Using data from Voyager, we have discovered a strong magnetic field just outside the solar system. This magnetic field holds the interstellar cloud together—"The Fluff"—and solves the long-standing puzzle of how it can exist at all.

The Fluff is much more strongly magnetized than anyone had previously suspected. This magnetic field can provide the extra pressure required to resist destruction.

The Voyagers are not actually inside the Local Fluff. But they are getting close and can sense what the cloud is like as they approach it.

At least, that's what NASA's Heliophysics Guest Investigator from George Mason University Merav Opher says in the December 24 issue of Nature. I lean to the intergalactic plot to keep our primitive world from entering the Federation of Advanced Civilizations. That, or Ming of Mongo trying to crush our puny asses.

It's ironic how the whole thing works. Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere protects us from the Sun's magnetic field and radiation. Then, the Fluff is not destroying us thanks to the Sun's magnetic field and the solar winds, which is what form the 6.2-billion-mile-wide heliosphere. So my question is: Who protects the Fluff?

I will leave you with that. Go think, my little Earthlings, go. [NASA]

Englishman Russell Thurnbull got attacked with ammonia 15 years ago during a street fight. As a result, he got an extremely painful condition called Limbal Stem Cell Deficiency, which resulted in blindness in one eye. After much medication, he became a lab rat for all kinds of treatments until a team from Newcastle's North East England Stem Cell Institute got the miraculous cure he was waiting for.

First, the team took a minuscule sample of stem cells from his healthy eye's cornea. This millimeter square of cells was placed on a amniotic membrane, which was placed inside a liquid made from his blood, glucose, insulin, and hydrocortisone. The cells will grow in that solution until taking all over the membrane, which then is used to replace the damaged cornea.

The result: He completely gained eyesight after only eight weeks of the operation. It is not Christopher Reeve walking, but if this is not the future ringing the doorbell, right here, right now, I don't know what it is. [Channel 4]

Nanoparticles — is there anything they can't do? — embedded in the hydrogel lenses react with glucose molecules in naturally occurring tears. A chemical reaction then causes the lenses to shift their hues, alerting the wearer to falling or spiking blood sugar levels. The wearer can then make the appropriate adjustments to his or her blood sugar, all without having to carry around (and use) devices for drawing and analyzing blood.

U. of Western Ontario Professor Jin Zhang has just collected $216,000 from the Canada Foundation for Innovation as a result of the breakthrough process to develop other applications for multifunctional nanocomposites, which can be used in everything from biomedicine to food preservation to packaging. We think a head-up display for glucose levels is pretty good, but if nanocomposites can also make the packaging on that blood-sugar-leveling candy bar biodegrade more quickly, all the better. [Institute of Nanotechnology]

Popular Science is your wormhole to the future. Reporting on what's new and what's next in science and technology, we deliver the future now.

Apparently, Gorilla Glass differs from the product you might find in a typical smartphone because it allows "larger ions to penetrate the surface more deeply to increase the compression tolerance and tolerate deeper scratches." This is achieved though a aluminum-composite composition that can be made extremely thin and light because of its strength.

Corning, the company behind the glass, is hoping to expand the reach of their product to other consumer electronics and even vehicles—anything that needs to withstand the elements. And by "elements" I mean clumsy, uncoordinated types...Adam? [Smartplanet and Gorilla Glass]

Extraordinary Animals In The Womb aired last year, using advances in scanning and imaging technology to trace the gestational paths of animals outside the human family. The documentary footage is actually a combination of digital photography, scans, and computer-generated models. The filmmakers took detailed scans of the animal's wombs, then had the model makers recreate every blood vessel and whisker. The resulting images, while not direct photographs, are, according to the researchers, accurate representations of what goes on inside these creatures' wombs.

You can read more about the documentary at the Daily Mail.

Stunning photographs of animals inside womb [This Blog Rules via Maurissa Tancharoen]

The small device would connect around the teeth and use bone conductivity to take sounds from a microphone in the deaf ear and turn them into vibrations that could be heard by the working ear. Pretty crazy! It's currently being tested, with plans for it to hit the FDA next year for approval and then official release. [New Scientist via io9]

The West Mata undersea volcano, located 200 kilometers from Samoa, erupted in May. Researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sent the remotely operated underwater vehicle Jason to record the explosive action. In addition to tossing up lava and chunks of rock, West Mata also released a significant amount of sulfuric acid into the water, rendering its acidity somewhere between battery acid and stomach acid. The research team collected various samples and is analyzing them and the footage to better understand these deep sea eruptions and the life that exists around these deep underwater volcanoes. Meanwhile, we get a spectacular view of the eruption itself.

Cameras catch underwater volcano in the act [Science News]

Those pixels are really genetically engineered bacteria, modified to "express fluorescent proteins and carotenoid pigments" by Team Osaka, at the nanobiology laboratories at the University of Osaka, Japan. [Microbial Art via New Scientist]

This was the decade of the first face transplant, the first extinct species brought back from the dead, and printable human tissue; a decade that brought us closer to synthetic life forms and the invisibility cloak. But we've whittled it down to ten of the decade's biggest science stories, with discoveries, advances, and topics that are sure to change our lives in the next ten years.

It's Full of Planets: This was a big decade for planets, and not just because Pluto got a downgrade. In 2005, astronomers discovered Eris, a dwarf planet larger Pluto (as well as smaller dwarf planets Haumea and Makemake). Eris' discovery prompted the International Astronomical Union to actually define the term planet, leading to Pluto's demotion to dwarf planet. But the discovery of Eris after all this time suggests there is still a lot to learn about our solar system.

We also got our first direct look at exoplanets, worlds outside our solar system, thanks to the Hubble Telescope. In 2008, astronomers at the Keck and Gemini captured the first images of planets orbiting distant stars. And the planetary discoveries just keep getting more exciting; just this week, astronomers announced that they had observed a super-Earth that might be made largely of liquid water.

Water, Water Everywhere: The world watched on as the Phoenix Lander dug through the Martian terrain for signs of water on the Red Planet. In the summer of 2008, NASA announced it had found definitive proof of water ice on Mars. More recently, scientists discovered that large deposits of water ice exist beneath the planet's surface. This fall, the moon became the center of our watery attention when astronomers found evidence of water throughout the moon's surface. Although the supervillainous plot to bomb the moon didn't seem as initially impressive as we had hoped, the probe did confirm researchers' suspicions that the moon does, in fact, contain a significant amount of frozen water. These discoveries not only reveal more about our solar system, they indicate that, should humans try to colonize Mars or the moon, there will be resources to make survival a little easier.

Shaking Up the Human Family Tree: Humanity got a new great-great-grandmother (or perhaps she's our great-great-great-aunt) in Ardi, a fossilized hominid skeleton found in Ethiopia. Granted, Ardipithecus ramidus was discovered in 1992, but it wasn't until 2009 that she was revealed as a significant addition to our family tree. Although there's technically no "missing link" because humans didn't evolve from chimpanzees, Ardi is, so far, our closest link to chimps, and brings us closer to the common human-chimp ancestor than ever before. Analysis of Ardi's skeleton and probably anatomy reveals just how unlike either chimps that common ancestor is bound to be. One of the Ardi researchers even quipped that when we find that common ancestor, it might look less like we evolved from a chimp-like creature and more like chimps evolved from creatures more like us.

The Book of Life Recorded: Our understanding of human genetics reached a new milestone with the mapping of the human genome. The Human Genome Project announced a rough draft of the human genome in 2000, followed by a more complete version in 2003; the sequence of the last chromosome was published in 2006. Though the genome hasn't been 100 percent mapped, the Human Genome Project has completed its mapping goals. We still have to interpret the sequences we have recorded, but hopefully as we translate the book of our genetic lives, we will get a better understand of how our genes interact and improve our treatment of genetic diseases. Plus, the project has paved the way for sequencing other critters and plants, and, just this week, the lung cancer and melanoma genomes were sequenced.

Changing Your Genes: The promises of genetic engineering have really begun to bear fruit in the last few years, in ways far beyond Alba, the glowing transgenic bunny that grabbed headlines in 2000. In 1999, an 18-year-old with a, inherited liver disease died during a gene therapy trial, after suffering an unanticipated immune reaction to a viral vector. But in more recent years, gene therapy and genetic engineering have shown their promise. In 2000, scientists reported the first gene therapy success, having provided a patient with severe combine immunodeficiency (commonly known as "Bubble Boy" syndrome), though SCID gene therapy treatments were halted when patients developed leukemia. This year, gene therapy successfully treated children with a congenital form of blindness, giving them the ability to see for the first time in their lives. Meanwhile, genetic engineering experiments on animals have cured color blindness in monkeys, created super-strong monkeys, created drug-producing rats, and enabled animals to pass their altered genes to their offspring.

Stem Cells Grow Up: Embryonic stem cells have been a source of contention for years, but in 2007, Shinya Yamanaka helped sidestep that issue when he found a way to reprogram adult skin cells into induced pluripotent stem cells. Stem cells themselves have continued to aid important medical advances. In 2008, researchers generated motor neurons from elderly patients with ALS, an advance that could help researchers better understand the disease. A newly released study has suggested that a mini stem cell transplant could reverse sickle cell disease, and stem cell research has lead to advances in HIV research and the treatment of heart disease.

Climate Change Takes Center Stage: One of the biggest science stories of the decade has been less about scientific advances than about how the public responds to scientific research. Reports that the glaciers are melting faster than expected, a decade of record warmth, and Al Gore's Nobel Prize have all been part of the conversation on climate change and to what extent humans are responsible.

Commercial Spacecrafts Prepare to Take Flight: Amidst NASA budget cuts, commercial spaceflight has come to the forefront. The Ansari X Prize, first offered in 1996 for the first private enterprise that could fly a three-passenger vehicle 100 kilopmeters into space twice in one week. In 2004, the prize was finally won by Mojave Aerospace Ventures' SpaceShipOne. That same year, Virgin Galactic was founded to further space tourism. The company recently unveiled SpaceShipTwo, the first commercial spacecraft. 2004 also saw the certification of the Mojave Air and Space Port, the first licensed facility for horizontal launches of reusable spacecraft in the US. In anticipation of the spaceflight business, one company claims it's readying a space hotel.

Our Cyborg Present: In the last decade, humans and machines have gotten closer than ever. We have machines that can read our memories, computers that let us type with our brains, and robotic arms controlled by monkey minds. Perhaps the most impressive cyborg advances have come in the last few months, with researchers hooking amputees up to robotic arms that not only respond to electrical signals from the human brain, but also provide tactile feedback.

The LHC Comes Online: The Large Hadron Collider has just begun colliding proton beams, but its construction represents one of the most ambitious scientific undertakings ever. The immense particle accelerator will hopefully give us first-hand observations of aspects of the universe that have been, thus far, the realm of theoretical physics. Despite fears from doomsayers that the LHC would destroy the world and a series of mishaps that led to claims that the device was being sabotaged from the future, the LHC came online this year and quickly got to smashing protons at record-breaking speeds.

400 degrees Fahrenheit, that's how hot. But still, there are signs which indicate the planet has a gaseous atmosphere. GJ1214b itself is composed mostly of water and other ices, with one fourth of it being rock. As Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics' graduate Zachory Berta puts it: "Despite its hot temperature, this appears to be a waterworld. It is much smaller, cooler, and more Earthlike than any other known exoplanet."

The other good news is that it was discovered by an array of eight 16-inch optical telescopes using Apogee U42 CCDs, a kind of sensor which is used by amateur astronomers all over the world. The array is part of the MEarth Project, which monitors 2,000 red dwarves for signs of planetary activity.

The next step would be to direct Hubble to the planet—which orbits the star in only 38 hours—and analyze its atmosphere. After that, we will send Kevin Costner in a one-way spacecraft. [Eureka Alert]

A collaborative effort between scientists at Northwestern University and the United States Department of Energy discovered that common bacteria can power simple machines like the one seen above. Stimulated by oxygen, the swimming bacteria are able to push gears that are millions of times their size.

Igor Aronson, a lead scientist on the project, envisions a future in which these types of bacteria-powered micromachines make up a material that could "dynamically alter its microstructures, repair damage, or power microdevices." Presumably they won't quit their day jobs of decomposing stuff and making us sneeze. [PRWeb]

The Scorpion is designed as a possible replacement for the current, heavier munitions on Predator drones, or, in concert with a "Gunslinger" deployment pod (not unlike a plane-mountable version of the aerodynamic ejection pod seen above) as a way retrofit heavier larger, typically less-armed planes with laser-guided bombing capabilities. Despite being years into the development process (these internal videos date back to 2006), Lockheed hasn't secured any buyers yet. And yeah, as far as weapons technology goes, the Scorpion is a relatively minor upgrade. But what isn't at all minor in the number of times I've watched these videos today, each time expecting an explosion, and never, ever getting it. [Danger Room]

It's like the science of Hallmark without the sacrifice of a unicorn. [It's Nice That via Neatorama]

[New Scientist via io9]

Yes, the ad wizards at Jerry Jones Heavy Manufacturing Concern, LLC, decided that their eleventy-billion dollar show palace, $14 hamburgers, live sex shows (NSFW), cheerleaders, and "Party Passes" (oh, and an NFL game) would not be enough to entertain the 80,000 people who bothered to show up for the 'Boys latest December nightmare. So at the start of the second half against the Chargers, they turned the 160' by 90' superstructure over midfield into a 3-D movie theater so that fans in attendance could experience the wonder of football with length, width and depth! It's like you're actually there!

Now stop and think about this for a second, since no one who works for the organization apparently did. In order to see 3-D images on a television, you need to wear special glasses—glasses that impair your vision of the real, physical world around you. This means that the Cowboys were literally asking fans to ignore the actual live football game taking place before their very eyes, so that they could watch it on television instead. For $300 a ticket. Because that would be more "realistic." The effect certainly is mind boggling.

Since many fans chose not to put on (or couldn't figure out?) the stupid glasses, the video replay board became a blurry red and blue mess to their eyes. According to reports, the loudest cheer of the day came when they finally shut it off halfway through the third quarter.

Of course, the dirty secret of JerryWorld's massive video board is that it so overshadows the playing field that most fans end up staring at it anyway, rather than the flesh-and-blood players on the field in front of them. (Granted, some don't have any choice.) I'm sure that thought will comfort DeMarcus Ware when he wakes up from his coma.

It's hard to see what Dallas Cowboys saw in 3D call [Dallas Morning News]
3D experiment falls flat at Cowboys Stadium [PFT]
Cowboys Stadium 3D scoreboard experiment doesn't go so well, turned off in less than seven minutes [Second image via Engadget]
"3-D" a "3-Dud" at Cowboys Stadium [WPMT]

The WISE will be in orbit for the next nine months, snapping a photo every 11 seconds to map the entire universe in infrared. Eventually it'll cover the entire sky 1.5 times over.

It'll be looking for any objects that have a potential of hitting Earth as well as distant objects such as brown dwarfs and far-away galaxies shrouded in dust. Also, alien spacecraft. I mean, duh. [CNN, image via]

But what is it, you ask? Why, put simply, it's a great representation of something we primitive humans will never be able to observe directly:

According to string theory, space-time is not four-dimensional as you might expect, but actually 10-dimensional. The extra six dimensions are believed to be compactified or rolled up into such a small space that they are unobservable at human scales of sight. Their size and six dimensions make Calabi-Yau spaces difficult to draw. But, this model shows a three-dimensional cross-section of this likely space to reveal its structure and shape. - Scientifics Online

And all that mind-bending fun is just $90! String theory, in the palm of your hand! Or, if you don't subscribe to string theory, it's a paperweight. [Scientifics Online via MSNBC]