Travel Through Time

NASA-funded researchers are refining a tool that could not only check for the faintest traces of life’s molecular building blocks on Mars, but could also determine whether they have been produced by anything alive.The instrument, called Urey: Mars Organic and Oxidant Detector, has already shown its capabilities in one of the most barren climes on Earth, the Atacama Desert in Chile. The European Space Agency has chosen this tool from the United States as part of the science payload for the ExoMars rover planned for launch in 2013. Last month, NASA selected Urey for an instrument-development investment of $750,000.

Solar energy has the power to reduce greenhouse gases and provide increased energy efficiency, says a scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, in a report (view it online) published in the March issue of Physics Today.

Last month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations released a report confirming global warming is upon us and attributing the growing threat to the man-made burning of fossil fuels.

Opportunities to increase solar energy conversion as an alternative to fossil fuels are addressed in the Physics Today article, co-authored by George Crabtree, senior scientist and director of Argonne’s Materials Science Division, and Nathan Lewis, professor of Chemistry at Caltech and director of its Molecular Materials Research Center.

It’s the year 2020, and space has never been so busy. Picture this:

In Earth orbit, a robotic maintenance ship skitters from one weather satellite to another, upgrading powerful optics that help meteorologists track dangerous storms.

Four hundred thousand kilometers away, a cargo ferry arrives at the Moon. It spots an orbiting depot, makes its approach and mates flawlessly, offloading drill heads, solar panels and other supplies for a frontier outpost at the Moon’s south pole.

Meanwhile, down on the the lunar surface, mining buggies trundle along a “sensor highway” between the outpost and some nearby hills. They’re harvesting lunar ice hidden in the shadows of a deep, cold crater.

In the digital age, organizing a photo collection has gone from bad to worse. The saying used to be that a picture is worth a thousand words. Now the question arises: what are a thousand pictures worth?In the digital age, organizing a photo collection has gone from bad to worse. The saying used to be that a picture is worth a thousand words. Now the question arises: what are a thousand pictures worth?

In a word, mainly a headache.