Enhanced and synthetic vision systems (inset) blend GPS information with a topographical database to create a moving digital map of unseen terrain and hazards. (Photograph by Sam Chui)
The Final Countdown: October 15, 2009: Virgin Galactic’s bullet-nosed rocket, SpaceShipTwo, sits in the hangar of Scaled Composites in Mojave, California, awaiting a paint job before its public debut in December. Click here to launch the gallery for a closer look at SpaceShipTwo under construction. John B. Carnett
A massive moon that orbited Uranus in the past may explain the planet's extreme tilt (Image: NASA/ESA/M. Showalter/SETI Institute)
Factory smoke. Photo: Martin Pope 
From The BBC:
Photo: Composting biofuels: Inside this white building, piles of sorghum are broken down into acids. The tanks in the foreground are used for pretreatment and for delivering a mixed culture containing many different organisms that break down biomass. The acids they produce can be used to make gasoline and other chemicals. Credit: Terrabon 
Researchers are closer to using tiny devices called semiconducting nanowires to create a new generation of ultrasmall transistors and more powerful computer chips. The researchers have grown the nanowires with sharply defined layers of silicon and germanium, offering better transistor performance. As depicted in this illustration, tiny particles of a gold-aluminum alloy were alternately heated and cooled inside a vacuum chamber, and then silicon and germanium gases were alternately introduced. As the gold-aluminum bead absorbed the gases, it became "supersaturated" with silicon and germanium, causing them to precipitate and form wires. (Credit: Purdue University, Birck Nanotechnology Center/Seyet LLC)
Electrodes placed directly on the surface of peoples' brains allow them to type just by thinking of letters. Image credit: stockxpert
From ABC News:
From San Francisco Chronicle:
From The New York Times:
John Criswick, an Ottawa entrepreneur who has booked a US$200,000 flight on board Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, stands in front of the plane at its unveiling in July 2008. (HO, Virgin Galactic/THE CANADIAN PRESS)
Photo: Silhouette of Very Large Array (VLA), which has contributed in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). In Arizona, a school IT director lost his job over a hunt for alien life. Newscom
From Space Travel:
Rows of jars containing Drosophila, also known as fruitflies, being bred in laboratory conditions. As Drosophila can be bred easily in mass and have a short lifespan, scientists frequently use them in research, particularly in the study of genes. (Credit: Wellcome Library, London)
The OrbiTouch keyboard, originally created to help people with carpal tunnel syndrome, is taking the gaming world by storm. Credit: Blue Orb
May 31: A video from the National Ignition Facility explains what the super-laser experiment is designed to do. NIF / LLNL
Photo: Corbis
Astronaut Hangout to Close After 30 Years -- Space.com
Lasers for Scanners Uh sir, you're not supposed to have that TriStar Pictures
A Large Ion Collider Experiment, or ALICE, (pictured above) recorded the first results from a proton-proton collision inside the Large Hadron Collider, physicists announced in December 2009. The collision created the precise ratio of matter and antimatter particles predicted from theory, showing that the so-called "big bang" machine is working as expected. Picture by Maximilien Brice, copyright CERN 
Stand of quaking aspen. (Credit: iStockphoto/Doug Sims)
(Click Image to Enlarge)
Nobel Prize Foundation Frets Over Its Finances -- ABC News
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer first approved a search deal in July, but the matter took a little extra time to complete. (Credit: Yahoo/Microsoft)
The snowman is made of two tiny tin beads, normally used to calibrate electron microscope lenses, which were welded together with platinum Photo: Dr Cox / National Physical Laboratory 
At Northrop Grumman’s model shop in El Segundo, California, Gary Miley applies gel to form a mold he will use to create a model blank. (Chad Slattery)
Jabulani, Deconstructed: Adidas
Large Hadron Collider
In this top-down illustration of a black hole and its surrounding disk, gas spiraling toward the black hole piles up just outside it, creating a traffic jam. The traffic jam is closer in for smaller black holes, so X-rays are emitted on a shorter timescale. By NASA
Workers remove the fin from a female mako shark on a beach in Santa Rosalia, Mexico, in an undated picture. For the first time, scientists have used DNA analysis to trace shark fins back to their home waters. Most of the hammerhead fins found at the market came from endangered populations in the western Atlantic, the researchers said in December 2009. Photograph by Brian J. Skerry, NGS 
Pingpong-playing robot 'Topio'. The bipedal humanoid robot is designed to play table tennis against a human being. Photograph: Kim Kyung-hoon/Reuters
Location of seismic velocity anomaly at a depth of 1,200 kilometers (746 miles) beneath Hawaiian Islands (outlines). Orange color indicates low S-wave velocities, implying higher rock temperatures. Open boxes show locations of sea-floor seismometers. (Credit: Image courtesy of Science)
Exercise improves blood flow to the brain and may help build new brain cells, recent studies show. Image credit: Dreamstime
Credit: iStockphoto
Photo: Wheels turning: The blades of CWind's wind turbine move an internal flywheel and several shafts that attach to small generators within the nacelle. In the lower image, a rubber wheel rolls on the inside wall of a flywheel inside a 65-kilowatt prototype turbine. Credit: CWind 
From Times Online:
Free spirit: Hundreds of images taken by the Spirit rover between May and June 2009 built up this panoramic view of Mars. The tracks made by the rover are visible
Photo from Clemens Höges
Funding for medical research is now estimated to be in the
The Riddle of Steel Freedom Steel International 
This August 2009 discovery image of GJ 758 B was taken with the Subaru Telescope's HiCIAO instrument in the near infrared, which measures and records differences in heat. Without the special technique employed here (angular differential imaging), the star's glare would overwhelm the light from the planet candidates. The planet-like object, GJ 758 B, is circled as B in the lower right portion of the image. An unconfirmed companion planet or planet-like object, C, can be viewed above B. The star, GJ 758, is located at the center of the image, at the hub of the starburst. The graphic at the top compares the orbital distances of solar system planets. (Credit: Max Planck Institute for Astronomy/National Astronomical Observatory of Japan)
A visualization of the human brain using VisTrails. In recent decades, researchers have used computers to build complex visualizations based on large data sets to gain a better perspective on their research. A computer-generated visualization can help a surgeon better understand what is happening inside a patient's heart before ever picking up a scalpel. Credit: Juliana Freire, University of Utah
Tomatoes are now known to absorb nutrients from insects they have trapped.
