NASA wants your vote on what to name its SUV-sized Mars Science Laboratory that remains parked on Earth until 2011 -- but Stephen Colbert won't get the chance to add this piece of space hardware as a new namesake.
They should have let it be named after him, after all that was the result of the VOTE!
Today’s most ambitious scientific instruments are modern-day cathedrals in their size and complexity, if not in their purpose—these are, after all, structures built to shatter worldviews, not to reinforce them. And the grandest of all, pictured on these pages and fired into action today, will take us on a journey to one of the least-accessible places imaginable: the realm of quantum particles, less than a billionth the size of a single atom.
I’ll keep it simple and short, I am not a scientist, but I think that you can’t put a price on science, you can’t say that the outcome doesn’t justify spending $ 6 billion because simply you can’t expect what the outcome might be, you can be certain however that it will be something that will catapult humanity into the future by decades if not centuries. In my opinion, spending $ 6 billion on such a machine is the equivalent of purchasing a $ 200 million mansion for ONE CENT! I am positive that we are going to look back at this experiment 50 years from now as a corner stone in the advancement of the human race, when we will be travelling between solar systems harvesting resources, with a picture of the LHC hanging on the walls of human space ships! I hope all goes well, and the benefits and science would be made available to all humanity.
Stay up to date on the latest news of the future of science and technology from your iPhone with full articles, images and offline viewing
Featuring every article from the magazine and website, plus links from around the Web. Also see our PopSci DIY feed
Share links with friends, comment on stories and more
In our December issue, Popular Science names the 100 best innovations of the year: bombproof wallpaper, self-parking cars, the fastest helicopter, and 97 more. Plus inventor profiles and videos.
Check out the best of what's new here.