This Week in the Future, September 5-9, 2011

There are strange doings afoot in this ghost town. Cardboard churches. Miraculous Cuban cigars. Saliva swabs. It’s all happening this week in the future.

Want to win this abandoned 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:

• Christchurch is Thinking of Replacing Its Earthquake-Ravaged Church with a Cardboard Cathedral
• DNA Analysis Catches Carcinogens in a Simple Saliva Sample
• Cuba Announces Release of the World’s First Lung Cancer Vaccine
• New Mexico Building a 20-Square-Mile Empty City in Which to Test Renewable Energy
• NASA Heads Back to the Moon, to Uncover Its Origins and to Inspire A New Generation

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

• Dear Nike: Here’s How You Make a Self-Tying Shoe From the Future
• Archive Gallery: Now You Can Watch Television in Color!
• All the Gold We’ve Mined Came From Space, New Study Says
• How the Greenest Skyscraper Complex Ever Is Rising Out of the Rubble of the World Trade Center
• Google Releases its Energy Consumption Numbers, Revealing a 260 Million Watt Continuous Suck
• The U.S. Army Is Ordering Weaponized, Soldier-Launched Kamikaze Suicide Drones
• Fermilab Sets End-of-Month Deadline to Establish Whether or Not the Higgs Boson Exists
• Antibiotics May Be Permanently Altering the Guts of Humanity
• New NASA Photos Show Footprints on the Moon
• Video: Cloaking System Makes Tank Invisible to Infrared Sensors
• High School Inventors 2011
• The Best of IFA 2011: Giant Smartphones, New Takes on 3-D, and More