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Fragmented human genomes could be shipped toward the stars and reconstructed upon their arrival,

to spur the monumental technology advances that would be required for such a feat. So the 100-Year Starship is more like a thought experiment than a construction project.

“The crux, to us, is inspiration of research — not just in solving the physics-based problems. It’s across all of the domains

Policy makers would be much better placed to combat the effects of global warming if scientists had access to accurate measurements of the Earth's radiation balance from a dedicated satellite, claims an international group of physicists.

it estimates that the satellite could cut a decade or more from the time needed to make useful projections of global temperature at the end of the 21st century.

"Think of it as rapid prototyping in biology--we make the part, test it, and then expand on it," says Reshma Shetty, one of the company's cofounders. "You can spend more time thinking about the design, rather than doing the grunt work of making DNA." A very simple project, such as assembling two pieces of DNA, might cost $100, with prices increasing from there.

The original Galaxy Zoo was launched in July 2007, with a data set made up of a million galaxies imaged with the robotic telescope of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. With so many galaxies, the team thought that it might take at least two years for visitors to the site to work through them all. Within 24 hours of launch, the site was receiving 70,000 classifications an hour, and more than 50 million classifications were received by the project during its first year, from almost 150,000 people.