This was the decade of the first face transplant, the first extinct species brought back from the dead, and printable human tissue; a decade that brought us closer to synthetic life forms and the invisibility cloak. But we've whittled it down to ten of the decade's biggest science stories, with discoveries, advances, and topics that are sure to change our lives in the next ten years.

It's Full of Planets: This was a big decade for planets, and not just because Pluto got a downgrade. In 2005, astronomers discovered Eris, a dwarf planet larger Pluto (as well as smaller dwarf planets Haumea and Makemake). Eris' discovery prompted the International Astronomical Union to actually define the term planet, leading to Pluto's demotion to dwarf planet. But the discovery of Eris after all this time suggests there is still a lot to learn about our solar system.

We also got our first direct look at exoplanets, worlds outside our solar system, thanks to the Hubble Telescope. In 2008, astronomers at the Keck and Gemini captured the first images of planets orbiting distant stars. And the planetary discoveries just keep getting more exciting; just this week, astronomers announced that they had observed a super-Earth that might be made largely of liquid water.

Water, Water Everywhere: The world watched on as the Phoenix Lander dug through the Martian terrain for signs of water on the Red Planet. In the summer of 2008, NASA announced it had found definitive proof of water ice on Mars. More recently, scientists discovered that large deposits of water ice exist beneath the planet's surface. This fall, the moon became the center of our watery attention when astronomers found evidence of water throughout the moon's surface. Although the supervillainous plot to bomb the moon didn't seem as initially impressive as we had hoped, the probe did confirm researchers' suspicions that the moon does, in fact, contain a significant amount of frozen water. These discoveries not only reveal more about our solar system, they indicate that, should humans try to colonize Mars or the moon, there will be resources to make survival a little easier.

Shaking Up the Human Family Tree: Humanity got a new great-great-grandmother (or perhaps she's our great-great-great-aunt) in Ardi, a fossilized hominid skeleton found in Ethiopia. Granted, Ardipithecus ramidus was discovered in 1992, but it wasn't until 2009 that she was revealed as a significant addition to our family tree. Although there's technically no "missing link" because humans didn't evolve from chimpanzees, Ardi is, so far, our closest link to chimps, and brings us closer to the common human-chimp ancestor than ever before. Analysis of Ardi's skeleton and probably anatomy reveals just how unlike either chimps that common ancestor is bound to be. One of the Ardi researchers even quipped that when we find that common ancestor, it might look less like we evolved from a chimp-like creature and more like chimps evolved from creatures more like us.

The Book of Life Recorded: Our understanding of human genetics reached a new milestone with the mapping of the human genome. The Human Genome Project announced a rough draft of the human genome in 2000, followed by a more complete version in 2003; the sequence of the last chromosome was published in 2006. Though the genome hasn't been 100 percent mapped, the Human Genome Project has completed its mapping goals. We still have to interpret the sequences we have recorded, but hopefully as we translate the book of our genetic lives, we will get a better understand of how our genes interact and improve our treatment of genetic diseases. Plus, the project has paved the way for sequencing other critters and plants, and, just this week, the lung cancer and melanoma genomes were sequenced.

Changing Your Genes: The promises of genetic engineering have really begun to bear fruit in the last few years, in ways far beyond Alba, the glowing transgenic bunny that grabbed headlines in 2000. In 1999, an 18-year-old with a, inherited liver disease died during a gene therapy trial, after suffering an unanticipated immune reaction to a viral vector. But in more recent years, gene therapy and genetic engineering have shown their promise. In 2000, scientists reported the first gene therapy success, having provided a patient with severe combine immunodeficiency (commonly known as "Bubble Boy" syndrome), though SCID gene therapy treatments were halted when patients developed leukemia. This year, gene therapy successfully treated children with a congenital form of blindness, giving them the ability to see for the first time in their lives. Meanwhile, genetic engineering experiments on animals have cured color blindness in monkeys, created super-strong monkeys, created drug-producing rats, and enabled animals to pass their altered genes to their offspring.

Stem Cells Grow Up: Embryonic stem cells have been a source of contention for years, but in 2007, Shinya Yamanaka helped sidestep that issue when he found a way to reprogram adult skin cells into induced pluripotent stem cells. Stem cells themselves have continued to aid important medical advances. In 2008, researchers generated motor neurons from elderly patients with ALS, an advance that could help researchers better understand the disease. A newly released study has suggested that a mini stem cell transplant could reverse sickle cell disease, and stem cell research has lead to advances in HIV research and the treatment of heart disease.

Climate Change Takes Center Stage: One of the biggest science stories of the decade has been less about scientific advances than about how the public responds to scientific research. Reports that the glaciers are melting faster than expected, a decade of record warmth, and Al Gore's Nobel Prize have all been part of the conversation on climate change and to what extent humans are responsible.

Commercial Spacecrafts Prepare to Take Flight: Amidst NASA budget cuts, commercial spaceflight has come to the forefront. The Ansari X Prize, first offered in 1996 for the first private enterprise that could fly a three-passenger vehicle 100 kilopmeters into space twice in one week. In 2004, the prize was finally won by Mojave Aerospace Ventures' SpaceShipOne. That same year, Virgin Galactic was founded to further space tourism. The company recently unveiled SpaceShipTwo, the first commercial spacecraft. 2004 also saw the certification of the Mojave Air and Space Port, the first licensed facility for horizontal launches of reusable spacecraft in the US. In anticipation of the spaceflight business, one company claims it's readying a space hotel.

Our Cyborg Present: In the last decade, humans and machines have gotten closer than ever. We have machines that can read our memories, computers that let us type with our brains, and robotic arms controlled by monkey minds. Perhaps the most impressive cyborg advances have come in the last few months, with researchers hooking amputees up to robotic arms that not only respond to electrical signals from the human brain, but also provide tactile feedback.

The LHC Comes Online: The Large Hadron Collider has just begun colliding proton beams, but its construction represents one of the most ambitious scientific undertakings ever. The immense particle accelerator will hopefully give us first-hand observations of aspects of the universe that have been, thus far, the realm of theoretical physics. Despite fears from doomsayers that the LHC would destroy the world and a series of mishaps that led to claims that the device was being sabotaged from the future, the LHC came online this year and quickly got to smashing protons at record-breaking speeds.

An Italian research team, lead by neurologist Paolo Maria Rossini, created the LifeHand, the latest in a long line of robotic prostheses. The team performed microsurgery to attach the hand 26-year-old Pierpaolo Petruzziello, who lost much of his left hand in a car accident. Petruzziello apparently mastered the hand in just a few days, and it responded to 95 percent of his mental commands. He claims that he also received incredible sensory feedback from the hand, even registering needle pinpricks.

Several weeks ago, another team reported successful experiments with an artificial hand that provided sensory feedback, but the LifeHand team claims that the experiments with Petruzziello represent the first time a subject has made achieved such complex movements with a prosthetic using only their mind. It's also the longest a subject has worn such a prosthetic; Petruzziello wore the LifeHand for a month. More research is needed, however, before a prosthetic can be tested long-term.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the LifeHand is that it didn't require Petruzziello to learn any new neurological tricks. He simply sends the same sorts of signals to the robotic hand as he sends his right hand, and gets nearly the same result.

The bionic hand controlled by thoughts [Sun via DVICE]

Netherlands Outrezone [Sam Van Olffen]

Don Quixote of Amsterdam vs. The Alien Windmills
Red Light District
Electrotulips
Flying Dutchman

We've profiled some of Wragg's sexier (read: NSFW) work before, and BrainBot has the all their whimsy, but is tinged with sadness as well. The BrainBot series was created as part of the "Mind Machines" show at San Diego's Distinctions Gallery. The illustrations are great on their own, but could we maybe someday see a Pixar-produced BrainBot short?

[Nate Wragg via lines and colors]

A Kiss Before Work
A Breath of Fresh Air
Computer Companion
The Brainbot is Alive and Dangerous
Brainbot Has Bad Days Too

Activelink, a subsidiary of Panasonic, working on a wearable robotic device — aptly termed the Power Loader — to aid in the heavy lifting associated with tasks like construction and rescue relief. Though considerably bulkier than Cyberdyne's HAL-5 suits, the Power Loader helps the wearer lift heavy objects (currently about 220 pounds) with ease. By placing their arms inside the robotic arms, the wearer will receive force feedback from the Power Loader, allowing them to more successfully manipulate objects in the Loader's grasp. Activelink plans to make the Power Loader commercially available by 2015.

You can see the Power Loader in action below, although Activelink fails to show off its Alien-fighting prowess:

[Activelink via Pink Tentacle]

So in the above sequence, the bad guys have crucified Gibson, and he's reliving the moment when the evil Fender stole his daughter and left him, his wife and their kid to die in a well. (The daughter has a chance to save them, but only if she can hold on to a barbed-wire rope. Ouch.) Reliving the trauma from this event makes Gibson upset enough to kick a hole in the cross that's holding him up, while both his flashback self and his now-self scream "FENDER!!!"

So here's the final battle, including a great bit where Gibson is fighting a guy... who sort of casually strolls into a fairly small, contained flame. The guy instantly catches fire all over his body, and then stumbles into a car... which explodes. Yeah!! And then Gibson finally faces Fender... who takes off his sunglasses, revealing really skanky contact lenses. They stare at each other, the closeups getting tighter and tighter, until... FIGHT!!!

According to Wikipedia, this movie was made instead of a sequel to the live-action He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe and a live-action Spider-Man movie. Both the He-Man and Spidey films got cancelled, so the studio threw this masterpiece together instead. But it all turned out for the best, since it led to Cyborg 2, starring Angelina Jolie.

Industrial designer Joanna Hawley decided to challenge the notions that prostheses need be purely functional – or that they should try to mimic biological limbs – by conceiving a prosthesis that is attractive and stylish in its own right:

Prosthetics generally lack humanity, style and grace. Often, they look much like landing gear and make the wearer uncomfortable, self aware, and sometimes depressed. By channeling the Eames' use materials and iconic style, we designed a leg with Steve McQueen in mind. We sought to convey a creative use of positive and negative space, a balance of materials and a reflection of the wearer.

Using the furniture designs of Charles and Ray Eames as an aesthetic model, Hawley and pre-med student Kayhan Haj-Ali-Ahmadi interviewed amputees, met with color specialists from make-up company Sephora, and scanned legs to achieve the proper proportions. The result: an individually tailored limb that does not look like a biological leg, but still meshes quite nicely with the human body, and hope for an aesthetically pleasing cyborg future.

[Eames-inspired Prosthetic Leg] via Yanko Design via William Gibson

Jang says that the movie is about his experience as a collector, feeling "endless desire." But we watch his tiny cyborg climb strange flowering plants, and following the impossible, gorgeous curves of a water pipe system, there is no feeling of urgency. Instead there is an almost meditative feeling as this lovely world unfolds. You're left with a quiet appreciation for all the hidden places where water droplets are to be found. And a desire to see more work from Jang.

via YouKu

SSC (also known as Natick, for the Massachusetts town where it's headquartered) is currently testing suits built by Sarcos and Raytheon, but they have some issues to resolve before the are deployable. The biggest problems, literally, are the power sources. They're too large and heavy, and don't last long enough.

The other issue is safety. The primary function of these suits will be to help soldiers lift heavy objects, such as missiles or crates full of supplies. Giving one person the ability to do the work of five is awesome, until a hydraulic line blows out. Imagine having a 1,000 pound crate of MREs land in your lap. Exo-suits in the field are definitely going to require redundancy. But the fact that the military has identified the areas that need improvement and is working on the development is a good sign. This isn't pie-in-the-sky technology any more. Image by: gadgetguide.

Exoskeleton Update. [Defense Tech]

Of course, we could take this in the exact opposite direction. How about a gene mod for blue skin? Maybe someone out there wants to osseointegrate an extra set of arms onto his torso. Right now, we're focused on replacing or repairing damaged parts, but how long before we start on the upgrades? This year we dealt with the question of whether an amputee athlete with prosthetic running legs had an unfair advantage over runners with just human legs. Are you feeling post-human yet? Image by: StudioCanal.

Surgery Will Put Dog With Amputated Leg Back On All Fours Again. [Science Daily]

• Spock: Not only could Spock serve as the poster boy for the entire half-human/half-something else universe, but they also worked his background into several episodes of the show, and the plot of a couple of the films. Plus it gave them the opportunity to write lines like "All right, you mutinous, disloyal, computerized half-breed. We'll see about you deserting my ship." Which Kirk said, and not Bones, who relished in taking digs at Spock's dual heritage. He also helped carve the way for other Stark Trek halfsies, like Deanna Troi (half Human/half Betazoid and Worf's son Alexander, who is 1/4 Human, 3/4 Klingon and 4/4 whiny.
• Doctor Who: Everyone knows that Doctor Who is from Gallifrey, right? Well, not the writers of the 1996 Doctor Who television movie. They had the 8th Doctor be half-human "On my mother's side," which opened up an enormous can of worms in the continuity, amongst the fans, and pretty much throughout space-time. The 10th Doctor later revealed that Time Lords can rewrite their DNA to imitate alien species, which seems like a stopgap effort at fixing that particular problem.
• Ripley: In Alien Resurrection (shudder) Ripley was brought back as a clone with half-human/half-alien DNA, with an alien queen embryo implanted inside her. The military scientists extracted the embryo, but decided to keep Half-Ripley alive. Which, of course, turned out to be a mistake because her human side is imbued with "kickass." Her resulting offspring was also a mix of Alien with Human traits. In fact, the original design for the creature featured very prominent male and female genitalia, which they finally removed in post-production. According to director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, "Even for a Frenchman, it's too much."
• Elizabeth: This half Alien/half human child from V: The Final Battle was the resulting offspring from the climactic ending of episode two of that miniseries. When Robin gave birth to those two babies, one a girl with a forked tongue, and the other a boy who looked like a lizard, it was one of the most shocking moments of the show. It was probably only topped by the fact that the Visitors were reptilian aliens. Elizabeth ended up having strange magical powers that saved the day in the end, plus the bacteria that killed her brother but left her alive was developed into a weapon called "Red Dust" that the humans used against the Visitors. Looks like cross-species sex pays off after all. Just ask the Cylons, and while you're at it find out what the hell is happening with the whole Hera subplot, especially now that we have Nicky and Hera: dual Cylon offspring.
• Robocop: Okay, in all fairness, he wasn't really half human, since most of his body had been replaced by robo-parts, but he still had a human brain and a human face. In fact, I'm not sure why the bad guys didn't just target his lower jaw whenever they were out fighting him in public. Looked fairly vulnerable to me. Still, he did have to power down from time to time (so he could dream and further the human plot points) and he also ate that strange sludge that tasted like baby food, so he had enough human workings going on in there. Thank you for your cooperation.
• Mariner: Kevin Costner's Waterworld flick has been popping up on cable every time you blink lately, and I have to admit that this film isn't as bad as I remember. Sure there are some dorky moments, but Costner's Mariner character as a half Human/half fish combo leads an interesting life. Rather than seeing him battle Dennis Hopper and his cronies, I'd like to see a Discovery Channel-esque special that just followed him around on his trimaran and showed us what his life was like. After all, at the end of the movie he returns to the waters to do... who knows what?
• King of the Land of Half: Did you know there was an entire land dedicated to Halves? Everything in the entire land was split into different halves, and was presided over by a king who wore half kingly robes, and a half suit of armor. His crown was made up of two different halves, and his breakfast bowl was made up of try different types of bowls, perfect to hold his Quaker Halfsies cereal in. This rice/corn combo cereal came and went in the early 1980s, but not before Jay Ward of Rocky and Bullwinkle fame could animate this Half King/Half King wonder. He might not be scifi, but the cereal featured Nutrasweet, which is certainly space-aged and likely to turn us all into mutants. And speaking of mutants...
• Kuato: Technically he might be a mutant, but he sure looked like a half Mutant/half Human to us. After all, he couldn't get around very well without the lug whose belly he was growing out of walking around and feeding him and all that jazz. What was really special was that no matter how fucked-up you thought Kuato looked, he was the real brains of the operation. You sure hope that poor guy never got punched in the stomach, plus it probably made shopping for clothes a real interesting experience. I just want to know where Kuato "went" while he was tucked up inside the guy's guts. Was it like regressing back to the womb? Check out the clip below that shows what he might have been like at parties.

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• Kraftwerk — "We Are Robots": The original video for this song came out back in 1978, and they released an updated version in 1991. During their 1981 concert tour they used mannequins to perform as themselves onstage in a bizarre "robots singing about robots" moment.
• Peter Miser — "Scent of a Robot": Pete Miser is actually Pete Ho, an asian-american hip hop rapper who breaks beats in New York City. This robot video features cool CGI versions of Pete becoming a robot.
• Flight of the Conchords — "The Humans Are Dead": Probably the finest post-human robot song is one written for the robots of the future by the humans of today, just so they'll have something to dance the funky robot to, on our mass graves.
• Bjork — All Is Full Of Love": One singing Bjork robots would be pretty creepy, but imagine what would happen with two of them singing with each other. Now you can see it for yourself.
• Beck — "Hell Yes": This video was directed by Garth Jennings of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and features the world's (at the time) only four QRIO robots doing some fan dancing.
• Daft Punk — "Robot Rock": Daft Punk already thinks that they are robots, and they go out of their way to hide their humanity from audiences. So who better than robots to provide some of the first music for robots?
• Styx — "Mr. Roboto": This video is about Robert Orin Charles Kilroy (ROCK) hiding inside a "roboto" prison guard robot to escape from jail. Of course, this will just give away that secret to real robots, so now we're screwed.

• The T-1 Battlefield Robot was the first ever "Terminator" bot, although it wasn't referred to by that name. It first appeared in T3, and was developed by the Air Force.
• If you've ever been to Universal Studios and been on the T2 3-D: Battle Across Time attraction, then you got to see the T-70 being demonstrated in a presentation to the audience, before everything goes haywire and they try to kill you.
• The 600 Series of terminators had "rubber skin," according to Kyle Reese in the original Terminator movie, which made them easy to spot. According to last night's episode of the show, they also had a low resistance to heat, since they weren't made out of coltan.
• The Arnold Schwarzenegger models were, in this order, T-101, 800 Series, 850 Series. There's been much debate over model numbers, but it is generally believed that the T designation is the model name, while the Series refers to the build of their endoskeleton. Confused? In T2 when Arnie has to reroute his auxiliary power and reboots, his heads up display says "Cyberdyne Systems Series 800 Model 101 Version 2.4."
• T3 has a deleted scene explainign that all of the T-101 units are modeled after Chief Master Sergeant William Candy, who happens to be Arnold Schwazenegger. Although they replaced his Southern accent with an Austrian one from one of the programmers.
• Going further into nerdism the novel T2: Infiltrator states that the T-101 series were modeled after counter-terrorist Dieter Rossbach, who Skynet found by searching through military files. His body was deemed large enough to conceal the endoskeleton underneath.
• The relentless cyborg in The Sarah Connor Chronicles is named Cromartie, and he is a T-888 model. We've seen his headless body find his head, grow new skin, and get plastic surgery. Clearly, he's kind of a badass.
• In the novels T2: Infiltrator, T2: Rising Storm and T2: Future War there are a T-950 series of terminators who are grown from babies and rapidly aged to become more human looking and acting.
• In Terminator 2, the T-1000 represented a giant leap forward, giving us a robot made out of a "mimetic poly-alloy," or "liquid metal." Not sure how Skynet suddenly developed this technology, but he could make his arms into giant knives, which was fairly cool. Plus he could disguise himself as other humans.
• Kristanna Loken portrayed the T-X in T3, and she wasn't just meant to kill John Connor. She was an anti-terminator terminator, and could take out rogue cyborgs with her plasma cannons. This was meant to be a combination of the T-101 and T-1000 series, having a liquid metal skin over an interior endoskeleton.
• In the novel Terminator Hunt a T-X unit is captured by the human resistance and sent back to the 1960s, where she is supposed to track the Connor family for 40 years. Talk about a nanny.
• Summer Glau plays an unknown future model of terminator in The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and she has the new ability to... eat food! At least corn chips, for now. No idea why a Terminator would eat. We also found out last night that she was built at McGuire Gunnery Range Depot 37. We're sure there are other tricks up her sleeve, and we hope that doesn't mean she can poop as well.
• When you travel to the future in the Battle Across Time ridefilm, you come face to face with Skynet's core. It's protected by a T-1000000 (or T-Meg), which is meant to be a large group of T-1000s all melded together. It takes the form of a giant spider to try and protect the core, but it does a poor job. Huzzah!

Let's do the math: humans invent sentient robots, they begin evolving on their own, then they rebel against mankind, and then they learn to disguise themselves as humans. Someone needs to check out Ronald D. Moore's Netflix account and see when the last time he rented Screamers was. However, anything that comes out now that features robots disguised as humans will "scream" BSG, so this ill-conceived sequel is too little, too late. Sorry Screamers 2, but you're destined for bargain bins and cable tv.

'Screamers 2' Finds A Director, Shoots Next Month [Bloody Disgusting]

Part of the challenge, says Eick, was "we only had the rights to the show's title and the character's name, but, legally, we couldn't depict mechanistic technology that involved parts being placed on the body."

I'm guessing this is the same legal circle jerk (involving the novel which the 1970s show was based on) which prevents a DVD release of the Lindsay Wagner series. In other words, Bionic Woman is reflecting our real-life universe: intellectual property keeps us from reaping the benefits of assistive technologies. Private ownership won't even let us imagine some possible futures. As a result, we don't have a cyborg with sturdy machine limbs, we have a much flimsier superhero. Image by Win McNamee for Getty Images.

Not Your Father's 'Bionic Woman' [Associated Press]