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Fast-forward to the year 2100. Computers, writes physicist and futurist Michio Kaku in Physics of the Future (Doubleday, 2011), will have humanlike intelligence, the Internet will be accessible via contact lenses, nanobots will eliminate cancers, space tourism will be cheap and popular, and we’ll be colonizing Mars

Scientists have found opal-like crystals in the Tagish Lake meteorite, which fell to Earth in Canada in 2000. This is the first extraterrestrial discovery of these unusual crystals, which may have formed in the primordial cloud of dust that produced the sun and planets of our solar system 4.6 billion years ago, according to a report in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Most of us take it for granted that math works--that scientists can devise formulas to describe subatomic events or that engineers can calculate paths for space

Cities get faster and more productive as they get bigger and last forever. Companies get slower and more boring, and then they go out of business. Can companies change that model?

Around a black hole 12 billion light years away, there's an almost unimaginable vapor cloud of water--enough to supply an entire planet's worth of water for every person on earth, 20,000 times over.

Pluto may not be a full-fledged planet anymore, but it's got its share of moons. Including a tiny moon just recently spotted by astronomers.

Dear EarthTalk : I have a carpet made out of recycled PET bottles in my baby’s room and I started noticing a lot of the fibers on our clothes and even in my mouth! Is it dangerous for me or my baby to be in contact with and possibly ingest these fibers? -- Ashley Riccaboni, via e-mail

Girls and the rest of us aside, diamonds can be a geologist's best friend--especially if that geologist has a mass spectrometer and is looking for clues about what Earth looked like billions of years ago. [More]

Dear EarthTalk : Can earthquake energy be harnessed for power, particularly in places like Japan? Also, how can Japan, so vulnerable to earthquakes, even have nuclear power?

A close chemical relative of the fuel in butane cigarette lighters may be what helps keep air travel viable in a post-petroleum world. As affordable petroleum becomes scarcer, it's easy to imagine switching to electric cars or outfitting hydrogen-powered ships with supplementary sails. But it's harder to picture what we might run jumbo jets on in the future

Let me be clear: Another Earth , opening July 22, is not a science-fiction film, despite its premise of the discovery of a planet just like our own.

Now that Atlantis has safely returned to Earth and the 30-year space shuttle program has drawn to a close, it's time to look back at the reign of Discovery, Atlantis, Endeavour and the tragically shortened careers of Challenger and Columbia . Since 1981 NASA has launched 135 shuttle missions, reaching destinations such as the Mir space station, the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station. [More]

When it gets hot, power companies can be pushed to the brink, but knowing when everyone is going to blast their AC at the same time can help them plan for all eventualities. There's no getting around it; the number of extreme weather events has significantly increased over the past few years. Heat waves--along with their accompanying droughts and strains on the electrical grid--are some of the most common extreme weather phenomena.

The death of large predators isn't just a tragedy, it can lead to the utter destruction of whole ecosystems--something that is already happening in many parts of the world. You may not have noticed, but we are in the early to middle stages of the Earth's sixth large extinction event. Compared to the

(PhysOrg.com) -- In a paper published in the US journal Optical Materials Express this week, Macquarie University researchers show that even the earth's hardest naturally occurring material, the diamond, is not forever.