The 2000s left us feeling battered, but the 2010s are looking awesome. Thanks to recent scientific research and an explosion of cultural interest in science fiction, there are at least 15 brilliant reasons to stick around for another decade.

It is time to celebrate the complete revolution of our planet around the sun by assigning to it an arbitrary number based on a Western belief system. Happy New Year, humans!

As we bid farewell to 2008, it’s time to find out what the new year will hold. Amazing technologies? Alien lifeforms? Giant monsters? We look at science fiction’s predictions for the year 2009.