Science

Around the world, a handful of scientists are trying to create life from scratch and they're getting closer.

Experts expect an announcement within three to 10 years from someone in the now little-known field of "wet artificial life."

"It's going to be a big deal and everybody's going to know about it," said Mark Bedau, chief operating officer of ProtoLife of Venice, Italy, one of those in the race. "We're talking about a technology that could change our world in pretty fundamental ways -- in fact, in ways that are impossible to predict."

My earlier column this week detailed the work of a volunteer team to assess problems with US temperature data used for climate modeling. One of these people is Steve McIntyre, who operates the site climateaudit.org. While inspecting historical temperature graphs, he noticed a strange discontinuity, or "jump" in many locations, all occurring around the time of January, 2000.

Scientists have discovered the universe's largest known planet, a giant ball made of mostly hydrogen that circles a star 1,400 light-years away. Scientists believe the planet is about twice the size of Jupiter, and has a temperature of 2,300-degrees.

"There is probably not a really firm surface anywhere on the planet. You would sink into it," said Georgi Mandushev, a research scientist at Lowell Observatory and lead author of an article announcing the finding in the peer-reviewed Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Scientists in Scotland have found a way to levitate small objects by reversing naturally occurring forces.

Professor Ulf Leonhardt and Dr Thomas Philbin of the University of St Andrews School of Physics & Astronomy have developed a special lens that allows them to reverse Casimir force – the natural attraction that draws small particles together.

Casimir force, first discovered in 1948 and measured in 1997, is a major problem in nanotechnology, since it causes atomic-sized particles to clump together.

Someone intentionally damaged a computer intended for the International Space Station, NASA said Thursday. The computer had no command and control or navigation functions, according to Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for space operations.

The damage would not have affected the astronauts, he said.

The shuttle Endeavour is supposed to take the computer to the space station after its August 7 launch.

The computer is to be installed in the U.S. laboratory to monitor sensors on the space station's truss.

When it comes to complaining about poor exchange rates for the U.S. dollar, American tourists traveling to Europe have nothing on tourists headed into space. The cost of flying to the international space station aboard a Russian Soyuz spaceship has increased from $25 million earlier this year to between $30 million and $40 million for trips planned in 2008 and 2009.

"It's mostly because of the fallen dollar," Eric Anderson, president and CEO of Space Adventures, said Wednesday. His company brokers the trips with Russia's space agency.

MIT biochemists have identified a molecular mechanism behind fear, and successfully cured it in mice, according to an article in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

Researchers from MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory hope that their work could lead to the first drug to treat the millions of adults who suffer each year from persistent, debilitating fears - including hundreds of soldiers returning from conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Scientists need help sorting through an unusual digital photo album: pictures of about 1 million galaxies. They are asking volunteers on the Internet to help classify the galaxies as either elliptical or spiral and note, where possible, in which direction they rotate.

It would be the largest galactic census ever compiled, something scientists say would provide new insight into the structure of the universe.

Space shuttle Endeavour arrived at its launch pad early Wednesday for a flight to send teacher-turned-astronaut Barbara Morgan and six crewmates to the international space station.

It's been a nearly five-year wait for Endeavour, and the shuttle has nothing on Morgan: She's been waiting 22 years.

In 1985, Morgan was picked as Christa McAuliffe's backup to become the first teacher in space under a special NASA program.

A new book seeks to demolish the concept that computer science is rooted in mathematics and, in particular that the notion of the algorithm is fundamental to computer science.