Peter Diamandis, CEO of the , wants to use our competitive instincts to make the world a better place. After handing out $10 million to the first private team to achieve suborbital space flight, he鈥檚 extended his X-prize concept into earthly realms such as automotive engineering, genomics and health care. And while he still sends billionaires to the International Space Station as managing director of the firm , he鈥檚 lately teamed up with futurist Ray Kurzweil to create the , where young entrepreneurs are trained to think about global issues. Ivan Semeniuk spoke with Diamandis about his ongoing ventures on and above the planet.

Why do you think prizes work?

First, as humans, we鈥檙e genetically predisposed to compete; we do it in sports and in business. That鈥檚 what encourages us to take risks, which drives breakthroughs. Secondly, if you鈥檙e going to try to do something on your own that鈥檚 considered audacious or outlandish and you fail, people say, 鈥淟ook at that stupid idiot who tried that crazy thing.鈥� However, if a third party puts up, as an objective, a very difficult goal, which you attempt but fail to achieve, then it鈥檚, 鈥淕ood try old chap, too bad you didn鈥檛 make it.鈥� The psychology of the prize changes the way society views you as a risk taker.

How do you scale up a prize into something that鈥檚 useful to society?

When we design a prize, it鈥檚 really important that the prize deliver a team and technology to a point where a business can then take off. It鈥檚 of zero interest to me to have a competition where the result ends up in a record book or on a museum shelf. For us, success means there鈥檚 an industry launched on the heels of a very visible achievement.

The Ansari X-prize was intended to launch a space tourism industry. As Apollo fades into history, are you worried that interest in space is diminishing?

I think I鈥檓 glad to see Apollo recede into the past because we鈥檝e hung our hats on the Apollo legacy for far too long. It鈥檚 important to get people to relate to space in an exciting way today. I think that means making space a personal experience, not a third-hand experience. The other thing we need is to have the first 鈥淣etscape鈥� event 鈥� the first company that makes a lot of money at it. That will bring in capital, and capital will fuel additional risk-taking that will drive us forward.

Speaking of risk, your business offers parabolic airplane flights for 鈥榮pace tourists鈥� who want to experience freefall 鈥� including Stephen Hawking in 2007. What was it like to put Stephen Hawking in zero g?

From the beginning, I thought it was going to be a great opportunity and that everyone would love it. Then I had people come to me and say, 鈥淵ou鈥檙e crazy. You鈥檙e going to kill Stephen Hawking and you鈥檙e going to destroy your company.鈥� But when we did it, we planned it well, it was extraordinarily easy and it was really fulfilling. After the 11 years we worked to get the company operational, that was the payoff.

When is Peter Diamandis going to space?

That鈥檚 my question. When the suborbital flights go, I will hop on one of the first of those. I can afford the $100,000 for that. As for the $40 million to go to orbit 鈥� as soon as I can afford that, I鈥檒l go 鈥� but I can鈥檛 yet.

Meanwhile, you鈥檝e now set up a . How can you improve health care with a prize?

I was honestly dubious at first. You can鈥檛 change what you can鈥檛 measure and in health care, there is no real measurement of a community鈥檚 health. If you say a community is healthy, how do you know that? So we鈥檝e created something called a community health index, which includes things like how many missed days of work, how many hospitalisations, how many deaths 鈥� concrete, objective measurements. What we鈥檙e inviting teams to do is demonstrate how they would improve a 10,000-person community health index by 50 per cent or more over a three-year period.

You鈥檝e also started the Singularity University. How is it different from a conventional graduate school experience?

Instead of focusing on a particular DNA sequence or ion channel or piece of computer code, we take you way out of your depth so that you鈥檙e looking at global issues. You鈥檒l be exposed to many other disciplines. You learn about AI and robotics and nanotech and human-machine interface. We ran our first class this summer and out of that class the students started six different companies, so it鈥檚 a real hotbed of entrepreneurship and big-picture thinking.

What do you hope to achieve with SU?

My hope is to create a network of people who are focused on the world鈥檚 problems and equip them to make transformational change. I want to spawn a new generation of young entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds that can approach these problems in ways that traditional institutional groups are not. Ultimately, while the X Prize Foundation sets the objective goals, I鈥檓 hoping that the Singularity University will generate the teams to compete for them.

Have you come across any problems that are not amenable to being solved with a prize challenge?

One of the fundamental problems on the planet is inequality. I haven鈥檛 figured out a prize for that one yet.

It鈥檚 not your average confession show: a panel of leading physicists spilling the beans about what keeps them tossing and turning in the wee hours.

That was the scene a few days ago in front of a packed auditorium at the Perimeter Institute, in Waterloo, Canada, when a panel of physicists was asked to respond to a single question: 鈥淲hat keeps you awake at night?鈥�

The discussion was part of 鈥溾��, a 10-day physics extravaganza, which ends on Sunday.

While most panelists professed to sleep very soundly, here are seven key conundrums that emerged during the session, which can be viewed .

Why this universe?

In their pursuit of nature鈥檚 fundamental laws, physicists have essentially been working under a long standing paradigm: demonstrating why the universe must be as we see it. But if other laws can be thought of, why can鈥檛 the universes they describe exist in some other place? 鈥淢aybe we鈥檒l find there鈥檚 no other alternative to the universe we know,鈥� says of Caltech. 鈥淏ut I suspect that鈥檚 not right.鈥� Carroll finds it easy to imagine that nature allows for different kinds of universes with different laws. 鈥淪o in our universe, the question becomes why these laws and not some other laws?鈥�

What is everything made of?

It鈥檚 now clear that ordinary matter 鈥� atoms, stars and galaxies 鈥� accounts for a paltry 4 per cent of the universe鈥檚 total energy budget. It鈥檚 the other 96 per cent that keeps University of Michigan physicist engaged. Freese is excited that one part of the problem, the nature of dark matter, may be nearing resolution. She points to new data from experiments like NASA鈥檚 that are consistent with the notion that dark matter particles in our own galaxy are annihilating with one another at a measurable rate, which in turn could reveal their properties. But the discovery of dark energy, which appears to be speeding up the expansion of the universe, has created a vast new set of puzzles for which there are no immediate answers in sight. This includes the nature of the dark energy itself and the question of why it has a value that is so extraordinarily small, allowing for the formation of galaxies, stars and the emergence of life.

How does complexity happen?

From the unpredictable behaviour of financial markets to the rise of life from inert matter, , physicist and applied mathematician at the University of Chicago, finds the most engaging questions deal with the rise of complex systems. Kadanoff worries that particle physicists and cosmologists are missing an important trick if they only focus on the very small and the very large. 鈥淲e still don鈥檛 know how ordinary window glass works and keeps it shape,鈥� says Kadanoff. 鈥淭he investigation of familiar things is just as important in the search for understanding.鈥� Life itself, he says, will only be truly understood by decoding how simple constituents with simple interactions can lead to complex phenomena.

Will string theory ever be proved correct?

Cambridge physicist is passionate about the mathematical beauty of string theory 鈥� the idea that the fundamental particles we observe are not point-like dots, but rather tiny strings. But he admits it once brought him to a philosophical crisis when he realised he might live his entire life not knowing whether it actually constitutes a description of all reality. Even experiments such as the Large Hadron Collider and the Planck satellite, while well positioned to reveal new physics, are unlikely to say anything definitive about strings. Tong finds solace in knowing that the methods of string theory can be brought to bear on less fundamental problems, such as the behaviour of quarks and exotic metals. 鈥淚t is a useful theory,鈥� he says, 鈥渟o I鈥檓 trying to concentrate on that.鈥�

What is the singularity?

For cosmologist and Perimeter Institute director , the biggest mystery is the one that started it all, the big bang. Conventional theory points back to an infinitely hot and dense state at the beginning of the universe, where the known laws of physics break down. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 know how to describe it,鈥� says Turok. 鈥淗ow can anyone claim to have a theory of everything without that?鈥� Turok is hopeful that string theory and a related development known as the 鈥�holographic principle鈥�, which shows that a singularity in three dimensions can be translated into a mathematically more manageable entity in two dimensions (which may imply that the third dimension and gravity itself are illusory). 鈥淭hese tools are giving us new ways of thinking about the problem, which are deeply satisfying in a mathematical sense,鈥� he says.

What is reality really?

The material world may, at some level, lie beyond comprehension, but , professor of physics at the University of Vienna, is profoundly hopeful that physicists have merely scratched the surface of something much bigger. Zeilinger specialises in quantum experiments that demonstrate the apparent influence of observers in the shaping of reality. 鈥淢aybe the real breakthrough will come when we start to realise the connections between reality, knowledge and our actions,鈥� he says. The concept is mind-bending, but it is well established in practice. Zeilinger and others have shown that particles that are widely separated can somehow have quantum states that are linked, so that observing one affects the outcome of the other. No one has yet fathomed how the universe seems to know when it is being watched.

How far can physics take us?

Perhaps the biggest question of all is whether the process of inquiry that has revealed so much about the universe since the time of Galileo and Kepler is nearing the end of the line. 鈥淚 worry whether we鈥檝e come to the limits of empirical science,鈥� says of Arizona State University. Specifically, Krauss wonders if it will require knowledge of other universes, such as those posed by Carroll, to understand why our universe is the way it is. If such knowledge is impossible to access, it may spell the end for deepening our understanding any further.

Turok says that鈥檚 exactly why the Perimeter Institute exists, to harness the thinking of the world鈥檚 brightest young minds in an unrestrained environment. By optimising conditions for creative thinking, it may be possible to avoid such an impasse.

鈥淲e鈥檙e used to thinking of theoretical physics as accidental,鈥� says Turok. 鈥淲e need to ask whether there鈥檚 a more strategic way to speed up understanding and discovery.鈥�

Perhaps then all those troubled physicists can finally get some rest 鈥� or at least switch to more mundane worries.

The 鈥淨uantum to Cosmos鈥� festival can be

Update: On 16 October, NASA released an image of a faint ejecta plume observed by the LCROSS shepherding spacecraft. See Elusive lunar plume caught on camera after all

Weeks before NASA鈥檚 LCROSS mission crashed into the moon, some scientists involved with the mission were predicting very little, if anything, would be seen from the impact 鈥� despite a well publicised observing campaign.

Others now say the $79 million mission was ill conceived and will not deliver a meaningful result even if it manages to find evidence for water on the moon.

LCROSS ended on Friday morning when a two-tonne Centaur rocket hit the floor of a perpetually shadowed crater near the lunar south pole.

女生小视频s hoped that dust and vapour kicked up by the impact would climb high enough to catch sunlight, allowing a satellite that trailed behind the rocket to hunt for traces of lunar water in the ejected debris. The Hubble Space Telescope and many Earth-based observers were recruited to watch for a plume of debris rising from the impact site.

But while scientists voiced disappointment when no obvious plume was spotted from any vantage point, some were not surprised.

鈥淲e had a meeting in August where we reported what we thought would be the scenario,鈥� says LCROSS team member of Brown University.

He said the new estimate for the mass that would be lofted to a visible elevation was 100 to 1000 times lower than estimates that had originally informed the mission.

Sideways spray

Schultz and his team derived their numbers from projectile experiments using a .

Their results differed strikingly from models that assumed debris would fly outward from the impact site a 45掳 angle.

Instead, the team found that the fastest debris, ejected at the initial stages of crater formation, tended to depart at an angle closer to 30掳 鈥� more of a sideways spray than an upward trajectory. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 not going to see sunlight,鈥� Schulz told New 女生小视频.

Rocket orientation

Another potential problem is that the 10 metre-long rocket was expected to produce a crater only 20 to 30 m in diameter. That crater size is small enough for the shape and orientation of the rocket to have played a role in how the debris was ejected, confounding expectations.

鈥淯nder those circumstances, the usual scaling relations may not have applied as well as we thought, even though we tried to take that into account,鈥� says LCROSS team member of the University of California, Santa Cruz.

So was it a waste of time for professional and amateur astronomers who tried to observe what may have been, in principle, unobservable? Probably not, says Schultz, because the risk of missing something valuable, however unlikely, outweighed the cost of looking.

鈥楶R stunt鈥�

But some question whether the LCROSS mission made any sense at all.

鈥淟CROSS was not a sound strategy to pursue if your objective was to answer the question, is there water ice on the moon? And if so, where is it and what is its state?鈥� says of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas.

If LCROSS is unsuccessful in finding water, says Spudis, it will not say anything definitive about the moon because it could simply mean that scientists were unlucky in hitting a dry patch.

On the other hand, a positive detection of water would not provide any information about the extent and distribution of ice on the moon鈥檚 surface, which Spudis says is the point of looking in the first place. 鈥淭hat tells me the fundamental rationale behind the mission was flawed.鈥�

A better, though admittedly more expensive, alternative would be a series of missions culminating in a rover, he says. The rover could move from sunlit to dark regions near the poles in order to compare lunar environments and characterise any ice found. 鈥淚nstead, [NASA] came up with a PR stunt, and it kind of backfired,鈥� he says.

See also: Hunting for water on the moon: a brief but splashy history

Update: On 16 October, NASA released an image of a faint ejecta plume observed by the LCROSS shepherding spacecraft. See Elusive lunar plume caught on camera after all

In the final minutes of its plunge toward the moon, NASA鈥檚 LCROSS spacecraft spotted the brief infrared flash of a rocket booster hitting the lunar surface just ahead of it 鈥� and it even saw heat from the crater formed by the impact. But scientists remain puzzled about why the event did not seem to generate a visible plume of debris as expected.

As hundreds of telescopes and observers watched, the highly publicised NASA mission to search for water on the moon reached its grand finale at 0431 PDT (1131 GMT) with a pair of high-speed crashes into a lunar crater named Cabeus.

During the crucial moments at NASA鈥檚 Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, scientists and engineers with LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) peered in silent concentration as successive images of the crater grew larger on their screens.

Spectroscopic hints

Nearby, some 500 bleary-eyed visitors that had gathered overnight outside mission control were watching the same pictures on a giant outdoor screen.

Yet, immediately after the scheduled impact time, there was no obvious sign of the spectacular explosion that many were expecting. 鈥淚mpacting into the moon is an unpredictable business at best,鈥� Anthony Colaprete, principal investigator for LCROSS, said in a post-impact briefing.

Colaprete did not offer definitive word as to why the visual camera apparently did not detect the event but added there were interesting changes in spectroscopic data taken by the spacecraft that might have been produced by a debris cloud. 鈥淚鈥檓 not convinced that the ejecta is not in the data yet,鈥� he said.

Sodium flash

A worst-case scenario would have occurred if the rocket hit bedrock rather than loose, gravelly soil. In that case, the debris plume might not have reached the minimum 1.5-kilometre altitude needed to catch the sunlight and be seen by LCROSS.

Because of the angle of the crater, the plume would have needed to rise to 2.5 to 3 km in order to be seen by telescopes on Earth. A 10-km-high plume was expected.

The impact was monitored by the Hubble Space Telescope, which has not yet delivered its data. Several major observatories were also watching for signs of impact, including the Keck and Canada-France-Hawaii telescopes on Mauna Kea, neither of which saw a plume. One positive report came from Kitt Peak Observatory in Arizona, where a flash of visible light revealing the presence of sodium was recorded during the impact.

鈥淚 think we鈥檙e all a little bit disappointed that we didn鈥檛 see anything,鈥� David Morrison, director of NASA鈥檚 , told New 女生小视频.

Neither here nor there

Regardless of its ultimate scientific return, today鈥檚 outcome will likely go down as one of the more bemusing episodes in NASA鈥檚 long history of lunar missions. While the spacecraft appeared to be working as expected and in contact with mission controllers, it clearly did not deliver the views that scientists and spectators were hoping for.

Unlike a catastrophic failure, such as Mars Polar Lander in 1999, or a euphoric success, such as the spectacular 2005 collision of the Deep Impact mission with Comet Tempel 1, the non-detection seemed to leave officials unsure of how to react.

The big question that planetary scientists hope will be answered is: are there significant quantities of water ice on the moon? Last month, water was discovered in the lunar soil, but the amounts detected were relatively small.

Cold traps

A long standing mystery is whether dark craters such as Cabeus could act as cold traps, capturing water molecules that are liberated when comets strike the moon. Data from the Lunar Prospector mission, which flew in the late 1990s, indicate high concentrations of hydrogen in Cabeus. The hydrogen could belong to water ice mixed in with the rock and soil in the crater鈥檚 depths.

LCROSS was designed to look for the signature of water and other molecules as it flew into the debris plume of the rocket impact. It should also have executed a sideways turn one minute prior to its own impact to see the molecular constituents of the impact backlit by the sun.

Without a plume to study, scientists will have less of a handle on the question but Colaprete says the spectroscopic data may be enough to spy the constituents of water. 鈥淚t will probably take two weeks to get a yes or no answer on water,鈥� said Michael Bicay, director of science at Ames.

See a gallery of other attempts to divine water on the moon

If there is life on Saturn鈥檚 bizarre, water-spewing moon Enceladus, it鈥檚 about to spend a lot of time in the freezer.

So concludes Norman Sleep of Stanford University, who says a perpetual cycle of melting and refreezing may offer the best explanation for why Enceladus seems so active today. In Sleep鈥檚 scenario, Enceladus is now heading back into a long cold phase after a comparatively brief warm spell.

For any potential life on Enceladus, 鈥渋t鈥檚 boom and bust鈥�, says Sleep.

Sleep raised the idea at this week鈥檚 American Geophysical Union meeting in Toronto, Canada, after researchers learned that Enceladus is pouring out 15 gigawatts of heat 鈥� more than double earlier estimates. The new number makes matters worse for scientists trying to explain where all the heat comes from. It far exceeds what can be accounted for by the decay of radioactive elements and tidal stress 鈥� strains induced by Saturn鈥檚 pull on the moon.

The effects of the heat are dramatic: Enceladus is one of the most active bodies in the solar system, with vast plumes of water molecules streaming from cracks in its icy crust. There are also hints of a subsurface ocean below.

While this has raised excitement over Enceladus as a potential place to search for life, it is becoming clear that something is awry. Enceladus cannot have been as it is now throughout its whole existence 鈥� it would have lost 20% of its mass via its geysers if that had been the case, for example (see Geyser teaser: The moon that should be colder).

Runaway melting

鈥淚t appears that we are really looking at Enceladus at a special time,鈥� James Roberts of Johns Hopkins University told colleagues.

For researchers, this conclusion is far from satisfying. While it鈥檚 possible that a one-time episode, such as a giant impact, may have delivered the excess heat that Encledus is releasing now, such an explanation would mean that events have conspired to show us Enceladus at a unique moment.

Instead, Sleep proposes a scenario in which Enceladus is frozen most of the time but thaws repeatedly. Over hundreds of millions of years, an existing gravitational interaction with the moon Dione causes the orbit of Enceladus to grow increasingly more elongated, or eccentric.

This produces much more tidal stress than Enceladus experiences today and eventually causes wide-scale fracturing and friction within its icy crust. The friction leads to runaway melting and produces an ocean and eruptions of water on the surface.

Watery pockets

The trick is that in its fluid state, Enceladus can more easily dissipate energy, which weakens the effect that drove up its eccentricity to begin with. The eccentricity returns to normal and then Enceladus refreezes, starting the cycle anew.

鈥淭his has probably happened a few times before,鈥� says Sleep.

While no one at the meeting was prepared to endorse the idea without further analysis, researchers said Sleep鈥檚 suggestion is consistent with other details emerging from Cassini spacecraft data.

鈥淲hat strikes me about it is that you can start with Enceladus cold and re-melt it,鈥� says of the Southwest Research Institute. 鈥淯ntil now that鈥檚 been the problem. If it鈥檚 frozen, it鈥檚 very hard to get the activity to start up.鈥�

As to whether life can survive on such a schizophrenic moon, Sleep says it depends on whether Enceladus freezes completely during the cold spells or retains a few watery pockets where microbes can eke out an existence in the lean times.

鈥淚f so, then fluctuations may not be a bad thing,鈥� says Sleep.

Mars may have had a wet, life-friendly past without ever getting warmer than the freezing point of water.

So concludes a new study that investigates what would happen to various mineral solutions on Mars. Researchers found that solutions containing certain combinations of sulphur, silicon and other ions stay liquid even down to -28 掳C 鈥� a much more plausible temperature for early Mars than one above 0 掳C.

鈥淭he results were a happy surprise,鈥� says Ricardo Amils of the Astrobiology Centre in Madrid, Spain. 鈥淭he concentrations you need are not much higher than seawater.鈥�

In the study, he and colleagues led by Alberto Fair茅n of NASA鈥檚 in Moffett Field, California, used models to determine what would have happened to water loaded up with generous helpings of calcium, sodium, silicon, iron and sulphur ions, among others.

The relative concentrations of the ingredients matched mineral compositions sampled by four Mars probes: the landers Viking 1 and Mars Pathfinder, and the rovers Spirit and Opportunity.

In many cases, the water not only remained liquid at extremely low temperatures but precipitated minerals as it got colder, including jarosite, haematite and gypsum 鈥� all present on Mars today.

Water, water everywhere

The study may resolve a conundrum about water on Mars: despite much evidence that suggests water was once present on the surface, it has proven virtually impossible to come up with a Martian climate model in which liquid water remains stable for long. In addition, different carbon dioxide levels in Fair茅n鈥檚 models make little difference to the results, which suggests that only modest amounts of greenhouse gases may have been required to maintain standing water on ancient Mars.

Significantly, the solutions modelled by Fair茅n ranged in concentration between 5 and 6 per cent; Earth鈥檚 seawater, for comparison, has a concentration of 3.5 per cent. Such concentrations are well within the comfort zone of numerous families of microbes on Earth, which suggests a cold, wet Mars may have been just as hospitable to life as a warm one.

The results could explain the water droplets apparently clinging to and even rolling down the landing struts of the Mars Phoenix lander in images from the spacecraft. The water is assumed to have come from ice melted by Phoenix鈥檚 thrusters at the landing site, but it was thought it could only remain liquid on Mars if it contained extremely high concentrations of salt.

鈥淭hey may not need a lot of salt,鈥� says Amils.

Journal reference: Nature (DOI: 10.1038/nature07978)