penis on its head 
Researchers create a sneeze-free geranium
Scientists figure out why coffee spills
How physics can tilt the odds in roulette
Mice can change their (ultrasonic) tune
Bizarre turtles pee from their mouths
Puppies learn to catch yawns as they grow
'Finding Nemo' fish talk their way out of a fight
750-legged millipede sets world record
DNA report claims that Bigfoot is part human
Help out researchers: Send them your poop
Scientists make brain cells from urine
Is reality 'unreal'? Scientists aim to find out
Did magic mushrooms inspire Santa saga?
Maya apocalypse fizzles out
'Alien'-like skulls unearthed in ancient cemetery
Scientists unravel secret behind Rudolph's red nose

Still more weird science:

• 10 weirdest animal discoveries of 2012
• 10 stories that made us blush in 2012
• A dozen obvious findings for 2012
• 2012 Weird Science Awards
• 2011 Weird Science Awards
• 2010 Weird Science Awards
• 2009 Weird Science Awards
• 2008 Weird Science Awards

For more serious looks back at 2012, check out The Year in Science and The Year in Space, as well as our Year in Space slideshow.

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 2012 draws to a close, physicists are celebrating — and being celebrated for — the end of a four-decade scientific quest to find a subatomic particle known as the Higgs boson. The discovery, made at the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider and reported in July, won honors this week as Science magazine's Breakthrough of the Year as well as a piece of the spotlight in Time magazine's Person of the Year package.

But the story of what some have nicknamed "the God particle" isn't over yet. (Physicists hate that nickname, by the way.)

"This particle has the potential to be a portal to a new landscape of physical phenomena that is still hidden from us," the scientific team behind the LHC's Compact Muon Solenoid detector writes in a Science paper that lays out the details behind the discovery.

That sentiment comes through as well in another paper from the LHC's ATLAS collaboration, which found results consistent with those from the CMS detector. The ATLAS scientists say finding the particle appears to provide the "last missing piece" in the Standard Model, the scientific theory that explains the subatomic realm — but also sets the stage for further studies "to explore the physics that must lie beyond" the Standard Model.

Both teams said they detected a particle that matched the quarry they sought, with a mass in the range of 125 billion electron volts. But they haven't yet quite confirmed that its characteristics fully conform with the theoretical particle that was proposed in the 1960s to fill in the Standard Model's remaining gaps.

CERN / ATLAS Experiment

This schematic shows the pattern of subatomic particle tracks associated with a candidate event for the detection of the Higgs boson.

That particle would help explain why some fundamental particles, such as the W and Z bosons, possess mass — while others, such as photons, don't. Physicists can see that such a mechanism must exist; otherwise, the cosmos just wouldn't work. The problem is figuring out how the mechanism is structured. The Higgs boson, and its associated Higgs field, fills the bill.

There's still some question whether the new particle reported this year is the Higgs boson, as described in the traditional Standard Model, or part of a more complex Higgs mechanism that may include other particles. Last week, there was a brief kerfuffle over whether the data from ATLAS hinted at two Higgs particles — but as of now, the leading view is that those hints are just statistical fluctuations that will eventually disappear. The definitive word is expected to come at a conference in March.

By that time, the LHC will be shut down for a major upgrade. The particle collider, housed in a 17-mile-round (27-kilometer-round) underground tunnel beneath the French-Swiss border near Geneva, has been running at energies of up to 8 trillion electron volts — but the upgrade will allow it to operate at 13 to 14 TeV starting in 2015. That's when the really way-out discoveries, relating to mysteries such as supersymmetry or the nature of dark matter, could come to light.

Why should we care about the Higgs boson? It may not bring us a better iPhone next year — but a better understanding of fundamental physics typically leads to better applications down the line. Just ask the inventors of medical scanners, microwave ovens or laser devices. For more on the practical implications of research at the LHC, check out our interactive interview with physicist Michio Kaku.

The same disclaimer goes for Science's runner-up breakthroughs of the year. You may not see how some of these discoveries can relate to everyday life — but someday, you or your children will:

Unraveling the Denisovan genome: In late 2010, anthropologists used genetic tools to discover a new type of human ancestor that lived in Siberia tens of thousands of years ago, dubbed the Denisovans. This year, they used a new technique to compare the Denisovan genome with those of modern-day populations — and confirmed that some parts of the Denisovan genetic heritage were passed on. That's right, kids: Our ancestors did it with Denisovans. The new technique is expected to yield a high-quality version of the Neanderthal genome in 2013.

Making eggs from stem cells: Japanese researchers coaxed mouse stem cells into becoming viable eggs that produce healthy offspring. There are a few caveats: The eggs still have to be hosted by an actual mouse during one stage of their maturation, and the technique doesn't yet work with human cells. But the project represents another significant step in the fight against infertility.

Curiosity's landing system: Perhaps the most amazing thing about the Curiosity rover's landing on Mars in August was that a system designed to lower the rover from a rocket-powered, hovering platform actually worked. NASA engineers acknowledged that the idea seemed crazy but insisted it was the "least crazy" way to get the 1-ton payload safely to the surface. The "sky crane" concept worked so well that NASA plans to do it again in 2020. For more about the Curiosity mission, check out our "Year in Space" roundup.

X-ray laser reveals protein structure: Scientists used intense, ultra-short X-ray pulses from a free-electron laser to collect data on the 3-D structure of proteins — and single-shot images of an intact virus. "The grand goal is to push X-ray diffraction to its ultimate limit and use an X-ray laser to decipher a protein structure by zapping individual molecules," Science's editors write.

Precision engineering of genomes: If you haven't heard about TALENs and CRISPR yet, you will — at least if genetic engineering is your thing. These are new tools for "editing" the genomes of creatures ranging from zebrafish to rats and crickets. Even human cells are being tweaked for research purposes. "Some researchers now think TALENs [transcription activator-like effector nucleases] will become standard procedure for all molecular biology labs," the editors say.

Majorana fermions detected, sort of: Seventy-five years ago, Italian physicist Ettore Majorana theorized that a weird type of subatomic particle existed that could act as its own antiparticle. This year, Dutch physicists reported tentative signs that the particles have at last been detected. If their existence is confirmed, Majorana fermions would have properties that make them perfectly suited for quantum computing.

ENCODE zooms in on human genome: After a decade of research, a $288 million project to trace all the threads that make up the human genome issued a blizzard of scientific papers. The studies suggested that only a small percentage of our DNA is wrapped up in our genes. At the time, much was made of the fact that what was once called "junk DNA" plays an important role in our genetic makeup. But we knew that already, right? The important thing is that Project ENCODE ("Encyclopedia of DNA Elements") has made a grand start toward reading, and understanding, our book of life.

Better brain-machine interfaces: Is the "Star Trek" nightmare vision of the Borg coming to pass? Not yet: We are not being assimilated into machinery. But in the future, it should become easier for us to assimilate machinery when the need arises. Researchers are perfecting techniques for controlling artificial limbs, computers or other devices with our thoughts alone. Someday even physicist Stephen Hawking might benefit from mind-reading systems.  

A new door in neutrino physics: Researchers caught a rare type of exotic particle known as an electron antineutrino in the act of disappearing, at an experimental facility in China — and that vanishing trick provided yet another long-sought puzzle piece in subatomic physics. The researchers said they measured the last parameter describing how different types of neutrinos morph into each other. For what it's worth, that parameter, the mixing angle known as theta13, equals 8.8 degrees, plus or minus 0.8 degrees. The fact that the value isn't zero could help explain why there's so much matter and so little antimatter in our universe.

Frontiers for 2013: In addition to 2012's breakthroughs, Science's editors highlighted six scientific areas to watch in 2013: single-cell DNA sequencing, the Planck probe's study of the cosmic microwave background, the Human Connectome Project, ultra-deep ice drilling at Antarctica's Lake Vostok, cancer immunotherapy research and basic plant research.

More about the Higgs quest:

• How will Nobel Prizes handle Higgs hassle?
• Comics go beyond the Higgs boson
• Gallery: Your guide to the particle zoo
• Cosmic Log archive on Higgs boson
• Special report on the Big Bang Machine

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.

Slideshow: Year in Space: 2012

Retrace the highlights of space exploration in 2012 — including a landing on Mars, a farewell to the first moonwalker, and a beautiful "Black Marble."

Launch slideshow

Every year marks beginnings and endings, but when it comes to space exploration, 2012 ranks as a big year for both starts and stops. SpaceX opened what could be a new era for commercial spaceflight. NASA's Curiosity rover began what could turn out to be a decade-long mission on Mars. First moonwalker Neil Armstrong, arguably the world's best-known (and most private) astronaut, passed away. So did Sally Ride, America's first woman astronaut. And after 30 years of service, the space shuttle fleet finally settled into museum retirement.

We've put together a slideshow that hits the off-world highlights of the past year. We've also put together an unscientific poll that lets you choose the top story for 2012 and the top trend for 2013. Without further ado, here's our 16th annual "Year in Space" roundup:

Top stories of 2012
It's always tough to limit the list to five, so I'm including an "other" category in this bunch. Please tell me in your comments why you think I'm underplaying or missing your favorite outer-space story.

• Curiosity goes to work on Mars: After a long cruise and seven minutes of terror, NASA's nuclear-powered Curiosity rover was dropped onto the Red Planet's surface in August to determine whether Mars ever had the chemical requirements for life. Curiosity soon figured out that it landed in the midst of an ancient riverbed, and started sniffing out evidence of complex chemicals. This whole rover thing is working so well that NASA wants to do it again in 2020.

• Godspeed, Neil Armstrong: Just as Curiosity was settling in for the long haul, Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong died of complications from heart surgery in August, at the age of 82. A nation mourned, and Apollo 13's Jim Lovell said Armstrong's passing "closed the book on the Camelot of manned spaceflight." The farewell to Armstrong came just a month after Sally Ride died at the age of 61, after a battle with pancreatic cancer. After her death, revelations about her complicated personal life stirred up controversy.

• SpaceX delivers the goods: The company founded by dot-com billionaire Elon Musk a decade ago finally sent a Dragon cargo capsule to the International Space Station during a demonstration flight in May, marking the space station's first commercial delivery. SpaceX did it again in October, turning what once seemed like science fiction into the new routine. SpaceX is also among three ventures getting a total of $1.1 billion to develop new spaceships capable of carrying astronauts to and from the space station.

• Farewell tour for shuttles: After months of decommissioning, all three of the retired space shuttles completed their final journeys to their new museum homes. Discovery went to the National Air and Space Museum's annex, near Washington. Endeavour made a cross-country flight and cross-town trek to the California Science Center in Los Angeles. Atlantis was towed to Kennedy Space Center's visitor complex. And the prototype shuttle Enterprise was shifted from the Smithsonian to New York's Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum. In October, the Enterprise got a buffeting from Superstorm Sandy.

• Asia's space efforts rise: China reached new milestones in June by putting its first woman in space, on a mission that marked the Chinese space program's first crewed docking. The test marked a significant step toward setting up an orbital space station, which China wants to do by 2020. In December, North Korea put a satellite in orbit, stirring new concerns about the isolated country's intentions. (The satellite went into a tumble, and all the signs suggest that whatever orbital mission it had ... has failed.)

• Other stories: June's transit of Venus marked the last event of its kind until 2117. NASA's Messenger probe detected water ice on Mercury. NASA's twin Grail probes arrived in lunar orbit, did their job and crash-landed on the moon, all in the course of a year. In November, a total solar eclipse wowed skywatchers, including yours truly.

Top trends of 2013
For some reason, my crystal ball is showing a fuzzy picture when it comes to the next year's trends. Maybe that's because we're in the midst of a hiatus for U.S. human spaceflight, or maybe I'm just missing the big picture. It's up to you to tell me in the comment section what I'm forgetting. 

• Commercial astronauts take off: Virgin Galactic is closing in on the first powered flight of its SpaceShipTwo rocket plane, and commercial test pilots could soon break the space barrier for the first time in more than eight years. Under the most favorable circumstances, it's even conceivable that paying passengers could be going on Virgin Galactic's suborbital space tours by the end of 2013. But we've heard all this before ... 

• Space gets a business case: In November, Uwingu announced that it would launch a planet-naming project to raise money for researchers (and investors). Meanwhile, two dozen teams are jockeying for position to send rovers to the moon and win a piece of the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize. Crowdsourcing is powering space elevator ideas and DIY satellite projects. Planetary Resources has a plan to make enough money building space telescopes to fund an asteroid-mining venture. Will spacey ideas like these actually pay off in 2013? Stay tuned.

• Earth's twin detected at last: Astronomers are already detecting planets in cosmic environments that just might support life as we know it. But they're aiming for an even more ambitious goal: to find Earthlike worlds, in Earthlike orbits, around sunlike stars. As NASA's Kepler mission builds up its database, will the data point to such planets? Or is it still too soon? 

• Will NASA change direction? NASA is working on a next-generation heavy-lift rocket and a heavy-duty spaceship, with the aim of launching test flights as early as 2014, crewed flights in 2021, and a human mission to a near-Earth asteroid in the mid-2020s. But some experts are questioning whether NASA is on the right path. Tight budgets for planetary science add to the uncertainty, particularly with a fiscal cliff looming. Will there be more shifts (or downsizings) in America's space vision? 

• Comets in the spotlight: Two comets have the potential to wow Northern Hemisphere observers in 2013: Comet PANSTARRS in March, and Comet ISON in November. It's too early to tell whether these alien visitors will live up to high expectations, but if the cosmos plays its cards right, the brightest highlights of the coming year may well turn out to be these "stars of wonder."

• Other trends: The sun is due to reach the height of its 11-year solar activity cycle in 2013, although so far this solar max is looking relatively wimpy. NASA's MAVEN mission to Mars is set for launch in November. Meanwhile, China is planning to launch another set of astronauts into orbit, as well as a robotic moon rover.

Cast your votes using the unscientific Live Poll ballots above, and feel free to register a write-in vote by leaving a comment below.

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.

Laughing babies, talking dogs and Rebecca Black may be Internet sensations, but if you want to add something more substantive to your viral video diet, turn your dial to dueling chatbots, dancing Ph.D. theses and other highlights from the past year's surfeit of science videos.

Talking bots can be just as surprising and silly as talking dogs. Take "AI vs. AI," for example. Cornell researchers Igor Labutov, Jason Losinski and Hod Lipson took two Cleverbot artificial-intelligence programs, hooked them up to each other, and typed in "Hi" as an ice-breaker. Hilarity ensues.

"We just assembled the pieces, the audio and the avatars, and let the program run," Lipson, an associate professor at the Cornell Creative Machines Lab, told me today.

The funniest line in the video comes when one AI program tells the other that they're chatting together as robots. The other bot replies, "I am not a robot, I am a unicorn." Where did that come from?

"The conversations are based on millions of conversations that it had before," Lipson said. "Probably this term is something it had encountered in some conversation with a human." The best guess is that someone made a reference to the unicorn from Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass," and somehow that stuck in the Cleverbot's electronic brain.

The takeaway is that artificially intelligent chatbots can become as petulant and irrational as the humans who made them. This Cleverbot conversation provides further evidence of that. ("I'm talking about you ... how you are a creep," one clone-bot tells another.)

Here are 10 other clever and creepy science videos from 2011 to while away the minutes with. I've added links to more information about each of them at the bottom of this item:

Update for 8:35 p.m. ET: For 10 more must-see, humorous science videos, check out this Tree of Life blog posting by UC-Davis biologist Jonathan A. Eisen. He says his No. 1 pick,  the "Bad Project" Lady Gaga parody, is "simply awesome" — and I simply agree.

More about the videos:

• Cleverbots at Cornell: AI vs. AI
• How the Cleverbot chats like a human
• Night flights: Sleigh ride in orbit
• Night flights: The best of NASA's night lights
• Ph.D. dance-off makes science sexy
• A Day Made of Glass: The story from Corning
• Future of Tech: The evolution of glass
• Scientific American explains the walking octopus
• Txchnologist: Ten of 2011's top science videos
• Top 10 videos of 2011 from C&EN, including soft robot
• Four-legged battlefield robot evolves into 'AlphaDog'
• Minute Physics' YouTube channel
• Video wows with quantum levitation
• Vi Hart's math blog | The Tau Manifesto
• The Scientist's 2011 Labby Awards | Doctor Bugs

More year-end reviews:

• Cast your vote for the Weird Science Awards
• 11 scientific twists from 2011
• The biggest ancient mysteries of 2011
• The year in space | 2011 slideshow
• Who's on the A-list for bad celebrity science?

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. 

Kyoto U. / INAH / The Daily Citizen / NBC

The weirdest science stories of 2011 include (clockwise from top left) the one about the game-playing chimps, the update on the 2012 Maya apocalypse, a bird-death epidemic and the zodiac debate.

Even with the supposed Mayan doomsday coming up, it's going to be hard for 2012 to match 2011 when it comes to weird science: What other year can boast a bird-killing "aflockalypse," a chupacabra prowling around the nation's capital, two Loch Ness-type monster sightings and two doomsday predictions. (News flash: The predictions were wrong.)

That's why the Weird Science Awards exist: To pay tribute to the strange but scientific (or pseudo-scientific) tales of each year. This year's winners of the fifth annual Weirdies will take their place alongside glow-in-the-dark cats and dogs, reattached rabbit penises, the 2,700-year-old marijuana stash and the Stone Age sex toy as talismans of this wacky age.

We're offering 30 nominees from the past year, and it's up to you to pick the top 10 award-winners. One of the nominees — the one about pee pressure — is a laureate from this year's Ig Nobel award ceremony, which honors "research that makes people laugh and then think." You can use that as your judging criterion, or you can go for the article that makes you laugh, and then ask, "What on earth were they thinking?"

Write-in votes and second-guessing are encouraged; you can register them in your comments below.

The 10 nominees that get the most votes as of noon ET on Jan. 3 will be recognized as the 2012 Weirdy winners, and to mark the occasion, we'll review the year in weird science on Wednesday with Ig Nobel creator Marc Abrahams.

Here are the nominees from the past year, in chronological order:

• Animals die in 'Aflockalypse'; technology gets blamed
• Pole shift forces makeover of airport runway
• 13th zodiac sign causes stir, but astrologers shrug
• World's smallest periodic table inscribed on shaft of hair
• Gorilla wows spectators by walking like a human
• Fungus turns ants into zombies to do its bidding
• Picture of 'Bownessie' monster causes a stir
• Microbes in lake and meteorite spark weird-life debate 
• Sugar wards off death for flies hooked on meth
• Chimps play video games with a sense of self
• He-she birds cross the animal world's gender lines
• Loch Ness monster-like beast filmed in Alaska
• Father of cryonics movement frozen for the future
• Dog's glow-in-the-dark effect has an on-off switch
• UFO fans latch onto report of underwater anomaly
• Mysterious orange goo gunks up Alaska shore
• Chupacabra? It's probably a mangy old fox!
• Science reveals how to win at 'Rock, Paper, Scissors'
• Dolphins learn how to use shells to catch fish
• Corpse-dissolving machine invented
• Cleverbot chats like human, passes Turing test
• Tool-using fish caught for first time on video
• Ig Nobel Prizes: Judgment clouded by pee pressure
• Preacher's doomsday prediction goes wrong ... twice!
• Roman-era couple held hands for 1,500 years
• Spot the devil that's hidden in Giotto fresco
• Mexico adds another brick to 2012 Maya legend
• These beds haven't been made in 77,000 years
• Scientists say Shroud had to be created in a flash
• Just this once, Samoa drops Friday from the calendar

Review the nominees, then cast your vote. We'll talk about the winners next Wednesday on "Virtually Speaking Science." In the meantime, take a walk down memory lane with these Weirdies from past years:

• 2011 Weird Science Awards
• 2010 Weird Science Awards
• 2009 Weird Science Awards
• 2008 Weird Science Awards

More year-end reviews:

• 11 scientific twists from 2011
• The biggest ancient mysteries of 2011
• The year in space | 2011 slideshow
• Who's on the A-list for bad celebrity science?

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. 

Fabrice Coffrini / AFP - Getty Images

Visitors watch an on-screen presentation at the "Universe of Particles" exhibition at CERN, where physicists are trying to track down the Higgs boson as well as faster-than-light neutrinos.

The past year brought us the supercomputer that trounced flesh-and-blood champions on the "Jeopardy" TV show ... genetic discoveries that showed us the tangles in humanity's family tree ... a tsunami that shouldn't have been as catastrophic as it was ... and neutrinos that shouldn't be going as fast as they seem to. Which scientific twist of 2011 do you find most intriguing? Now's the time to cast your vote for the top science story of 2011.

This year's crop of top stories is trickier than usual because they cross so many lines. I've pared them down to a list of 11, but the only reason I'm able to do that is because of the way the lines are being drawn. I've already touched on two of the biggest science stories of 2011 in our "Year in Space" roundup: the end of the space shuttle era and the avalanche of extrasolar planets. Our "Ancient Mysteries" roundup casts a spotlight on the big stories in archaeology, anthropology and paleontology. I'm also leaving out some big stories with technology angles, such as the Arab Spring protests and the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

So what's left? In this list, I'm stressing the twists in science and technology that go against expectations — or set up great expectations for the year ahead. I'm also including some personal favorites that you can feel free to quibble over. Check out this chronological list, review the details by clicking on the links, then cast your vote for the year's top science story:

Japan hit by quake, tsunami, nuclear crisis: The magnitude-8.9 quake that hit Japan in March qualifies as a top story on any scale, but the safety gaps at the Fukushima nuclear facility showed scientifically how nature can confound engineers' best-laid plans. It was just this month that Japan's prime minister announced the facility was in a stable state of "cold shutdown." Fukushima may be an albatross around the neck of the nuclear power industry for years to come. Or maybe not. Check out "After the Wave," msnbc.com's special report about the earthquake's aftermath. 

AIDS virus on the run? An international study finds that people who take antiretroviral drugs — medicine that weakens the HIV virus that causes AIDS — not only benefit from treatment but are far less likely to infect their sexual partners. The finding was so remarkable that the results were made public four years early, and last week the editors of the journal Science hailed it as the year's top breakthrough.

Climate highs and lows: This month, a U.N. climate conference reached agreement on a new plan to control greenhouse-gas emissions, but it's not clear whether the plan will pay off. Meanwhile, a former climate skeptic says he no longer doubts the reality of global warming, the climate issue creates a controversy on the GOP campaign trail, "Climategate 2.0" fails to gain traction, and Arctic sea ice is close to record lows.  

Goodbye, Tevatron ... hello, Higgs boson? After 28 years of service, the Tevatron collider was shut down in Illinois in September, leaving the Large Hadron Collider as the only experiment hunting for the elusive Higgs boson. Discovery of that particle could show scientists how mass arose in the universe. Researchers at the LHC suspect that they've got the subatomic bugger cornered, but the actual discovery (or determination that it doesn't exist after all) will have to wait until next year.

Faster-than-light neutrinos? Physicists at CERN and Italy's Gran Sasso laboratory say they've clocked bunches of neutrinos traveling between the two labs at a speed that's just a bit faster than the speed of light — something that relativity theory contends should be impossible. Most observers are confident that the claim will be proven wrong in 2012, due to some sort of experimental error. But a rerun of the test in November, under somewhat different conditions, came up with the same result. Stay tuned...

Watson wins on 'Jeopardy': IBM programmed a supercomputer named Watson to dominate the "Jeopardy" TV trivia game, and dominate it did. The point of the exercise wasn't to win the $1 million prize, which was donated to charity; rather, the technology behind Watson is being applied to medical diagnoses and other applications. We puny humans can take heart in the fact that Watson is not infallible. After all, it thought Toronto was a U.S. city, and it actually lost a game to U.S. Rep. Rush Holt (although, come to think of it, that might have been a political move on Watson's part).

Gamers untangle protein puzzles: Game-playing humans struck back this year by figuring out the molecular structure of a key enzyme in an AIDS-like virus that afflicts rhesus monkeys. The protein-folding achievement, accomplished by the players of an online game called Foldit, served as further evidence that non-scientists can help conduct valuable scientific research through collaborative software. Foldit's game-playing teams even came up with new mathematical algorithms for solving biochemical puzzles more efficiently.

Genetic family tree gets tangled: Late last year, researchers announced that they found genetic twists in our DNA that pointed to a previously unknown branch of our ancient family tree. Some of our ancestors interbred with creatures in Siberia that were not like modern humans or Neanderthals, but were of a distinct strain now known as the Denisovans. This year, geneticists reported that interbreeding with Denisovans and Neanderthals gave a big boost to our ancestors' immune systems. There's also evidence that our ancestors swapped genes with other now-extinct populations even before they left Africa. "Everywhere you look now, we find a little bit of interbreeding," said University of Arizona geneticist Michael Hammer.

Personalized medicine really works: Scientists have been saying for years that someday we'll all have our entire genomes sequenced, and that genomic analysis will open up a brave new world of personalized medicine. This year, it really happened. Physicians found a flaw in a California teen's genetic code that guided them to prescribe new medication for her bouts of sudden breathlessness. The success story serves as "the leading edge of what will become, pretty soon, a deluge of such reports," said Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health.

Heaviest antimatter created: Researchers at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider reported seeing traces of antihelium-4 nuclei, made up of two antiprotons and two antineutrons. These are the heaviest bits of antimatter ever detected on Earth, and that record's likely to stand for a long, long time. Sorry, Dan Brown: The antimatter bomb you wrote about in "Angels & Demons" will have to remain firmly in the realm of fiction.

Fingerpainting at prehistoric preschool: Here's something completely different: Researchers measured the widths of finger marks  to figure out that kids as young as 2 years old exercised their artistry on prehistoric cave walls, with an occasional boost from the grown-ups. It's amazing how archaeology can bring a 13,000-year-old culture to life.

So what am I forgetting? Space-time cloaking devices? New York's new bee species? Remember that I have a whole 'nother list of top stories for space exploration as well as for ancient mysteries, and that I'm putting the Arab Spring and Steve Jobs' death in a different category. Let me know what else is missing by leaving a comment below, and get ready to take a walk on the wild side later this week when it's time to judge the 2012 Weird Science Awards.

More year-end reviews:

• The biggest ancient mysteries of 2011
• The year in space | 2011 sllideshow
• Who's on the A-list for bad celebrity science?
• Science: Top breakthroughs of the year
• Scientific American: Top 10 science stories of 2011
• Nature: 10 people who mattered in science
• Discover Magazine: Top 100 stories of 2011
• Physics World: Top 10 breakthroughs for 2011
• RealClearScience: Top 10 stories of 2011
• Ars Technica: 2011's biggest science stories

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.

Pierre Ducharme / Reuters

The space shuttle Atlantis lands at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 21, ending 30 years' worth of shuttle missions. Click on the image to see msnbc.com's "Year in Space" slideshow.

During 2011, NASA said goodbye to the Spirit Mars rover and the space shuttle program — but there's hope that during 2012, new players will strut their stuff on the space effort's huge stage, stretching from Cape Canaveral to the Red Planet.

This is my 15th annual "Year in Space" roundup, and in all those years I can't think of a starker time of transition between the year that's past and the year to come. The space shuttles are being readied for museums, and work hasn't yet started on the big rocket that NASA says it will need for the next era of human space exploration. The space agency's plans for commercializing operations in low Earth orbit could well be tied up in budgetary knots, and there are questions about how much farther its robotic Mars exploration program can go.

Farewells and failures, including Russia's Soyuz glitch and Phobos-Grunt gremlins, dominated the news from space over the past year.

But it's not all gloom and doom: One of NASA's Mars rovers may have given up the ghost, but the other one — Opportunity — has begin its most ambitious adventure yet, exploring the 14-mile-wide Endeavour Crater on Mars. Juno, GRAIL and Mars Science Laboratory were launched toward Jupiter, the moon and Mars, respectively. Other planetary probes are purring along, all the way from Mercury to the solar system's edge.

One of the most promising frontiers for 2012 is being explored by NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft: The past month has seen the unveiling of Earth-sized planets as well as a Neptune-sized planet sitting in the habitable zone around its parent star. Those alien Earths are still too hot for life, but lots of folks are speculating that we could hear about the first Earth-sized planets in an Earth-type orbit within a year or two.

Which outer-space tales has intrigued you the most over the past year, and what sounds most intriguing for the year ahead? That's what this lineup is all about. I'll list five top stories for 2011, and five top trends for 2012. You can pick your favorite using the Live Vote ballots. Who knows? Your preferences may influence my to-do list for the coming year. Take a run through our "Year in Space Pictures" slideshow to refresh your memory, then cast your vote. We'll crown the winners in an update next week.

Top stories of 2011
It's always tough to limit the list to five, so I'm including an "other" category in this bunch. Please tell me in your comments why you think I'm underplaying or missing your favorite outer-space story.

• NASA ends space shuttle program: Policymakers decided years ago that the shuttle program would have to end once the International Space Station was complete, due to safety and cost concerns. The end finally came in July. Grounding the shuttles theoretically frees up money for exploration programs that go beyond Earth orbit, but in the short term, thousands of jobs are lost. For the time being, NASA has to depend on Russia and other countries for space transport.
• Spirit rover gives up the ghost: After months of trying to re-establish contact with the six-wheeled little trouper, NASA declared that Spirit was really most sincerely dead — felled by stuck wheels and a winter freeze-up. It had a good run: Six years of operation on Mars as part of a mission that was expected to last only 90 days. The Opportunity rover soldiers on, reaching Endeavour Crater after three years of trekking. And it recently made a significant find: gypsum deposits that appear to confirm water once flowed on Mars.
• 'Hubble's successor' dodges a bullet: NASA's James Webb Space Telescope had been in danger of cancellation, but the White House and Congress worked out a deal to keep the project alive on an $8 billion budget. However, the budget negotiations dealt a heavy blow to the White House's request for commercial crew vehicle development, and there are continuing worries about other space science programs, such as the ExoMars missions that NASA is supposed to be working on with the Europeans.
• Earth-sized planets and super-Earths: As I mentioned above, the Kepler science team has been finding a bonanza of planets, including super-hot super-Earths. A parallel effort led by European astronomers is also yielding scores of promising planets. All these discoveries are providing new target lists for colleagues who have been searching for signals from intelligent aliens.
• Downers in Earth orbit: Sometimes the sky seemed to be falling in 2011. In August, an unmanned Soyuz rocket blew up after launch, sparking an investigation that might have led to the evacuation of the International Space Station. NASA's Upper Atmospheric Research Satellite fell to Earth in September, and the German-built ROSAT satellite followed in October. There was lots of hand-wringing over the potential risk from falling debris, but nobody got hurt. The glitch that affected Russia's Phobos-Grunt probe in November will eventually lead to another fall in the new year (see below).
• Other top stories: China tests orbital docking. High-profile love story focuses on congresswoman and astronaut. Alien bacterial claim causes a stir. Asteroid threat downgraded. NASA probes reach Mercury and Vesta. Other spacecraft head for Jupiter and the moon. Auroras put on spectacular shows.

Top trends of 2012
As Yogi Berra supposedly said, "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." I'm signaling the speculative nature of the prediction business by sprinkling a few question marks here and there:

• Commercial flights to space station? SpaceX's Dragon cargo craft is currently scheduled to link up with the International Space Station for the first time in February, potentially marking the beginning of a new age in NASA's orbital operations. Orbital Sciences is due to follow later in the year. Meanwhile, commercial ventures will be working on designs for spacecraft capable of putting astronauts in orbit by 2017 or so. How far will NASA's funding get them?
• Monster rover reaches Mars: NASA's November launch of the $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory could justifiably rank as one of 2011's top stories, but the real payoff comes in August, when a rocket-powered sky crane is due to drop the 1-ton, car-sized Curiosity rover onto Gale Crater's scientifically intriguing terrain. The big question is: Will that thing really work? But if the rover sets down safely on the surface, we could be in for years of stunning imagery and scientific discovery.   
• Earth's twin detected at last? As the Kepler probe takes more observations, Earth-size candidates that lie in Earth-type orbits may well be added to the list of potential planets. Further confirmation would be required to make sure the candidates are truly alien Earths, but even hints that such worlds are on the list could cause a sensation of "Avatar" proportions.
• NASA works on future course: NASA wants to go to an asteroid in the mid-2020s, and send astronauts as far as Mars in the 2030s. But there are lots of blank spaces that still need to be filled in. For example, who'll help NASA build the multibillion-dollar heavy-lift rocket that Congress mandated? What will happen to space science priorities such as Mars sample return and  proposed missions to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn? In an era of tightening budgets, how much exploration can NASA afford? Will the presidential election lead to yet another change of vision?
• SpaceShipTwo actually in space? Virgin Galactic's founder, British billionaire Richard Branson, has said powered tests of the company's SpaceShipTwo rocket plane will begin in 2012, and he may well take a ride with his family as a Christmas present next year. If he sticks to that schedule, humans will ride into outer space on a privately developed rocket ship for the first time since SpaceShipOne's trips in 2004. But the tests to date have not been glitch-free, and a question mark is definitely in order.
• Other top stories: Phobos-Grunt plunges in January. Transit of Venus in June. Total solar eclipse in November. Doomsday hype in December. Solar activity rises toward maximum.

There you have it: Click on the links to get more background, weigh the field, and cast your vote. This could be more fun than the Iowa caucus, and I'm saying that as a former Hawkeye. For even more end-of-the-year musings, check out these links:

• Space.com's most memorable spaceflight stories
• Space.com's most amazing astronomy stories
• Space.com: Biggest space flops of the year
• Next steps in the new space race
• 2011: The Year in Space Pictures
• NASA: Year in Review 2011

For something completely different, check out my review of the year's top ancient mysteries.

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.

IBM

"Help me, IBM-Kenobi!" This illustration shows how holographic displays might someday be incorporated into a mobile device. Such a concept is nowhere near reality yet, but IBM's forecasters say it could be in five years.

In the year 2015, will we be using holographic 3-D cell phones powered by air-breathing batteries in energy-saving offices to protect the planet and anticipate traffic jams? IBM's forecasters think we will — but a look back at their past technology predictions shows why some forecasts are sure bets and others fall flat.

The company's "Next Five in Five" list is an effort to anticipate technological innovations that are just over the horizon today but will make a significant impact on everyday life five years hence. "These are technologies we are working on, in some cases," Kerrie Holley, an IBM fellow and chief technology officer for global business services, told me. In other cases, IBM's researchers are just trying to figure out "where the hockey puck is going" when it comes to broad tech trends, he said.

Such forecasts blend common-sense projections of current trends with wild ideas that sound so crazy they just might work. You can see how this works in this year's "Five in Five" list:

Beam up your friends in 3-D: Future devices will display 3-D imagery as holograms, which will open the way for real-time interaction at a distance, the way Jedi knights interacted with each other in "Star Wars." Princess Leia could make her famous holographic plea for help using a cell phone rather than R2-D2. This sounds like a crazy idea, but just last month, University of Arizona researchers demonstrated just such a prototype holo-display. Holley said IBM was less interested in holograms and more interested in 3-D data visualization — for example, using medical data to create a computerized avatar that can be twisted and turned for inspection in a doctor's office. "It's 3-D imagery, but it could be displayed on something you could look at only two-dimensionally," he said.

Air-breathing batteries, or no battery at all: Next-generation electronic devices are being designed to do more with less power, and next-generation batteries are being developed to store more power with less weight. Lithium metal-air batteries and zinc-air batteries, for example, use oxygen from the air in their electrodes. Some devices may not even need batteries in the traditional sense, but instead would generate power when they're shaken. Some wristwatches use this trick today: They require no winding, but get charged up by "scavenging" the energy from your arm movements. "This isn't going to power the big devices, but it could conceivably power mobile phones in the future," Holley said. Is there a "shake-and-dial" phone in your future?

Everyone's an observer: Sensors and cameras in your car, your phone and your wallet can be used to produce a real-time, wide-angle picture of the environment. "Snap a photo, maybe the app prompts you for a few quick questions, and then you can send it off," Holley said. All those readings could be aggregated by computers to track seismic events, monitor the rise and fall of rivers, pass along tsunami alerts or even conduct scientific studies. "You'll be able to contribute this data to fight global warming, save endangered species or track invasive plants or animals that threaten ecosystems around the world," IBM says. "In the next five years, a whole class of 'citizen scientists' will emerge, using simple sensors that already exist to create massive data sets for research."

Your commute will be personalized: Mathematical models will draw upon real-time data to figure out not only where highway traffic is gnarly right now, but also what the situation will be when you're on the road. As we discussed six months ago, IBM researchers are already quantifying which factors are the most painful for commuters, and using those findings to develop traffic flow prediction systems. Such a system has already been put to the test in Singapore — so I'd say this is one of those sure-fire forecasts.

Computers will help power your city: Computer data centers are sometimes seen as energy hogs that give off lots of heat, requiring heavy-duty air conditioning systems to cool off all that circuitry. But what if that waste heat could be used to keep buildings warm in the winter and cool in the summer? This year, IBM delivered a water-cooled supercomputer to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich that consumes up to 40 percent less energy than a comparable air-cooled machine. This is probably the geekiest prediction of the bunch, but IBM says the cooling system reduces the computer's carbon footprint by 85 percent.

How much of this is blue-sky thinking, and how much of this is just common sense? Four years ago, I passed along a couple of five-year, five-tech forecasts, and it's instructive to see how those shaped up. First, here's IBM's "Five in Five" list from late 2006:

3-D Internet: The Internet will become a seamless virtual world that you explore through 3-D computer graphics, like one great big Second Life with open borders. Second Life and other virtual worlds haven't been as successful as some forecasters may have thought, and as a result, this prediction has fallen flat. Who knows? Maybe the same thing will happen to this year's dream of a holographic world. 

Mind-reading cell phones: Mobile devices will be aware of your surroundings and let you know what's on special at the nearest pizza place. You'll be able to take a picture of a landmark and have the mobile network tell you everything it knows about what you're seeing. Four years later, this prediction looks like a sure thing, thanks to GPS-aware smart phones and augmented-reality apps.

Nanotech for energy and the environment: Advances in nanomaterials will lead to new types of water-filtering and desalination systems as well as lower-cost solar power systems. Because engineers were already looking into these technologies four years ago, this was a pretty solid prediction. Just this summer, Stanford researchers announced the development of a water-purifying filter that works 80,000 times faster than existing filters, thanks in part to nanotubes and silver nanowires. And several companies are working on printable thin-film solar panels that will be far less expensive to produce than the solar cells that were available in 2006.

Telemedicine: Patients' vital signs will be beamed directly to your doctor's office, and care providers in remote areas will transmit medical images and data to specialists thousands of miles away for instant review. RFID technology and telemonitoring systems have made this sort of thing possible, although I don't think the practice is quite as inexpensive and widespread as IBM expected it to be. In the future, portable medical scanners could make a big difference in the developing world.

Real-time speech translation: Translators will be popping up in mobile phones, handheld devices and automobiles. Nowadays, text-to-speech translation is no big deal, thanks to apps such as iSpeak. Last year, Google demonstrated near-real-time speech-to-speech translation and said the app would be available in 2010. With 2010 coming to a close, there are indeed some speech translation apps out there, but the challenge hasn't yet been fully met.

In early 2007, I took a turn at the five-tech, five-year prediction game. Here's a review of my picks almost four years later:

Energy independence through ethanol: "We'll become less dependent on foreign fossil fuel, thanks to advances in cellulosic ethanol production and other energy technologies." Unfortunately, energy independence still seems as far off as the 3-D Internet. Much of the luster that surrounded the ethanol dream in 2007 has disappeared, due to a food-vs.-fuel controversy as well as questions about the efficiency of the current production process. Researchers are still looking for workable ways to turn wood waste and other cellulosic sources into biofuels. But nowadays the big buzz is about electric cars rather than biofuel power.

Sociable, drivable robots: "Robots will become more humanlike, while others will be smart enough to drive themselves through city traffic." Autonomous vehicles have proven that they can take on city streets, and this year Google made a splash by road-testing driverless cars (with a human behind the wheel for backup). Robonaut 2, which is scheduled to fly up to the International Space Station, is one example of a robot that's built to fit in with human crewmates. The biggest frontier for humanoid androids is in Japan, where machines have gone to the head of the class, strutted their stuff on the fashion catwalk and officiated at weddings. But sex with a robot? Eeeww!

Cyborgs and cyberhumans: "Researchers will develop better prosthetic devices and perhaps even fiber-optic nervous systems, knitting humans and their machines more closely together." Prosthetics have indeed become much better in the past four years, but you didn't need to be a techno-prophet to see that. Among the examples: more lifelike artificial body parts, artificial skin with a sense of touch, nano-sized circuitry that could be used in brain-computer interfaces, and yes, fiber-optic nerves. But there's still a long way to go, and I might have to keep this one in the next five-tech forecast.

Personalized medicine: "Your genetic profile will help guide medical treatment." It's taking much longer than the experts thought for genetic medicine to hit the big time, in part because the genetic roots of disease are far more complex than expected. But headway is being made. Just this month, German researchers said they figured out the genetic reasons why some patients respond better to the anti-clotting medication Plavix.

Commercial spaceflight: "By 2010, there might well be two or three companies offering quick rides to outer space and back, with a price tag of $200,000 or so." Virgin Galactic and other companies are indeed willing to take your money for future suborbital space trips, but in the six years since SpaceShipOne flew, no other private-sector spaceships have yet brought humans to the final frontier. That may change in 2011 or 2012 — so I still have a shot at partial redemption. 

How close do you think these predictions came? And what do you think the next five years will bring? Feel free to critique all these forecasts or offer your own "Five in Five" prognostications in the comment section below. 

For another perspective on the "Next Five in Five," check out this report from The Motley Fool. Connect with Cosmic Log by "liking" our Facebook page or hooking up on Twitter, and check out "The Case for Pluto," science editor Alan Boyle's book about Pluto and the planet quest.