I suspect many of my readers don’t usually encounter a lot of breaking science news, but it’s been a big week and I wouldn’t want you to miss out. Still, if watching The Big Bang Theory is about all the physics you can handle in a week, then feel free to click off now and look at the pretty Lego Sculptures at BrickCon 2009.

For the rest of you, it’s interesting to note that your long held suspicions have been confirmed. It seems the universe is even more random than predicted. Rather, the ambient entropy values are higher than previous estimates. This is important because the progression of the universe between minimum and maximum entropy is what constitutes the flow of time. In essence, the universe is closer to maximum entropy than expected, and maximum entropy is the end of the line for life, the universe, and everything. Not to worry, it’s still many billions of years away, so don’t spend your 401k next week or anything. Still, understanding entropy at a macro level is essential to understanding the lifecycle of the cosmos.

In other news, the first instance of human telepathy or brain-to-brain communication was demonstrated. Sure, it was only a small string of ones and zeros (or yeses and nos) that were sent, but the result was definitive. So we’re a long way from this being a practical substitute for SMS messages, but it’s pretty awesome. And for those naysayers pointing at the fact that the method used the Internet as the intermediary network and so isn’t quite real telepathy I’d ask, “How is it that connecting two brains directly to the Internet is somehow less cool?”

Meanwhile, plasma rocket engines are now robust enough to be considered for live testing by NASA. These engines are way more powerful and fuel efficient than conventional chemical rockets. If this engine could be perfected, it would reduce a trip to Mars from 6 months to about 40 days. This is the sort of technology that could re-energize the space program and make exploration of the solar system a practical goal.

Finally, on the green-tech front, a new microbial process is able to turn poop into fuel for your car. More specifically, sewage is converted into ethanol by the little critters. This has the potential to solve two problems at once, which is way cooler than corn to ethanol. We have other uses for corn, but poop is always at a surplus, and there’s not much demand for it to be used for anything else.

The bottom line is that science trudges on, whether you are paying attention or not. And there are lots and lots of interesting discoveries yet to be made. In fact, Roger Penrose (one of my personal geek heroes and a man I’d love to have the opportunity to embarrass myself with over dinner some time) is pretty convinced that many of our fundamental understandings of physics are wrong. The non-deterministic nature of quantum mechanics is beyond annoying. (Einstein agonized over this same thing, causing him to spend his latter years trying to prove he was wrong about quantum theory.) And string theory, despite having a delightful mathematical elegance, has so far defied testability. With apologies to Sheldon Cooper (an unapologetic yet fictional string theory advocate), it may just be baseless fanciful math.

Either way, our kids and grandkids have a lot of work to do.