Scientists are eyeing the jet stream, an energy source that rages night and day, 365 days a year, just a few miles above our heads. If they can tap into its fierce winds, the world's entire electrical needs could be met, they say.
Two environmental activist groups have petitioned the U.S. government to pursue new regulations on numerous products such as sunscreens and cosmetics that contain potentially hazardous nanoparticles but lack adequate warning labels of their possible health effects.
Outer space is fast filling up with human-generated junk, from exploded satellites to leaky nuclear reactors, and the debris threatens the safety of cosmic exploration.
India, China, Japan and Europe are busy launching, or planning to launch, robotic spaceships to the moon and points beyond. Their goals will include tasks ranging from mapping minerals to seeking ice from which future astronauts might extract drinking water. More distant goals include looking for a mineral called ilmenite that some experts think is rich in an isotope called helium-3.
The U.S. Air Force has funded a study to examine possible ways to teleport humans and objects through space. Critics argue that funding studies into teleportation are a waste of money for now because of the tremendous energy and computation requirements.
The U.S. Air Force is quietly spending millions of dollars investigating ways to use a radical power source -- antimatter, the eerie "mirror" of ordinary matter -- in future weapons.
Real-life professors and scientists are grappling with real antimatter -- the particle physicists' "mirror image" of ordinary matter -- in today's laboratories to create the weapons and space cruisers of tommorrow.
Martin Rees argues in a new book that coming technological catastrophes could doom billions and to prevent them, society may need to consider restricting specific types of scientific research. He specifically cites dangers from nanotechnology and supercolliders.
Anti-nuclear activists and pro-space advocates square off on whether nuclear powered spacecraft are safe.
Like the flying killer robots of the "Terminator" movies, the unmanned Predator aircraft is a step closer to the automated battlefields long envisioned by science-fiction writers.