This Week in the Future, July 18-22, 2011

This week in the future Stars: They’re Just Like Us!: Burt Reynolds caught with a fake ID, just like college students across the nation. Burt, we know there’s a certain other Burt who got honored with a PopSci post this week–but even if you’re not an aerospace pioneer, we’ll always have a special place in our heart for the Bandit. (Note: This PopSci celebrity news brief has as much truth to it as your average celebrity gossip. Which is to say, none.)

Want to win this homage to Burts Renyolds and Rutan, a Baarbarian illustration, on a t-shirt? It’s easy! The rules: Follow us on Twitter (we’re @PopSci) and retweet our This Week in the Future tweet. One of those lucky retweeters will be chosen to receive a custom T-shirt with this week’s Baarbarian illustration on it, thus making the winner the envy of their friends, coworkers and everyone else with eyes. (Those who would rather not leave things to chance and just pony up some cash for the t-shirt can do that here.) The stories pictured herein:

• Robotic Octopus Tentacle Wants to Become Robotic Octopus, Seeks Seven More Tentacles
• Killing Mosquitoes With a Genetic Trick that Makes Digesting Blood Deadly
• Unveiled: Burt Rutan’s Final Creation Is A Flying Car
• Anti-Fraud Facial Recognition System Revokes the Wrong Person’s License

And don’t forget to check out our other favorite stories of the week:

• Big Science: The 10 Most Ambitious Experiments in the Universe Today
• How Intelligent Cars Will Make Driving Easier and Greener
• Brilliant Teenagers, World-Saving Tech and Dance Parties at Microsoft’s Imagine Cup
• Mice Engineered to Lack Muscle Contraction Gene Have Superior Endurance (and Humans Might, Too)
• Scientists Discover Two Never-Before-Seen Kinds of Water Waves
• New Study of Gulf Oil Spill Details the Plume’s Chemical Makeup, Helping Explain Where the Oil Went
• Antiretrovirals Show Huge Promise for Halting HIV Spread in Two Major Studies
• The Five Best Forward-Thinking Features in Mac OS X Lion
• Space Shuttle Atlantis Touches Down, Ending an Era of American Manned Spaceflight
• Early Man Walked Upright 2 Million Years Earlier Than We Thought, Says New Analysis
• The Mystery of the Pioneer Anomaly Solved at Last
• Archive Gallery: The Best of Biomimicry