It's nice to see that one of the staple plot devices of science fiction is actually true. Apparently, a trip to space can give you superpowers; at least if you're a cockroach.

According to Russian news agency Novosti, baby cockroaches conceived aboard a satellite in September have apparently grown up to be faster and tougher than their terrestrial brethren.

The first creatures ever conceived in space also grew more quickly than ordinary Earth-bred cockroaches.

Could these positive effects be due somehow to the effectively weightless environment during conception, or to a healthy dose of radiation?

The report does not reveal whether any of the 33 new super-roaches have yet attempted to destroy the Earth, or taken to writing free verse.

Nor are we told any details of how the conception took place, but perhaps it's a good thing that the world is denied a full account of free-fall cockroach sex.

Stephen Battersby, New Scientist correspondent

Making someone vanish in New York and appear an instant later in Tokyo is way beyond current technology but just might be possible in the far future, physicists told an audience at MIT attending a preview and panel discussion about the movie Jumper on Wednesday.

Actor Hayden Christensen and director Doug Liman were at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, US, to show scenes from the upcoming movie and to discuss it with physicists Max Tegmark and Edward Farhi.

In the film, a young man played by Christensen discovers he has the ability to instantly teleport himself across the globe. He uses the ability to rob a bank before getting caught up in a war pitting other "jumpers" like himself against a group that wants to kill them. Click on the image below to watch the trailer.



I was expecting the physicists to say that trying to teleport something as complex as a human being would be totally out of the question. So I was surprised when they said they wouldn't rule it out, even if it is way beyond current technology.

Physicists have teleported individual particles of light called photons across distances of more than 3 kilometres, according to Farhi (below, right), who heads MIT's Center for Theoretical Physics, and have also teleported particles of matter such as electrons.

He said that it should not be too difficult to increase the distances to thousands of kilometres or even interstellar distances, but that teleporting something as complicated as a human, as opposed to single particles, would be much more difficult.

"That really is pretty far down the line," he said. "A living creature probably has 1030 [1 followed by 30 zeros] particles in it … and to get all the information about that to some distant location looks really pretty formidable. I cannot see that as something in the reasonable future."

Farhi also pointed out two limitations of this technique, which is called quantum teleportation. One is that it requires particles to be sent ahead of time to the location you want to teleport to. These particles are what take on your essence to reconstruct you in this location when you are teleported. Secondly, even quantum teleportation takes time – the signal that carries the information used to reconstruct you cannot move faster than the speed of light. However, if it were one day possible to teleport a person, down to the quantum state of each of their atoms, he said the teleported person at point B should have exactly the same thoughts and memories as the person whose quantum state was destroyed at point A.

The other physicist on the panel, Max Tegmark (above, left), pointed out another possible way to transport things quickly across space-time. The laws of physics allow for the existence of "wormholes", which are distortions in the fabric of space that can link two distant locations.

If you could build and take such a shortcut, you could go faster than the speed of light and also time travel, Tegmark said. Unfortunately, he says, the trip could be quite gruelling, as wormholes tend to be quite unstable. "It could collapse into a black hole," he said, "which would be kind of a bummer."

Tegmark later asked Christensen how scientists could be more helpful to filmmakers. "Watch Jumper, get inspired by it, and get to work and figure [teleportation] out," he replied.

Given Christensen's previous role in the Star Wars series, the physicists were also asked to compare the scientific realism of that series with that of Jumper. "I would guess that you would have a light sabre weapon before you will teleport a person," Farhi said. Tegmark wondered how one would build a light sabre: "The only hard part about the light sabre is getting the laser beam to stop."

A few clips of Jumper were shown. I wasn't expecting anything great, because I had not been impressed by the trailer, which seemed higher on enthusiasm than impact. But the scenes we saw developed the story more and did a better job of drawing me in, even if they still seemed a little cheesy in places.

I have my doubts about whether teleportation of people will ever become a reality. The speed of light is pretty fast, and as Tegmark said, if you don't want to go faster than that, there are easier ways to travel, using vehicles propelled by the annihilation of matter with antimatter, for example.

Having said that, I don't have a problem with a far-fetched premise if it makes for an enjoyable movie. I'm hoping Jumper will take the teleportation idea in interesting directions, but that remains to be seen.

David Shiga, online reporter (Images: Maggie McKee)

Robert Bigelow is a billionaire who amassed his fortune through real estate ventures like the Budget Suites of America hotel chain. Now he's on a personal quest to kick-start the commercial space travel industry by launching and renting out low-cost, inflatable space stations to corporations, space agencies and space tourists.

Click on the icon below to watch a video about his plans.



In October 2007, I was invited to meet Robert Bigelow at the mansion that serves as his corporate headquarters in Las Vegas, Nevada, US.

Passing by a fountain bubbling softly in the courtyard outside, I entered the foyer and was led upstairs to Robert Bigelow's office. It was spacious, but not enormous, done out in dark wood like the rest of the mansion in an elegant, old world style – nothing like the garish neon of the Las Vegas strip.

On Bigelow's desk sat a meteorite and a model of an inflatable space station. On the wall behind it was a framed magazine cover featuring one of the Bigelow space stations.

Bigelow got up from behind his desk and shook my hand, then invited me to sit down across from him.

Over the next hour, we talked about everything from his lifelong interest in UFOs to his strategy for overcoming the lack of affordable transportation options for getting humans into space. To prevent this transportation problem from making his commercial space stations inaccessible, and therefore useless, he told me he intends to offer $760 million of his own money to get such a vehicle developed.

Bigelow was a good speaker – he was confident and knowledgeable about the elements needed to make his aerospace dreams take flight. He was very forthcoming, not shying away from answering questions about his involvement in UFO and paranormal research. Only one question prompted a guarded response – when I asked him whether there is any connection between that research and his plans for private space stations. "I would say possibly, and I need to let that go as my shortest answer," he said.

(Read the full interview or listen to an episode of radio's The Space Show in which I talk with host David Livingston about my visit.)

Bigelow certainly thinks big. He has started construction of a 15,000-square-metre factory that will be able to mass produce his inflatable space stations. If his master plan is successful, he will have revolutionised human access to space.

Such lofty aims demand a sceptical eye. Clearly, there are many hurdles to overcome, with the lack of affordable transportation and the uncertain market for his space stations key among them. Before the interview, I wondered if – despite his success in the business world – Bigelow might have more imagination than practical sense. But I found him to be a hard-nosed realist.

"I recognise that everything I have spent so far and what I might spend in the future could all be for nothing," he told me. "But that is part of the recipe. If you are not willing to take on that kind of risk, then don't be in the game."

Bigelow also struck me as a person who knows how to get things done. His time is scheduled down to the minute. And when for a moment he couldn't remember the exact amount for the space transportation contract his company may offer ($758 million), he had the figure at his fingertips in seconds, after punching a few buttons to get the appropriate staffer on the phone.

Given the hurdles, I still think Bigelow's goal is a long shot. But I emerged from the interview with the impression that if anyone can achieve such an outlandish objective – and that's a big if – Bigelow probably can.

David Shiga, online reporter

Space tourist Charles Simonyi and Microsoft chief Bill Gates are giving a total of $30 million to a groundbreaking telescope that will make 'movies' of the sky by imaging it repeatedly.

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is to be built in the mountains of Chile and is supposed to image the entire sky visible from this location every three nights, starting in 2014.

That will allow it to detect slight changes in the night sky over time, as asteroids change position, supernovae explode and fade, and other events unfold.

Within a decade of operation, it will be able to find 90% of all asteroids down to 140 metres across that have the potential to threaten Earth. That would reduce the likelihood that such an object could remain undetected until just before a close encounter, like the recently discovered object that might hit Mars on 30 January.

The observatory has already enlisted internet search giant Google to help deal with the reams of data the telescope will generate.

Now, Charles Simonyi, a former Microsoft engineer and recent tourist to the International Space Station, has pledged $20 million towards building the LSST, with Bill Gates pitching in another $10 million.

The money helps move the project towards its goal of raising $300 million to construct the telescope. About $30 million had already been raised from other donors as of mid-2006.

But the LSST will have to compete for funding with other next-generation ground-based observatories, like the 24.5-metre Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), expected to cost $550 million. Another mega-project, the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), recently got a funding boost of $200 million from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Such giant observatories have become more practical in recent years thanks to advances in adaptive optics, which use shape-changing mirrors to cancel out the blurring effects of the atmosphere.

I think we can expect exciting things from ground-based astronomy in the next decade with these huge observatories coming on line. Such leaps in technology tend to lead to new and unexpected discoveries – who knows what marvels these new telescopes might reveal.

David Shiga, online reporter