Europe is considering plans to spend more than 5 billion pounds on a string of giant solar power stations along the Mediterranean desert shores of northern Africa and the Middle East.
NASA is sponsoring a competition to develop the technology needed for a space elevator.
European researchers have begun work on a research programme to create a flotilla of orbiting mirrors that could return clear pictures of exo-planets, worlds that circle other stars.
Finding life on Mars has proved an elusive dream for decades. But scientists now believe they may be able to do it for themselves - by turning the Red Planet into a blue world with streams, green fields and fresh breezes and filling it with Earthly creatures.
Anti-nuclear protesters argue that NASA plans to use nuclear power propulsion in space increases the risks of radiation contamination both during production and in the event of a launch accident.
Scientists have pinpointed the Methuselah gene - a stretch of DNA that confers healthy old age on men and women - raising the prospect that researchers may one day be able to create drugs that extend human life.
Scientists are split over the theory that natural selection has come to a standstill in the West.
America's space agency Nasa - once a synonym for US high-tech supremacy - is struggling for survival. In the last few days, it has lost its chief, been revealed to have a staggering $5 billion debt, and been blasted by a committee, which includes several Nobel laureates, for its utterly inept management.
Men and women could one day grow limbs lost in accidents or regenerate organs destroyed by illness. The prospect has been raised by geneticists who have revealed the biological secret of creatures that can replace limbs that have been severed in fights or attacks by predators. This ability - possessed by animals such as the salamander, which can regenerate entire legs and various species of lizards, which can regrow tails - has baffled scientists for centuries.
'Armageddon - triggered by an asteroid hurtling into our planet - is a genuine risk. Now some scientists are pressing the European Space Agency (ESA) to construct a satellite called Gaia which could pinpoint errant chunks of rock that threaten Earth.'