We humans tend to think of ourselves as special, the culmination of the evolutionary tree. But that hardly seems credible to an astronomer, aware that although our Sun formed 4.5 billion years ago, it is barely in middle age. Should we regret our eventual obsolescence or try to prevent it -- to rage, rage against the dying of the mites, as it were?

What happens to society when sexbots are everywhere?

This leading neuroengineer thinks it's dangerous to even try.

We are sequencing the world -- from ourselves to all of the organisms upon which we depend as a living planet. In the future, our planetary genome might include new life forms built in the lab; there is even talk of the possibility of a resurrected Neanderthal, carried by a surrogate human mother. Science fiction? Not anymore.