As if Star Trek needed anymore anachronisms, it looks like the Enterprise wouldn’t have survived warp speed. A group of physicists at the University of Sydney discovered that arrival and landing of a craft running faster than the speed of light would be catastrophic.

In the 1990s, a Mexican physicist created The Alcubierre warp drive. It suggests that the space-time continuum be formed into a bubble around the spacecraft, allowing it to travel faster than the speed of light while conforming to the rules of special relativity. The theoretical mechanism was recently dusted off by some students and their professor at the University of Sydney.

They found that the spacecraft would collect debris along the bubble-shaped space-time continuum, with some even entering the bubble. Then came the landing: as the craft decelerates, all of the energy produced by The Alcubierre warp drive is released at once with such force that anything within contact would be completely destroyed. Sorry Mr. Sulu, you’re fired.

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One of the barriers to Moon colonization has always been the astronomical (pun intended) cost of transporting materials there. It would cost billions just to take up enough stuff to build a small command center and living quarters. And since the nearest Target is pretty far away, colonists would need plenty of duplicates and back-ups. The most sensible solution is to use material that’s already on the Moon to build anything and everything a colony of humans might need – although even that doesn’t seem entirely sensible. It’s not like plastic, wood and metal grow on trees up there.

What the Moon does have plenty of, though, is rocks. And since we clever humans invented the amazing technology known as rapid prototyping (or 3D printing), we have a way to use those rocks to build a lot of the things a fledgling space colony might need. This idea has been around for a long time, but it wasn’t until recently that someone actually tested it out. In the above video, professor Amit Bandyopadhyay from Washington State University puts the concept to the test by using imitation Moon rocks to create small 3D objects like the ones at the top of the page. According to the professor, astronauts could even use the process to mend broken tools and other objects. Today we’re one exciting step closer to setting up shop on lands other than the Earth.

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Polyurethane, that ubiquitous artificial material out of which just about everything seems to be made these days, is super-cheap and durable enough that it’s absolutely everywhere. But it isn’t recyclable or biodegradable, meaning that the broken toy you throw out today will remain in the landfill forever and ever. This, obviously, is a huge problem for people who don’t enjoy living in a planet-sized trash heap full of lawn furniture and water guns.

Enter Pestalotiopsis microspora, a mushroom found growing in the Ecuadorian rain forest (not the one pictured above) by a group of Yale students. The fungus can survive on a steady diet of nothing but polyurethane, the only organism known to do so. What’s even more exciting is that it can do this in an anaerobic (air-free) setting, such as the environment found at the bottom of a garbage dump. Maybe future generations won’t have to figure out what to do with all of our plastic waste, after all.

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It has always been one of those frustrating little quirks of science (and sci-fi) that many people assume life elsewhere in the universe will be humanoid in form. While we don’t know for sure that there are other inhabited planets out there, it seems almost impossible to think that we’re alone. But according to new research published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, life on other planets could actually take the shape of advanced dinosaurs with the intelligence and cunning of humans. And since the asteroid that (probably) wiped out dinosaurs on Earth wouldn’t have occurred in the same way on another planet, these monster dinos would have been able to evolve unhindered for unknown millions of years.

A second, unrelated, study from Kyoto Sangyo University in Japan suggests that Earth could have seeded the universe with life. After all, a long-standing theory says that life on Earth was possibly planted here by intergalactic rocks which carried the first little seeds of life – and there is no reason the theory can’t work the other way. This old theory was updated by the researchers with new data suggesting significant amounts of life-bearing material could have made its way (following asteroid collisions) to solar system bodies that are likely able to support life. The JACS study states that the same cosmic event that brought life to Earth could have been replicated elsewhere in the universe, but the conditions could have been different enough to cause life to evolve differently…maybe as intelligent dinosaurs. These studies are both a little on the wacky side, but it’s refreshing to see mainstream science looking at alternatives to the commonly-accepted space-type theories.

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The idea of “suspended animation” has long been a crucial part of some science fiction stories. How else would sci-fi astronauts reach faraway planets, or military volunteers be put into “hibernation” for 500 years? But as commonplace as suspended animation might be in science fiction, it has yet to be perfected to the point that we can use it reliably for real-world applications. That could change very, very soon: Dr. Peter Rhee has gained FDA approval to start human trials on his suspended animation technique.

Dr. Rhee was one of the surgeons who worked to save Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ life when she was shot in the head on January 8, 2011. As the chief of the Tucson, Arizona trauma center, Rhee used a device to cool the Representative’s skin when her wound dangerously raised her body temperature. He wants to use a somewhat similar technique to artificially induce hypothermia in trauma patients, effectively putting them into a type of hibernation and giving surgeons more time to work on their wounds.

When the patient’s body temperature is drastically lowered, the body’s functions move so slowly that the heart actually ceases to beat. The patient is somewhere between life and death, and the technique can give surgeons enough time to work on traumatic wounds without worrying about the patient bleeding to death before the surgery is completed. This technique, if approved for use in hospitals, would only be used when there is no other way to save the patient’s life. But by giving doctors a few more precious minutes, trauma victims could come back from injuries that would previously have been unquestionably fatal.

The post Suspending Disbelief: Sci-Fi Staple Approved for Human Trial first appeared on Gajitz.