One thing’s for sure – burning hydrocarbons has to be done away with, and soon. The race is on to find new energy sources for our multitudinous needs. One of these potential solutions is to use bacteria in fuel cells. After all, they can produce energy from a wide range of materials, such as glucose and sewage, and the growing field of synthetic biology could engineer new bugs that output enough power to be commercially useful.

An article at Nature.com caused a stir, citing research by Italian researcher Nicola Pugno as proof the space elevator is an un-buildable concept, at least with current technologies. The pro-elevator lobby have come out in force to react to and refute the study; Ted Semon’s Space Elevator Blog rounds up the responses.

It’s a landmark day for the high-energy physics people. The formal go-ahead for the construction of the ITER experimental fusion tokomak plant has been signed off by the contributing nations, and construction will start soon in southern France. Why they aren’t spending the 10 billion euros on making the alternative energy sources we already have work more efficiently is anyone’s guess.

For all the sceptics, some concrete evidence that nanotech is useful. Researchers at Harvard University have built Field Effect Transistors with nanowire, and they are performing ‘three to four times better’ than plain old silicon CMOS versions.

Those old Voyager probes were built to last, and they’re still sending back data now. But Voyager 2 has just sent back something that has the scientists a little baffled. It seems that the magnetic field of the solar system, the heliosphere, is distorted in its southern hemisphere. The best explanation so far is that the interstellar magnetic field is pushing it out of shape.