Two University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists believe moon rocks contain all the energy the United States needs for the next millennium.

The moon’s surface is full of the energy source helium-3, said Gerald Kulcinski, a nuclear engineering professor and director of the Fusion Technology Institute at UW.

"If we could land the space shuttle on the moon, fill the cargo with canisters of helium-3 mined from the surface and bring the shuttle back to Earth, that cargo would supply the entire electrical power needs of the United States for an entire year," he said.

The team estimates the moon probably holds more than 1 million metric tons of helium-3 on its surface, more than enough energy to provide the nation with more than 1,000 years of electricity.

The debate over whether to build the world's biggest nuclear fusion facility in France or Japan is going critical. The European Union says it could pull out of the international project and build its own, if the project goes to Japan. But the US has firmly backed Japan as its preferred site.

Critics allege the US support for Japan is to punish France for its opposition to the war in Iraq, or to enlist Japan's help in an expensive particle accelerator project called the Linear Collider.

Whatever the motivation, the decision is being based purely on politics, says ITER's former deputy director Ronald Parker, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "No scientists are being consulted about the advantages or disadvantages of each location," he told New Scientist.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Lots of people wish they could jack their brain directly to their computer and toss out those annoying keyboards and joysticks -- especially people who can't use keyboards or joysticks.

Five quadriplegic patients might be months away from testing a brain-computer interface created by Cyberkinetics, a privately held company in Foxboro, Massachusetts. The company's system, called BrainGate, could help patients with no mobility to control a computer, a robot or eventually their own rewired muscles, using only their thoughts. If the trials go well, a product could be on the market by 2007.

"It looks a lot like the Matrix," Surgenor said, referring to the sockets in the backs of the movie characters' heads that allowed them to log into the Matrix grid.

A decision on where to site the world's first big nuclear fusion reactor has been postponed until next year.
Officials from several countries meeting in Washington were divided on whether to build the international reactor in France or Japan.

The US has been against the French option because of France's opposition to the US-led invasion of Iraq.

Nuclear fusion holds out the promise of virtually limitless pollution-free energy.