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It’s now been discovered that what was once thought to be an oil bonanza in Central Asia?with more oil than exists in the Middle East?is actually a bust. And despite government support of hydrogen fuel cells, research indicates that these will not be a viable reality in the near future, meaning we’ll continue to depend on Middle Eastern oil. At the same time, there’s been a dramatic shift in U.S. foreign policy toward Iraq and Saudi Arabia?and these things may be connected.
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Brian Walker is known as the “Rocket Guy” because he’s built his own rocket, which he plans to ride into space. “Hopefully I’ll launch from the black rock desert in Nevada,” he says. He?s been working on Project RUSH (Rapid Up Super High) for 4 years. When his rocket, Earthstar One, is completed, he will use it to ascend 50 miles straight up. It will be fueled by 90% pure hydrogen peroxide, and will descend back to Earth by parachute.
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If you clap your hands in front of the 1,100-year-old Temple of Kukulcan, in the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza, the pyramid chirps a reply in the voice of the sacred quetzal bird. “Now I have heard echoes in my life, but this is really strange,” says acoustical engineer David Lubman, who thinks the Mayans built their pyramids to create specific sound effects. A handclap at the base of Kukulcan?s staircase generates what Lubman describes as a “chir-roop” sound that first ascends and then falls, like the cry of the native quetzal bird.
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Melting was so severe on the Greenland ice sheet this summer that some of the scientists there weren?t sure they would be able to get off. “We had come in with a fixed-wing aircraft landing on skis,” says Konrad Steffen “If that snow is melting then you cannot leave. As it was, we had to charter a helicopter.”

This was a record-breaking year for northern polar ice loss, with surface melt on Greenland the highest in recorded history. The amount of Arctic sea ice also reached a record low. Compared with the northern expansion of vegetation, all this presents a “compelling case that something is going on,” says Larry Hinzman, of the University of Alaska.
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