We have a fairly good idea of how life on Earth evolved, whatever the creationists think. But is that the only way it could have possibly worked? The rapidly growing field of synthetic biology is working hard at trying to answer that very question, and to push the envelope of a technology whose ‘only limits…in a sense, were established 3.8 billion years ago when the first one-celled life came into being’. We’re a long way off from creating life from scratch, but the theorists are busy looking at ways we might someday be able to.

I hope you brought your party threads – it’s the Hubble Telescope’s sixteenth birthday! And to celebrate, those lovely people at NASA and the European Space Agency have released a new mosaic image of the M82 galaxy. If you like a bit of that action, they have plenty more great space images from the past sixteen years to download too. These guys have kept me in fresh desktop wallpaper for ages.

China has announced that September 2008, right after the Beijing Olympic Games, will see the next manned spaceflight by the Chinese space program. This will also feature their first attempt at a space walk.

If you cut open a nanotube and roll it out flat, you get a sheet of carbon-graphite one molecule thick, referred to as ‘graphene’. Research at the UK’s University of Manchester shows that graphene sheets act like a metal, but a metal with properties governed by quantum physics. For instance, they can be used to filter electrons according to their quantum spin, opening the door on the elusive ‘spintronics’ computation models.

Add to the list of territorial disputes that seem rather silly to an outsider this one: South Korea has threatened a “physical clash” if Japan continues a sea-floor survey near the disputed islands of Dokdo/Takeshima. Note that these islands are so small they can only be visited when the seas are low.