Science

This Week in the Future: November 8-13, 2009:  Baarbian.com

We're all about the future here at PopSci; we put the pieces together and deliver the news and nuggets you need to know to stay on top of where this world (and universe, and beyond) is headed. This week, the future's looking like quite the wild party--water from space, libidinous rats, and transforming UAVs. What's not to love?

(Get the details, and win the t-shirt, after the jump).

This Week in the Future, November 16-20, 2009:  Baarbarian

UV phasers, battlefield-based cryogenic tech, computerized cat brains and space fish on Jupiter's moon? Believe it, baby. The future is yours, and we've rounded it up for you in high style once again with This Week in The Future

Over the weekend President Obama and other world leaders broke the news: No legally binding international climate-change treaty this year.

Algae get a lot of airtime as a possible future source of biofuels to wean us from dirty fossil fuels, but even biofuels don't go so far as to eliminate hydrocarbons (and their constituent carbon emissions) from our energy diet. But a different use for algae could prove a better solution to the future of fuel.

A new process that produces clean, sustainable hydrogen from photosynthesis in algae could change all that. The means of manufacturing clean, usable hydrogen has heretofore required a high-energy process that drastically dilutes the upside.

NASA's moon-smashing mission may not have provided a huge show for the folks on Earth, but now there's sweet vindication for scientists. The plume of lunar debris kicked up from ancient lunar crater kicked up 24 gallons of water, LCROSS mission staff reported today.

This is what goes on behind the scenes whenever you open your mouth to speak.

Server farms are undeniably awesome in that they store huge pools of data, enable such modern phenomena as cloud computing and Web-hosted email, and most importantly, make the Internet as it stands today possible. The downside: data centers get very, very hot. Cooling huge banks of servers doesn't just cost a lot, it eats up a lot of energy, and that generally means fossil fuels.

In 2009, science got a hefty shot in the arm from the federal government's stimulus spending. Now U.S. citizens can see exactly how their taxpayer dollars go toward funding video games that test autism responses, or discovering lakes hidden beneath the Antarctic ice sheet.

Thanks to a surface covered in liquid water, Jupiter's moon Europa serves as the prime suspect for bodies in our solar system harboring extraterrestrial life. For the most part though, speculation has assumed the life on Europa would be microscopic, similar to the chemical and rock-eating microbes found atop undersea volcanic vents on Earth. However, a new study estimates the level of oxygen in Europa's seas may be high enough to support fish-sized life. Hello, alien sushi.