Bang & Olufsen's Beolab 5 speakers may look like end tables from Wonderland, but they have more going for them than trippy design (they'd better, for $16,000 a pair). Gently touch one of them on top and a miniature microphone extends from its base. Then the 15-inch woofer-powered by the 2,500-watt internal amplifier-starts whomp-whomping like a baritone light saber. The microphone records the sound after it bounces off your walls and couch, and adjusts the output of specific bass frequencies to compensate for the shape of your room and the speaker's location.

At first glance, the engine bolted to the test stand looks like an unlikely candidate to lead an aerospace revolution. Its size is unimpressive: At about four feet long, it's dwarfed by the machinery that feeds it air and fuel, machinery that fills a house-size structure at the China Lake Naval Air Warfare

It's the fourth day of a scientific conference in Denverfour busy February days in a huge rabbit-warren convention center with long hallways and fluorescent lighting and serious scientists giving serious PowerPoint presentations in darkened auditoriums; four days of breakthroughs and advancesnanotech to biotech, anthropology to zoology, the whole mind-spinning stew. Four days, for the assembled journalists, of making sense of it all and banging out stories on the fly-and now comes word of what could be a light interlude: Keep an eye out for the guy carrying the head. Say what? The robotic human head.

Next time you sit with a stranger at a dinner party, pray for someone as interesting as any of the scientists in the ranks of the second annual PopSci Brilliant 10. Someone who is well into an exciting career but still picking up speed. Someone in the grip of an obsessive inquiry into the nature of the world-brainy, resourceful, gutsy-and not afraid to talk about it. This year, we again sought researchers whose work, while watched and admired (and certainly envied) by colleagues, is largely unknown to a public that admits few scientists into the spotlight of fame.

Movie humanoids, from C3PO to the Terminator, have long been able to see, hear, think, and socialize. Today's real-life humanoidsrobots with the mechanical equivalents of eyes, head, arms and handsare finally beginning to catch up. The five bots here are the standard-bearers.

The great corn breeder John Laughnan used to say that the soil and climate of Champaign County, Illinois, were the best in the world for growing corn, but that they were not ideal. That is, given a chance, he could design a plot of land and a climate that would grow corn even better.

My subjects were falling backward from an airplane traveling 110 mph; I had just one chance. In the second my strobe lights would need to recover, the jumpers would fade to specks. Here, I caught Jari Kuosma of the BirdMan wingsuit company and two buddies leaping from a Skyvan I'd rented for the purpose.

On August 27, Mars will be closer to Earth than at any point in the past 73,000 years. That's good news for amateur astronomers (see What's New), but it won't make a manned mission to the Red Planet any easier. For that, NASA has earmarked an initial $2 million to build the Integrated Human Exploration Mission Simulation Facility, dubbed Integrity, at Houston's Johnson Space Center.

Amphicom's quirky new Aqua FM snorkel radio ($129) uses bone conduction technology to transmit music into your ears while you swimno headphones necessary. A tiny antenna runs up the snorkel barrel and out of the water so you can tune in the entire FM band. Just bite down lightly on the snorkel's mouthpiece and vibrations from the radio signal are transmitted through your molars and jawbone to your skull, where they vibrate the bones of the middle ear.

Before leaving her apartment, Carmen Fernandez, a blind woman living in Madrid, Spain, used to carefully memorize her route—and stick to it—to keep from getting lost. But a new GPS device that Fernandez is testing has freed her from such a rigid routine. Using the gadget's Braille keypad, she punches in her destination, and as she walks, the handheld product calls out directions to her. "Now I can walk home by any route, and I always know where I am," Fernandez says. "I've learned so much about my own neighborhood."