If you think stem cell research can polarise opinion, just wait for the reaction to this. In 2004, a fertility scientist named Panos Zavos claimed to have implanted a cloned embryo in a human uterus, but that it failed to create a pregnancy. The science world told him to shut up and publish his findings. And now, he has done, in an obscure but genuine science journal, along with claims that he has tried the procedure a number of times since. Let the frantic ethical battle commence.

Seth Shostak rounds up the four most common suggestions from the public as to why SETI has had no results so far. I particularly love the abductee quaintness of, “you SETI types are just looking in the wrong places. We know where the extraterrestrials are: on a planet in the Zeta Reticuli system.” Yeah, and they came all this way just to probe your bowels, right…

Here’s a great idea from the UK government: taxing individuals based on their carbon emissions and use of non-renewable resources. It makes a lot of sense…but typically of New Labour, it’s such a complicated and obscure process that it may prove to be impractical in the form suggested. At least they’re making an effort, though.

What exactly are the supermassive objects at the centre of galaxies? Recent theories have maintained that they are black holes, devouring matter from the space around them and churning out X-rays. But a physicist in Texas thinks that they may be something to do with axions, a type of hypothetical particle that is one of the candidates for the origin of ‘dark matter’. It all boils down to the fact that we don’t really understand how gravity works at large scales evenm nearly as well as the scientists would like to – not yet, at least.

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired of waiting for my wearable cybertech enhancements. It looks like some other folk are getting twitchy too, to the extent of getting on with it themselves – some futurist with sharp eyes and steady hands cheerfully went and built his own head-up display into a pair of innocuously normal-looking sunglasses. I wonder if he does custom orders?