Bigelow Aerospace / msnbc.com

A scale model shows Bigelow Aerospace's proposed lunar colony, prefabricated using inflatable modules, with lunar landers in the background.

For 45 years, an international treaty has barred countries from laying claim to the moon and other celestial bodies — but some policy analysts say private ventures might be able to stake their claims, and they want Congress to create a legal framework that takes advantage of the "loophole."

The concept was unveiled last week by Rand Simberg, an adjunct scholar at the Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute, and it aims to take advantage of the same market incentives that drove the settlement of the American frontier. The way Simberg sees it, the lack of property rights in space "partially explains why we have not developed the next and, in a sense, last frontier — space."

The inability to claim sovereignty over other worlds goes back to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. A hundred countries, including the United States and all the other spacefaring nations, are parties to that treaty.

Yet another treaty, drawn up in 1979, bars private ownership of extraterrestrial property in the solar system — but that pact, known as the Moon Treaty, has not been ratified by any of the world's spacefaring nations. The differences between the two treaties suggest that it's possible to have private ownership without national sovereignty, and that's the loophole that Simberg wants to take advantage of.

Multibillion-dollar incentive?
Backers of the proposed legislation, known as the Space Settlement Prize Act, say it could create, "at no cost to taxpayers, a multibillion-dollar incentive for private companies to finance and build permanent settlements on the moon and/or Mars."

The proposal would set up a process for the U.S. government to recognize ownership of extraterrestrial territory if a private venture establishes a permanently inhabited settlement on another world. For example, the first venture to establish a moonbase could lay claim to up to 600,000 square miles of the lunar surface. Having the first Mars base would entitle the operators to up to 3.6 million square miles of the Red Planet. Putting a permanent base on an asteroid could be rewarded by with up to 1 million square miles of surface area, depending on how big the asteroid was.

The owners would have to guarantee that anyone could buy a ticket to travel to the territory. Each succeeding settlement group would be allotted 15 percent less land than their predecessor. And if two potential claimants couldn't resolve a land dispute, U.S. courts could step in.

But doesn't that sound like sovereignty?

"In some sense, it gives the imprimatur of the U.S. government," Simberg said. "But it doesn't make it a sovereignty question. It's a recognition, not an appropriation." He said the first commercial moon colonies could well be headquartered in different countries. In that case, the United States would be recognizing the property rights of non-U.S. ventures on another world.

What would the U.S. do?
Simberg emphasized that the federal government wouldn't be obligated to take any action to defend extraterrestrial property owners. "How the U.S. government would respond to future claims and conflicts of claims on the moon would be entirely a political decision," he said.

Some legal experts say the loophole doesn't really exist. They point to a section of the Outer Space Treaty that holds national governments responsible for the space settlement activities of their citizens, and say that would preclude any effort to uphold property claims.

"Even if the United States withdrew from the treaty in order to implement such land grants, what would stop the Chinese from adopting domestic legislation that went further?" Berin Szoka and James Dunstan asked in an essay published by Wired. "What if the first time a Chinese probe lands on the moon, the moon could be claimed by the 'Great Wall Company,' owned by the People’s Liberation Army? The United States would then be left to argue that our law should be followed, but the Chinese law shouldn’t. That’s precisely the kind of territorial jockeying the Outer Space Treaty was intended to prevent."

Simberg said a lunar land grab would almost certainly not play out that way. If Chinese leaders really wanted to take over the moon — a scenario that billionaire Robert Bigelow laid out last year — all they'd have to do is withdraw from the Outer Space Treaty and do what they will. "They wouldn't try to play this legislative game," Simberg said.

Why go to the trouble?
The bigger question is, why would anyone go to the trouble of claiming the moon, or Mars, or an asteroid? Right now, there's nothing out there that's worth the hundreds of billions of dollars it would take for a commercial venture to set up its own space program and establish a beachhead beyond Earth. But Simberg and his colleagues say that situation could change if the cost of spaceflight goes down and the perceived value of extraterrestrial resources (helium-3? rare earth elements?) goes up.

Simberg acknowledged that he's thinking about the long-term future of beyond-Earth settlement rather than short-term campaign issues. "Nothing like this is going to pass this year," he said. What he'd love to see is a new international process that takes the place of the Outer Space Treaty and provides a jump-start for private-sector space colonies.

"The treaty's outdated," he said. "It just doesn't work. I don't think anyone back then could conceive of a private launch system based on the Isle of Man, launching somebody into orbit who would then be transferred to L1 [an Earth-moon transfer point] on a tug that was run out of Dubai, and then to a lander operated by somebody in Australia."

Does all this sound like science fiction, or future science fact? Feel free to register your vote in the poll above, or share your opinion as a comment below.

More about space settlement:

• Could lunar real estate spark a future war?
• Colonies on the moon? It's not a loony idea
• Russia wants to build moon colonies
• Synthetic life could help humans colonize Mars

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Via Camille Flammarion

A seeker of truth breaks through the vault of the heavens to discover a metaphysical realm in an engraving from Camille Flammarion's 1888 book "The Atmosphere: Popular Meteorology."

Religious holidays such as Easter and Passover usually spark a spate of stories about the intersection of science and religion, and that's especially the case during this presidential election year. Some folks seem to assume that the scientific and spiritual ways of looking at the world are fundamentally at odds, but a new poll commissioned by ScienceDebate.org suggests that scientific issues are hugely important to religious believers as well as non-believers.

The online survey of 1,005 likely U.S. voters, conducted last month by JZ Analytics, found that 84 percent of the respondents ranked policy issues relating to science, innovation and health as important themes for presidential debates. That puts the science agenda right behind economic policy and national security policy, and ahead of environmental policy and faith and values.

The added twist is that science was ranked in the same order by the survey's Christian subgroups. Eighty-two percent of Catholics and 83 percent of Protestants saw science issues as important, while 49 percent and 59 percent of those respective groupings thought the candidates' views on faith and values were important to debate.

"Even though we often hear of faith opposing science in the political arena, these findings show that the perception isn't necessarily true," Shawn Lawrence Otto, co-founder of ScienceDebate.org, said in a news release about the study.

For Otto and his colleagues, the bottom line is that science policy views should take precedence over the candidates' religious beliefs in the political debates to come. But the findings also suggest that there's plenty of room for dialogue between science-minded and spirituallly minded thinkers. You don't need a public opinion survey to figure that out — just look at the dozens upon dozens of books that address questions of science and religion.

This year, there's plenty to choose from, whether you're of the godly or the godless persuasion. Here are seven recently published books to get your brain working, organized alphabetically and covering a range of perspectives on science and religion:

"Born Believers: The Science of Children's Religious Belief," by Justin Barrett. One of the common views about religious formation is that kids are merely taught to believe what their parents believe. Barrett, a psychologist and anthropologist who's associated with the Fuller Seminary, takes another tack, citing research that suggests children have an innate inclination toward the "God idea." Based on those findings, Barrett comes up with checklists for becoming a confident atheist (step 2 is "do not have children") as well as for encouraging a child's religious development.

"Free Will," by Sam Harris. The well-known atheist addresses the well-known paradox of free will vs. determinism in this slim 96-page paperback. Harris cuts through quantum claptrap to argue that free will is an illusion, but he also argues that causes and consequences, intentions and actions provide a basis for morality. 

"God and the Folly of Faith: The Incompatibility of Science and Religion," by Victor Stenger. This latest volume from philosopher-physicist Victor Stenger argues that Christianity held back the progress of science for a millennium, and that the current perspectives provided by science and religion on the origins of the universe, complexity and consciousness are incompatible.  Stenger also decries the negative influence of organized religion on global issues such as overpopulation and environmental degradation.

"The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion," by Jonathan Haidt. A social psychologist focuses on why people of different ideological stripes find it so hard to get along, and suggests that it goes back to our evolutionary tendency toward "groupishness." Religion and politics provide ways to define in-groups and out-groups, and conservatives turn out to be better than liberals at taking advantage of those natural tendencies. Haidt also lays out some strategies to break the us-vs.-them impasse that has made American politics so uncivil. (Check out the strategies at CivilPolitics.org.)

"The Spiritual Doorway in the Brain: A Neurologist's Search for the God Experience," by Kevin Nelson. Near-death experiences, out-of-body sensations, battles with the devil, religious ecstasy and psychotropic drugs all figure in this exploration of the neurological basis for altered states. I like the fact that Nelson doesn't pass judgment: "No matter if we could know how every single brain molecule makes spiritual experience, why the brain is spiritual will remain for many of us our most treasured mystery," he writes. "There is room in the brain for faith."

"Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion and Naturalism," by Alvin Plantinga. This book is something of a counterweight to Stenger's book, arguing that the seeming conflicts between science and religion are due to the scientific method's, um, methodology. Notre Dame philosophy professor Alvin Plantinga puts a lot of weight on the seemingly "fine-tuned" nature of the universe, which is definitely open to debate. And speaking of debate, there's an earlier book on this topic, titled "Science and Religion: Are They Compatible," which features a back-and-forth between Plantinga and atheist philosopher Daniel Dennett.

"Why Religion is Natural and Science Is Not," by Robert McCauley. This book draws upon findings in cognitive science and evolutionary biology to make the case that the human brain is naturally more suited to religious belief than to scientific inquiry. McCauley's conclusion is that the scientific perspective poses no real threat to religion, "while the unnaturalness of science puts it in a surprisingly precarious position."

More readings in science and religion:

• Gospels of science
• Stephen Hawking says God's not needed
• How to get a cosmos from nothing
• Richard Dawkins puts 'Magic' on a tablet

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

msnbc.com

How do liberals and conservatives differ in their attitudes toward science? Statistics indicate that conservatives' confidence in science as an institution has declined dramatically since 1974.

An analysis of 36 years' worth of polling data indicates that confidence in science as an institution has steadily declined among Americans who consider themselves conservatives, while confidence levels have been at steadier levels for other ideological groups.

The study, published in the April issue of the American Sociological Review, provides fresh ammunition for those who complain that conservative views on issues such as climate change are at odds with the scientific consensus.

"You can see this distrust in science among conservatives reflected in the current Republican primary campaign," Gordon Gauchat, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Sheps Center for Health Services Research, said in a news release from the American Sociological Association. "When people want to define themselves as conservatives relative to moderates and liberals, you often hear them raising questions about the validity of global warming and evolution, and talking about how 'intellectual elites' and scientists don't necessarily have the whole truth."

It's not clear how much impact Gauchat's study will have on the debate over politics and science: Liberals are likely to see it as confirmation of what they already believe, while conservatives who are skeptical about the scientific elite are likely to greet these scientific claims with skepticism as well.

But the analysis represents a serious effort to flesh out political attitudes toward science with real data. Gauchat bases his findings on a statistical analysis of survey results from the General Social Survey, a long-running project that has weighed public confidence in social institutions since 1974. The GSS has been conducted annually or semiannually by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center, or NORC, with an annual average of 1,500 Americans taking part.

Gauchat cross-referenced attitudes toward the scientific community with various demographic categories, and found that two categories showed a significant erosion of trust in science: conservatives and frequent churchgoers. People who identified themselves as conservatives voiced more confidence in science than moderates or liberals in 1974, but by 2010, that level had fallen by more than 25 percent.

Gordon Gauchat / UNC-Chapel Hill / ASR

This graph shows the unadjusted mean values for public trust in science, classified by self-reported political ideology between 1974 and 2010. The figures are derived from the General Social Survey.

Why the drop? Gauchat suggested that the character of the conservative movement has changed over the past three and a half decades — and so has the character of the scientific establishment.

"Over the last several decades, there's been an effort among those who define themselves as conservatives to clearly identify what it means to be a conservative," he said. "For whatever reason, this appears to involve opposing science and universities, and what is perceived as the 'liberal culture.' So, self-identified conservatives seem to lump these groups together and rally around the notion that what makes 'us' conservatives is that we don't agree with 'them.'"

Meanwhile, the perception of science's role in society has shifted as well.

"In the past, the scientific community was viewed as concerned primarily with macro structural matters such as winning the space race," Gauchat said. "Today, conservatives perceive the scientific community as more focused on regulatory matters such as stopping industry from producing too much carbon dioxide."

Gauchat's findings run counter to at least one liberal stereotype about conservatives: that right-wingers are distrustful of scientists because they have less education. The figures do support a link between more education and more trust in science, but they also show that more highly educated conservatives are, if anything, more distrustful.

That trend fits best with the concept that "educated or high-information conservatives will hold hyper-opinions about science, because they have a more sophisticated grasp about what types of knowledge will conform with or contradict their ideological positions, and they will prefer to believe what supports their ideology," Gauchat wrote.

So what does this mean for the role of science in setting national policy? "In a political climate in which all sides do not share a basic trust in science, scientific evidence no longer is viewed as a politically neutral factor in judging whether a public policy is good or bad," Gauchat said. Heightened distrust could turn young people away from careers in science and engineering, and in the long run, that could hurt America's standing in a global economy that is becoming increasingly competitive on the technological front.

'The Republican Brain'
Gauchat took on this project to assess the claims made by science journalist Chris Mooney in his 2005 book, "The Republican War on Science" — and Mooney, who reviewed the paper before publication, said the findings confirmed those claims.

Wiley

"The Republican Brain" is the latest book from Chris Mooney.

"It's certainly gratifying to see this study come out," Mooney told me. "I appreciate that the author actually undertook to use data. I'm glad I wasn't just whistling in the wind when it came to Republicans and science."

Now Mooney is coming out with another book, titled "The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Don't Believe in Science."

"In the book, I'm really careful to say there's what we call 'nature' and what we call 'nurture,' and you can't explain anything in politics without both of them," he said. "Whenever you see change in a group over time, that's probably 'nurture.'"

Mooney said the factors Gauchat mentioned would fit in the nurture category, along with the GOP's "Southern strategy" to bring what were once traditionally Democratic states into the Republican fold. "This is tapping into the power of nurture, but I also say we've ignored nature for too long," he said.

In "The Republican Brain," Mooney weaves his case for "nature" in politics from a variety of studies tracing the brain-based differences between liberal and conservative views of reality. (You'll find some of them by following the links below.)

"You're starting to find things about fixity of belief, desire to have certainty, and you see that these things are also associated with conservatism," he said. "These traits are content-neutral. You could take today's conservatives, stick them in [Soviet] Russia, and they can be very pro-science."

Mooney said people may be born with brains that predispose them either to liberal-leaning traits such as "openness to experience," or conservative-leaning traits such as "conscientiousness."

"The research suggests that people are born with a predisposition, but it's only a predisposition," Mooney said. "'Just born that way' is a phrase that makes me uncomfortable, because it implies some sort of hard wiring. Genes aren't destiny."

If you haven't figured it out by now, Mooney considers himself a liberal, and he's doubtful that any amount of "nurture" could turn him into a conservative. But he said liberals could learn a lot from conservatives, specifically about loyalty to leaders and to their cause. Like conservatives, some liberals may find themselves at odds with the scientific consensus on some issues. Which issues, specifically? Mooney pointed to hard-line stands against hydraulic fracturing (a.k.a. fracking), nuclear power, childhood vaccination and genetically modified organisms.

"Liberals have wanted to believe that if the system were just fair, then everybody would agree with us," he said. "That's a liberal fantasy. Actually, it turns out that liberalism is not the only way of being. ... Liberals should realize that not everybody's like them, and liberals' instincts in politics could be exactly what you don't want to do."

I'm imagining there's a lot to disagree with here, whether you're a liberal or a conservative. Good thing there's a comment section below. To paraphrase Monty Python, this is the right room for an argument.

More about politics and science:

• Conservative or liberal? It may be in the genes
• Scientists say they've found the 'liberal gene'
• Brain scans show whether you lean left or right
• Study finds that political bias affects brain activity

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

NASA will be dealing with some tough choices in the years ahead: The space agency has to start virtually from square one on its Mars exploration program. It has to rein in budget overruns on the $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope, widely seen as the heir to the Hubble Space Telescope. It's spending hundreds of millions of dollars on commercial efforts to replace the space shuttle, and billions of dollars on the development of a new launch system to send astronauts beyond Earth orbit for the first time in more than 40 years. And to top it off, it's been allotted less money for next year than it's getting this year.

How can NASA strike the proper balance in its budget? It can't, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson says. In his latest book, "Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier," Tyson explains why America's space effort needs more of a boost than it's getting.

"I'd really argue for doubling NASA's budget," Tyson told me today.

For the past few years, the space agency's spending has amounted to roughly half a percent of the total federal budget. (This year NASA is due to spend $17.8 billion.) In proportional terms, that's half what it was 20 years ago under President George H.W. Bush — and roughly a ninth of what it was in 1966, at the height of the U.S.-Soviet space race.

Tyson said that NASA's budgetary situation is so untenable that if he were on the NASA Advisory Council, as he was between 2005 and 2008, he couldn't give any advice. "I would excuse myself from the meeting," he said. "I wouldn't even stop at the White House."

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, is in his element among large-scale planetary models.

Over the past couple of years, Congress has had a stronger hand in setting NASA's future course, but Tyson thinks the ultimate fix for what ails NASA won't be found on Capitol Hill.

"If I write members of Congress with the ideas that I have, in a way, that's circumventing the electorate, because they elected a person to serve their interests," he said. "If I come around the side door and say, 'Do this,' I'd feel uncomfortable in that role. I'd rather address the public. As an educator, this is a fundamental part of what I do: communicating the thrill of discovery and exploration to the public. And if the public is not enchanted by exploration and discovery, that's OK. ... Then I appeal to the economic argument: In this, the 21st century, the nations that embrace innovations in science and technology are the ones who will lead the world."

Don't stop thinking about tomorrow
Tyson has been thinking about these topics for years — as the director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, as an adviser to NASA and a member of several space policy commissions, as the author of several books and myriad magazine articles, and as the host of the updated "Cosmos" TV series, due to debut next year.

W.W. Norton

"Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier" is adapted from commentaries written by Neil deGrasse Tyson over the past 15 years.

He freely acknowledges that the glory days of the space effort were driven not by economics, not by science, but by the Cold War's military realities and image-building imperatives. "We did it for military purposes, but we reap the economic benefits," he said.

Which benefits does Tyson have in mind? He noted that there have been plenty of technological spin-offs from spaceflight, ranging from satellite weather forecasting to electronic gadgetry to Tang and Teflon. "Spin-offs are great, but that's not even what I'm talking about," he said. "I'm talking about a culture that wants to dream about tomorrow, and make tomorrow happen today. That culture prevailed in the 1960s and early '70s."

Nowadays you don't hear so much about Tomorrowland. "We've been coasting on those investments, and it's finally caught up with us," Tyson said. "Meanwhile, other countries understand this investment, and they are making active gains in their innovations in science and technology. In particular, space is galvanizing that effort. We knew that would happen, because that's what happened to us in the 1960s. This is not some surprise emotion. It's already been tested ... with us. Right now it's in China, but I think we can resurrect it here going forward."

No delusional thinking
Unlike GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich, who made such a splash with his pledge to build a moon base by 2020, Tyson shies away from pointing to a particular destination for the space effort. It could be the moon, or Mars, or an asteroid, or the solar system's Lagrangian gravitational balance points. And unlike Gingrich, Tyson believes space exploration efforts will always have to be led by governments. Routine operations in low Earth orbit could be handed over to private enterprise, just as airmail delivery was handed over to commercial carriers in the 1920s. But exploration is a different matter, Tyson said.

 Tyson said his book's original title — before his publisher talked him out of it — was going to be "Failure to Launch: The Dreams and Delusions of Space Enthusiasts."

"Where the delusional thinking reveals itself ... is the expectation that private enterprise can lead a space frontier. No ... no is the answer," Tyson said. "Not that I don't want that to be the case. There's just no precedent for that in the history of human culture. To take something that's expensive, dangerous, unknown and risky ... put all of those together and you cannot value it in the capital markets. There's no known return on investment."

"Space Chronicles" represents Tyson's effort to lay the groundwork for informed, non-delusional decisions about America's future in space — and also work in some of the catchy topics that he's written about over the years, ranging from the prospects for extraterrestrial life to the potential for killer asteroids.

"I want to put people on firm ground of how to think about the science and engineering of space exploration, so that when it comes time to make a policy decision, they have some fluency in the ambitions of those who want to explore space," Tyson said. "The book is a celebration of space, but it's also an indictment of all the delusional thinking that has interfered with efforts to resurrect another golden age of space exploration."

Is it delusional thinking in this budget-conscious era to propose doubling NASA's budget? Or would it be a policy move just crazy enough to work — and inspire a new generation of innovation? Please feel free to weigh in with your comments, pro and con.

More from Neil deGrasse Tyson on msnbc.com:

• 2010: Why the frontier matters
• 2009: Pluto's pros and cons
• 2008: Black holes for beginners
• 2007: From black holes to black history
• 2005: Einstein and Darwin — a tale of two theories

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Traders have solidified their positions on the Oscar prediction markets — and if the wisdom of crowds holds true, Sunday will be a big night for "The Artist," the Hollywood throwback to the silent era.

In addition to being the favorite for best picture, "The Artist" is projected to be in the spotlight for best director (Michel Hazanavicius) and best actor (Jean Dujardin). Viola Davis, who played a leading role in "The Help," has the highest-valued shares in the best-actress market. Christopher Plummer ("Beginners") and Octavia Spencer ("The Help") are favored for best supporting actor and actress, respectively.

These are the clear verdicts from the Hollywood Stock Exchange and Intrade, two of the prediction markets catering to Oscar picks.

Such markets let traders "invest" (basically, bet) on the outcome of a future decision. Traders invest in a particular proposition  — for example, that George Clooney, the star of "The Descendants," will get the best-actor Oscar. If that proposition comes true, the investor would get $25 in play money for each share on the Hollywood Stock Exchange, or $10 in real money on Intrade. If it doesn't come true, the shares become worthless.

In the political sphere, prediction markets have been found to be at least as accurate as traditional polling, because traders get pretty savvy about adjusting their investments to reflect new data. The method has been applied not only to politics and the Oscars, but to flu epidemic forecasts and financial forecasts as well.

Beyond the top six categories, HSX is going with "The Descendants" for adapted screenplay and "Midnight in Paris" for original screenplay. Intrade, meanwhile, favors "Rango" for best animated feature. The trading generally reflects the mainstream thinking, but this year it has shown a shift in sentiment from Clooney to Dujardin.

Last year, the Oscars followed the Hollywood Stock Exchange's market trends in seven out of the eight categories covered. The wisdom of crowds was wrong only when it came to best director. Will the markets do as well this year? Would you care to bet? I'll update this item after the Oscars with the results.

By the way, Mitt Romney is favored to win the Michigan and Arizona GOP presidential primaries on the Intrade markets, despite the social-media buzz over Rick Santorum. Romney also leads the pack for the Republican nomination, on Intrade as well as the Iowa Electronic Markets. GOP Newt Gingrich is showing some surprising volatility on the IEM — but isn't volatility exactly what you'd expect from Newt?

Update for 11:45 p.m. ET Feb. 26: It's another seven-out-of-eight performance for the Hollywood Stock Exchange. The one big surprise: Meryl Streep, not Viola Davis, won the best-actress Oscar. Who would have thought Streep would be the underdog in the pre-Oscar handicapping? If you bet on Streep today, you could have more than doubled your money on Intrade. The closing price was 35.5, and if you were lucky enough to buy in at that level, each $3.55 that you put in would get you $10. All the other top-valued picks on HSX and Intrade won their Oscars. 

More about the Oscars:

• Will 'The Artist' dance away with best-picture Oscar?
• George Clooney to claim best-actor Oscar? Wanna bet?
• Oscar time! Stay near the stars in Hollywood

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or following the Cosmic Log Google+ page. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

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President Barack Obama chats with members of Team America Rocketry Challenge, including Gwynelle Condino and Janet Nieto from Presidio, Texas, during last week's White House Science Fair. Obama's budget proposal emphasizes the economic benefits of scientific research.

Science policy experts are happy with the broad outlines of the White House's budget plan, but some projects on the scientific frontiers are looking as if they're in big trouble.

The plan for NASA spending in fiscal 2013 serves as an example: Today's $17.7 billion request is just slightly less than what the space agency is getting this year. Some programs, such as the commercial spaceship development program, would get far more than they're getting now. But the high-profile Mars program would basically be put on hold after next year's scheduled launch of the MAVEN orbiter. Other hoped-for missions to Jupiter's moons or the planet Uranus are off the table.

"With these cuts to NASA science, humankind loses," the Planetary Society's CEO, Bill Nye ("The Science Guy") said in a pugnacious blog posting. "There's going to be a fight."

A similar scenario is playing out in high-energy physics: The Department of Energy's Office of Science budget is in for a 2.4 percent increase, rising to $4.992 billion. Research into biofuels and clean-energy technologies would get a significant boost. But funding for domestic fusion research and high-energy experimental facilities such as the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider — which reported the first signs of quark-gluon plasma, also known as "big bang soup" — would be hit with heavy cutbacks.

The cutbacks could mark the beginning of a "death spiral," Steven Vigdor, associate director for nuclear and particle physics at Brookhaven National Laboratory, told ScienceInsider's Adrian Cho.

There are three big things to keep in mind about today's budget proposal:

• First, Obama's overall $3.8 trillion budget plan is being forged amid circumstances that call for economic austerity. The White House is particularly keen to shine a spotlight on down-to-earth programs that will yield economic benefits, such as energy initiatives. "I think what the president did is look to his economic advisers and recognize that 50 percent of the economic growth since the end of the Second World War is due to advances in science and innovation," Michael Lubell, director of public affairs for the American Physical Society, told me. "If we eliminate that scientific base, future innovation will not occur in this country, and economic growth is going to be stunted."
• Second, it's just a proposal. For good or for ill, the fate of the budget depends on what Congress passes, not what the president proposes. It's not clear that anything will be decided before the November elections. The most likely scenario is that R&D, like other budget categories, will be funded through a continuing resolution until the dust settles, as was the case in 2008 and 2010. A couple of House members already have vowed to fight NASA's plan to hold up Mars missions, and there are no doubt other areas where the budget proposal will be contested.
• Third, spending on research and development enjoys more bipartisan support than most other types of spending. Lubell noted that President Barack Obama was "sticking to a trajectory that was originally established by President George W. Bush." That trajectory calls for continued increases in federal R&D. For fiscal 2013, the White House would raise total R&D spending to $140.8 billion, an increase of 1.4 percent or $1.95 billion.

Lubell acknowledged that the Republicans will be prone to claim that today's 246-page budget request is dead on arrival. "That may be true for the overall budget, but perhaps when they get into the details, they can find a few places where they can agree," he said.

The big picture on research and development is "absolutely encouraging for the federal research enterprise and for supporters of scientific innovation," said Matt Hourihan, director of the R&D Budget and Policy Program at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He took particular note of the 4.8 percent rise in proposed spending by the National Science Foundation, to $7.4 billion for 2013.

The White House said the budget would expand "NSF's efforts in clean-energy research, advanced manufacturing, wireless communications and other emerging technologies." Advanced manufacturing and wireless-network innovation also figured prominently in the request for the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which would see its budget rise to $857 million.

The Environmental Protection Agency would receive more R&D money to study hot topics such as climate change and shale-rock hydraulic fracturing (a.k.a. "fracking"). But Hourihan said "the news isn't so good" for the National Institutes of Health, where the budget would remain virtually flat at $30 billion.

In percentage terms, the news is even worse for the Defense Department, which would see its R&D spending fall 2.1 percent to $71.2 billion. The Agriculture Department and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are also due to get less for R&D than they're getting for the current fiscal year.

For a full critique of R&D spending, agency by agency, check out the budget-related postings at the ScienceInsider blog. Then let me know what you think of the prospects for federally funded research and development by leaving a comment below.

More about the budget:

• What you need to know about the budget proposal
• Obama seeks clean energy and pipeline funds
• Budget plan sees recovery gaining speed
• Agency-by-agency guide to the budget

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

ScienceDebate.org

Uncle Sam's famous appeal gets a science-minded twist in this poster from Science Debate 2012.

Some might argue that GOP hopeful Newt Gingrich blew his political chances by emphasizing big scientific ideas like the establishment of a moon colony — but what's really needed is more science, not less.

That's the way Shawn Otto sees it, anyway. Otto, a filmmaker who was born and raised in Minnesota, is the co-founder of ScienceDebate.org and the author of "Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America." He's also my guest tonight on "Virtually Speaking Science," a talk show about the scientific frontier that happens on BlogTalkRadio and in the Second Life virtual world.

I hope you can join us at 9 p.m. ET (which is 6 p.m. PT and Second Life time), but if you can't, you can catch up with the podcast via BlogTalkRadio or iTunes.

Even though Otto and his colleagues at ScienceDebate.org didn't get a full-bore, live-action presidential debate on science and technology issues during the 2008 campaign, they got the next best thing: A rundown from Barack Obama as well as his Republican rival for the presidency, John McCain, on 14 key issues. ScienceDebate is planning to reprise the "14 Questions" exercise this year, augmented by other questions from the general public. The organizers are even talking with TV networks again about having a broadcast science debate at some point during the presidential campaign.

ShawnOtto.com

Shawn Lawrence Otto is an author, science advocate and filmmaker.

Are people really interested in scientific perspectives when it comes to politics? Some studies suggest that increased scientific knowledge about political issues just confirms pre-existing cultural attitudes rather than changing anyone's mind. And there's experimental evidence that Gingrich's support in the Florida primary campaign went down dramatically last week after he highlighted the idea of creating a U.S. colony (and perhaps eventually the 51st state) on the moon by 2020. He ended up losing to Mitt Romney by a substantial margin in Tuesday's primary.

"I don't think he handled it well," Otto said of Gingrich's moon moment.

But Otto also said there should be room in a political campaign to debate big ideas — even the idea of going to the moon, Mars and beyond. "When have we gotten to a point where painting a big vision is seen as outside the mainstream?" he asked.

You can bet we'll be talking about big ideas on "Virtually Speaking Science" tonight. For a warmup, here's an edited transcript of my pre-show Q&A with Otto:

Cosmic Log: How are science and technology issues being addressed this time around, as compared with 2008? Any big differences?

Otto: Yeah, it's quite a bit different. Last time, because there was an open seat, we were getting to know candidates on both sides. Nobody knew for sure what their science positions were. We were trying to figure out where the candidates stood on a lot of these issues.

This time, that's still true in part, but some of their views are quite well known. Obama has broadly been viewed as being pro-science, and he's appointed a lot of well-known scientists to top positions. But he's also taken some surprising stances, such as his support of Kathleen Sebelius' overruling of the recommendations of her scientists about Plan B. [The decision means "morning-after" birth control pills won't be made available over the counter to girls younger than 17.]

There's also been the back-and-forth over the Keystone XL pipeline, and the fact that his administration has pretty much banished the words "climate change" and is only talking about green energy. And how he has cut back on NASA's plans, for instance. So there are some less than thrilling aspects from the science perspective, but he's much more of a known entity now.

On the Republican side, particularly because of activism around climate change that's funded by energy industry money, and energy-industry-funded libertarian think tanks that are supporting Republican candidates in the primary process, there's been a lot of increased activism on the climate issue — and a lot of denial of the results of science.

Also, ALEC has been suggesting that state legislatures should require schools to teach skepticism of evolution and climate change in science class. That appeals to the foot soldiers, largely on the right and in the Republican Party. It seems that whenever a candidate on the Republican side has been slipping in the polls, they've taken a vocal anti-science position to recapture some momentum. Which is the opposite of what you would have expected even 10 years ago. 

Whoever the winning candidate is on the Republican side is going to be interested in not appearing unreasonable or anti-science to the moderate, mainstream, middle-of-the-road swing voters once they get the party endorsement. So whoever gets the nomination is going to be anxious to moderate their views on science.

Q: Right. You secure the base, and then you move to the center.

A: Both Newt and Mitt have been very careful not to paint themselves too tightly into a corner — for instance, on climate change. Newt has said, very adroitly, that it "hasn't been fully proven." He's smart enough to know that nothing in science is ever fully proven. That is in fact a true statement. But most of his constituency may not realize that. So that's a careful nuancing on his part that I thought was quite clever. Mitt has gotten himself in trouble by his various recorded statements on the issue that seem to be contradictory. So I think Newt has handled it in a smarter way.

But it's interesting to see what happened to Newt with the whole space theme last week. When have we gotten to a point where painting a big vision is seen as outside the mainstream? The big science issues are about the future. Certainly it's not a central plank in the campaign platform this time around, but it is worth talking about, I would think, especially in Florida.

Q: It's similar to what happened when President George W. Bush announced the plan to return to the moon. It was easy to lampoon that, with the bumper stickers saying "Send Bush to Mars." I heard the same thing this time around ... "Send Newt to the moon." You could print the same bumper sticker. Was it a good thing that a scientific issue somehow captured the attention, or a bad thing because his stock went down as soon as he brought it up?

A: I don't think he handled it well. I don't think his stock went down because of the subject matter, but more probably because of the emphasis that he placed on it relative to the other topics that the GOP base is concerned about — space and the moon or Mars is not high on the list when people are worried about the economy, or keeping jobs, or Social Security, or addressing housing foreclosures. If he emphasized it a little differently, I don't think it would have come out the way it did.

Q: Do you think science and technology issues will play more of a part, or less of a part, compared with 2008?

A: I think it's already clear that they're playing more of a part. The topic of science, and the denial of science, is much more of a politically charged issue. Unfortunately, science has come to be viewed as more of a partisan topic. I don't think that's right. I don't think that's healthy for America or the Republican Party. I'd like to see the Republicans get away from that, but it's part of the fabric, and people are much more keyed in on it. They're curious whether there are other areas where candidates don't see eye to eye with science.

Q: You mean besides climate change and evolution?

A: Wherever they pop up, whether it's HPV vaccine or other issues. Newt has said that embryonic stem cell research is killing children for research material. So it's getting a little extreme.

Q: At one time you suggested that scientists should consider becoming Republicans. Is that still your counsel?

A: Well, there are a couple of reasons there. One is that there are relatively few voters or activists involved in the grass roots of either of the political parties. So few, in fact, that if scientists actually did become heavily involved, for instance in the Republican Party, they could take over a lot of the process. There's a reasoned argument to be made that there's a leverage point there. Whether scientists would feel comfortable doing that is another matter entirely.

I've had some long and interesting conversations with science writers and scientists about this question ... whether or not that's the way to do it, or whether the Republican Party will have to experience a time-out that's so painful that they'll change their anti-science, anti-reason, anti-intellectual ways. I don't know if that actually would happen. There's enough fervor fueling the constituencies in the Republican Party, and enough money supporting that fervor, that I'm not sure whether they'd abandon those views or just become more clever about marketing them. I think change has to happen from both within and without, as it usually does.

Personally, I don't care what party scientists belong to. We just need their voice to be raised in our civic dialogue right now, more than we have in many decades. 

Join us at 9 p.m. ET tonight on "Virtually Speaking Science," which is broadcast on BlogTalkRadio and in the Second Life virtual world at the MICA Small Auditorium at Stella Nova. Many thanks to the Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics for co-sponsoring the Second Life event. Tonight's hourlong show will be archived on BlogTalkRadio and iTunes. Check out these other podcasts from the "VSScience" show:

• Marc Abrahams on silly science
• Robert Zubrin on Mars exploration
• Marc Millis on interstellar spaceflight
• Sean Carroll on the puzzling frontiers of physics
• Rand Simberg on the private-enterprise vision for spaceflight
• Martin Hoffert on the future of energy policy
• George Djorgovski on science in virtual worlds
• Alan Stern on suborbital research and NASA's mission to Pluto
• Col. 'Coyote' Smith on the outlook for space solar power
• Tim Pickens on rocket ventures and the Google Lunar X Prize

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

An artist's conception shows astronauts walking up to an early lunar habitat. Five years ago, NASA was considering the deployment of such a habitat in the 2020s.

GOP hopeful Mitt Romney says that he’d fire anyone who suggested spending hundreds of billions of dollars to build a moon colony — but what about tens of billions of dollars? A former NASA adviser says he and others at the space agency drew up an approach that could put astronauts on the moon for $40 billion, as a “Plan B” for future exploration.

"We figured out at NASA how to do it in about 10 years for $40 billion," said Charles Miller, who recently left his position as NASA Headquarters' senior adviser for commercial space and is now president of NextGen Space. "The question is, would Mitt Romney fire me for a proposal to return to the moon for $40 billion?"

For a few years, NASA was following a plan to return to the moon by 2020 for $104 billion, through the Constellation program set up under President George W. Bush. But Constellation was canceled by President Barack Obama, and the space agency currently is gearing up for an effort to put astronauts on a near-Earth asteroid by the mid-2020s.

Last week, Romney's chief rival for the GOP nomination, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, pledged to put an all-American settlement on the moon by 2020 if he was elected president. But Gingrich's initiative runs into the same problem that killed Constellation: federal budgets that are too tight to match lunar ambitions. Obama had to scale back what was once envisioned as an "inspiring" space program due to the economic downturn, as described by The New Yorker in an insider report last week.

The moon-shot cancellation was in line with an independent panel's conclusion that the plan was "not viable," considering the realities of the federal budget. But that panel was working under the assumption that a whole new deep-space infrastructure would have to be developed, including a heavy-lift vehicle then known as the Ares 5. That assumption was carried over into the post-Constellation plan, in the form of a heavy-lift Space Launch System that would cost $35 billion over the next decade or so. Billions more would have to be spent preparing for trips beyond Earth orbit — to an asteroid, to the moon, to Mars or other destinations.

Plan B for outer space
Miller and his colleagues on a NASA task force drew up an alternative plan, which they said would provide a less expensive and faster path to deep-space exploration. Rather than building an entirely new type of heavy-lift rocket, NASA would use a series of tried-and-true rockets — perhaps including the U.S. commercial Atlas, Delta and Falcon rockets as well as Europe's Ariane, Japan's H2 and Russia's Soyuz and Zenit rockets — to deliver propellant to an orbiting fuel depot.

After a series of low-cost fuel delivery flights, the high-value components for trips to the moon would be sent up and assembled in orbit. Once the lunar transfer vehicle was ready to go, the astronauts would climb aboard, head out of orbit for the moon, conduct their mission and return.

NASA would still have to develop a lunar lander, as well as the Orion deep-space capsule it's currently working on, and perhaps a habitat module as well. But it wouldn't have to build the heavy-lifter.

A preliminary version of the plan was leaked to the SpaceRef website last October, amid calls from Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., for the report's release. At the time, the report suggested that missions to the moon could begin in 2024, but Miller told me that he challenged his team to optimize their cost and timeframe estimates. "They went from landing on the moon in 2024 to 2021," he said, at an average cost of $4 billion per year for 10 years. Such funding levels would be in line with NASA's current budget, with adjustments for inflation in the latter five years, he said.

Miller said the plan could conceivably be revised to reduce the time frame even further, from 10 to eight years. "It's ready when our national leadership decides it wants something more affordable," he told me. "I consider it to be Plan B."

NASA has not released the current version of the plan, but the agency's top executives have not been as bullish as Miller is about Plan B. During a congressional hearing last summer, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said the alternatives to building a heavy-lift rocket were "not as economical, nor as reliable."

Miller contends that the plan didn't get a proper "apples-to-apples" comparison from NASA's top executives or from the Human Exploration Framework Team, which drew up NASA's Plan A. 

Reality check
It may well be technically possible to send astronauts back to the moon by 2020 — but even if NASA successfully implemented the Plan B outlined by Miller, there wouldn't be a full-fledged moon colony by that time. Then there's the bigger question of whether it's worth spending tens of billions of dollars to put astronauts back on the moon, even if the experts agree it's possible to do it within a $40 billion budget.

"That's what you hire presidents to decide," Miller said.

Obama decided years ago that it would be better to go to a new destination in deep space, such as a near-Earth asteroid or the moons of Mars, rather than returning to the moon. "We've been there before," Obama said when he announced his space goals in 2009.

It's possible that Gingrich's pledge to build a moon base by 2020 has hurt him in the polls — even in Florida, where the aerospace industry has suffered a heavy blow due to last year's retirement of the space shuttle fleet. On the eve of Florida's primary, surveys suggest that Gingrich is lagging by double digits behind Romney, who has been far less specific about his space aspirations. In effect, Romney wants to conduct another round of soul-searching about NASA's vision, retracing the process that Obama and his aides went through three years ago.

For now, NASA's big-ticket priorities in human spaceflight are to continue developing the Space Launch System and the Orion multipurpose crew vehicle, while commercializing operations to send supplies and astronauts to the International Space Station. The Space Launch System in particular has strong support in Congress — so much so that critics have dubbed it the "Senate Launch System." Any effort to change course at this point would probably run into significant opposition — unless the SLS project became totally unworkable and/or unaffordable.

In that case, Plan B ... or Plan C, or D ... might well get another look, regardless of who's in the White House.

Update for 7:50 p.m. ET: Over the past week, there's been a lot of debate over Gingrich's moon-base pledge, and over the justification for spending anything at all on space exploration. I've tried to step around the questions surrounding the rationales for spaceflight in this item — but Wayne Hale, who used to head up NASA's space shuttle program, provides a provocative perspective today in a posting to his blog, titled "What Would Rick and Gus and Dick Want?" The title is a reference to the anniversaries of the Columbia tragedy (helmed by Rick Husband), the Apollo 1 fire (with Gus Grissom as commander) and the Challenger explosion (commanded by Dick Scobee). Here's some of what Hale says:

"It is impossible to build a business plan on exploration of the unknown; some decisions aren’t amenable to the quarterly profit and loss statement. Seward’s folly, Jefferson’s gamble, Teddy’s canal – they were all the butt of jokes and sarcasm.  Yet, America, the land of opportunity, was not built by skeptics.  America was built by people who were willing to risk everything on a dimly perceived future.  Facing the unknown frontier changed Americans and made us what we are.  We would be a lesser people if our great-grandparents had not chosen those challenges.  The cost was high and many did not live to see the results of their gamble.  But as a nation we continued on and became great.

"Now where is our frontier?  Making corporate profits on Wall Street by moving money around?  Now what will inspire our children?  Playing video games that are made in overseas sweatshops? 

"You know better than that. Without the challenge of a frontier, stagnation, mediocrity and decline is our guaranteed future."

So what would Rick and Gus and Dick want? Read the full posting for Hale's conjecture. 

More moon-base blasts from the past:

• Russia calls for international moon base
• Will China take over the moon?
• Billionaire shoots for the moon
• Wanted: Home-builders for the moon

I discussed moon-base politics and much, much more with Dr. David Livingston on "The Space Show" today. If you missed the program, check the "Space Show" home page for the archived audio. Science and politics will also be on the agenda for my "Virtually Speaking Science" chat with Shawn Otto at 9 p.m. ET Wednesday. Otto is one of the organizers of Science Debate 2012 and the author of "Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America." I hope you'll join us, either on BlogTalkRadio or in Second Life.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Jim Bourg / Reuters file

The GOP presidential field includes, from left, former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, shown at attention during the playing of the National Anthem during a Nov. 22 debate. Romney, Paul and Santorum are favored to finish in the top three spots in the Iowa GOP caucuses, while Perry's fortunes have fallen in the polls and the prediction markets.

Last updated 12:45 p.m. ET Jan. 4:

The pundits portrayed the Iowa GOP presidential caucuses as a tight three-way race, but market traders settled on an order of finish even before Tuesday's voting began. They had former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney first, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul second, and former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum third.

The contest turned out to be tighter than even the pundits expected: Romney led Santorum by just eight votes, with Paul not too far behind in third. But when it comes to the Republican nomination, Romney holds a far more commanding lead, at least for now.

Iowa's precinct-level party caucuses were convened to select delegates to go to the county-level conventions, but the real reason why GOP presidential candidates spent the past few months shuttling around the Hawkeye State was because this was the first real-world test of strength in an actual 2012 election. The same could be said for the pollsters and the prediction markets.

Most of the political handicapping you've heard about is based on traditional polling, which tallies up voters' preferences as expressed during telephone interviews. But for more than two decades, researchers have been experimenting with market techniques for sizing up political propositions — and so far, they've found that open market exchanges have been at least as accurate as the pollsters in predicting the results of elections.

Justin Wolfers, an economist at Penn's Wharton School who's been studying prediction markets for years, expected the accuracy record to hold for Tuesday's results, even though caucus outcomes are notoriously difficult to predict.

"All the usual ways we have for gathering information, including polls, are going to be much more screwy," he told me on Tuesday. "Someone's going to be surprised tomorrow. But ... empirical evidence suggests that prediction markets will be the least bad predictor."

How political markets work
Prediction markets let investors purchase "shares" in a particular proposition — for example, that Romney would finish either first or second in the Iowa caucus vote. Over the course of the campaign, they can sell off those shares and buy different ones, depending on how they gauge the candidates' chances. The price fluctuates based on supply and demand, but when the election occurs, the traders who backed the winning proposition get a set payoff. The traders who backed the wrong horse get nothing.

The idea is that markets provide a good vehicle for distilling the "wisdom of crowds," particularly when traders put their money or prestige behind their prediction. It's a lot like online gambling, but totally legal.

The nation's longest-running political prediction market happens to be headquartered in the Hawkeye State: Traders on the Iowa Electronic Markets buy and sell shares with real money, in hopes of reaping a $1-per-share return. Their account is limited to $500, so nobody makes a fortune. But the exercise is a valuable research tool for economists at the University of Iowa's Tippie College of Business, which manages the markets under a no-action arrangement with federal regulators.

Inkling Markets offers similar political trading, but with play money rather than real money at stake. And then there are offshore betting markets such as InTrade and Betfair. A website known as PredictWise.com aggregates the InTrade and Betfair statistics for political propositions.

On all these markets, the stated percentage or value for a given proposition reflects the probability that the proposition will come true. That's different from political polls, which reflect voter preferences in percentage terms. Thus, the numbers you see on the political markets don't exactly track the numbers you see in polling results. But the rankings on Tuesday afternoon were the same as what was seen in the polls: Romney first, followed by Paul and Santorum. Here's how the markets looked at 4:45 p.m. ET Tuesday afternoon, with 100 being the maximum value:

• Iowa Electronic Markets: 81.8 cents for Romney, 69.6 cents for Paul, 51.8 cents for "Rest of Field" (primarily Santorum). This is a market to predict who'll be in the top two.

• Inkling Markets: 73.2 percent for Romney, 15.3 for "Anyone Else" (primarily Paul), 10.1 for Santorum.

• Betfair: 48.3 percent for Romney, 29.4 for Paul, 23.1 for Santorum.

• InTrade: 49.3 percent for Romney, 25.6 for Paul, 24.2 for Santorum.

IEM

This chart shows the wildly fluctuating values for candidates' shares on the Iowa Electronic Markets. For the past few days, Mitt Romney's shares have been most highly valued, followed by Ron Paul and ROF or "Rest of Field," which includes Rick Santorum.

The projected outcome, as reflected in the markets, closely tracked what the polls were suggesting, Wolfers said. "The prediction markets are somewhat more bullish about Mitt Romney," he observed. If Romney didn't lead the pack, that would have been a surprise for the pundits — and for the traders as well.

There are a few additional twists to the trading. For example, much was made of Santorum's late surge in the polls, but the trading suggested that the surge hit its peak a few days ago and fell back somewhat.

After the top three, the GOP field's share values dropped dramatically. University of Iowa spokesman Tom Snee noted that within the past few days, traders had U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann's shares at 0.2 cents, compared with businessman Herman Cain's 0.3 cents. "What they're saying is that Bachmann has less of a chance to win than someone who's not running anymore," Snee said. (Cain's shares have sunk since then, however.)

The big picture for the GOP nomination
For now, the traders on all the markets give Romney the overwhelming edge for the Republican nomination. The IEM had him at 81 cents on Tuesday, Inkling had him at 85.06 percent, and Betfair and InTrade had him at 74.4 and 79.8 percent, respectively.

If Romney faltered in Iowa, these prices could have changed overnight. Literally.

Joyce Berg, the IEM's director, noted that four years ago, Hillary Clinton was the market favorite before the Iowa caucuses, but was displaced by Barack Obama afterward. Clinton made an unexpected resurgence in the 2008 New Hampshire primary but eventually lost ground again to Obama. "What we're seeing is that markets are very good aggregators of news," Berg said. "In our markets, people appear to trade with their heads, not their hearts."

The IEM's traders are primed to respond quickly to the results of the caucuses, just as traders on the New York Stock Exchange respond quickly to the latest unemployment figures. So the fact that Romney has been on top for the past few months is no guarantee, in the political world or in the marketplace. "If he did not finish in the top two, that would be news," Berg said. "You would expect that to show up in the Republican convention market."

Wolfers said the fact that the GOP field was so wide in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses made this "one of the most unstable markets we've ever seen," in large part because the different voting constituencies didn't want to waste their votes on someone who wasn't perceived as a potential winner. Evangelical Christians, for example, might have wavered between several candidates based on the perception of their chances. Now there's a good chance that the evangelical vote will coalesce behind Santorum.

"It's not a standard two-horse race," Wolfers observed. "The dynamics when you have strategic voting are very, very volatile."

How do you think the Iowa caucus results compared with the pre-election predictions? Weigh in with your comments below.

Update for 5:45 p.m. ET Jan. 3: Mashable and Global Point Research are checking out whether positive sentiments expressed in Twitter tweets can be correlated with the Iowa caucus results. Analysis of data collected between Dec. 27 and 30 shows a big spike for Santorum, which would mesh with his surge of support in the polls and prediction markets.

Update for 9:28 p.m. ET Jan. 3: The betting on InTrade and Betfair shifted quickly toward Ron Paul, making him the betting favorite. Romney fell to No. 2, with Santorum rated No. 3. The order on the IEM and Inkling Markets was unchanged: Romney, Paul, Santorum. Inkling, meanwhile, closed its market for the night at 9 p.m. ET, so there'll be no chance for folks to change their prediction.

Update for 11:25 p.m. ET Jan. 3: By this time it was clear that Ron Paul will finish third, but Romney and Santorum were neck-and-neck for first and second. InTrade and Betfair favored Romney to squeak out a victory. The IEM's traders basically valued Romney's and Santorum's shares at the maximum price of $1, in recognition of the fact that they were both assured of finishing in the top two. It was possible to make a quick buck by betting on Santorum: Someone who invested $51.80 in 100 of his shares on Tuesday afternoon will get $100 on Wednesday.

Update for 3:40 a.m. ET Jan. 4: I've updated this report with the complete results from Iowa, headlined by Romney's eight-vote edge and Santorum's surprisingly strong surge.

Update for 12:45 p.m. ET Jan. 4: One of the night's other big winners was Justin Wolfers, the prediction-market expert from Penn's Wharton School. FiveThirtyEight.com's polling guru, Nate Silver, bet Wolfers a steak dinner that Santorum would be the top vote-getter in the Iowa caucuses, but Wolfers prevailed along with Romney by an eight-vote margin. Wolfers is a pescetarian who eats fish but not steak, so Silver will have to pay off with seafood. "Am I allowed to request a recount in Iowa if I have a seafood dinner riding on the outcome?" he asked in a Twitter tweet. (Sorry, Nate, there'll be no recount, even if seafood is at steak ... er, stake.)

More about prediction markets:

• How to make an honest profit in politics
• 2012 political markets open for business
• Buying into all sorts of predictions

For the latest results from Iowa and their significance for the 2012 presidential campaign, check in with NBCPolitics.com.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

IEM / msnbc.com

The red line in this chart shows the dramatic rise in the price of Newt Gingrich shares on the Iowa Electronic Markets' exchange for the 2012 Iowa GOP presidential caucus. "ROF" is "rest of field."

How many stockbrokers can boast about a trade that brought in more than 200 times their investment over the past six weeks? Political pundits could, if they had the foresight to "invest" in GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich's prospects back in October.

The Iowa Electronic Markets make it possible to do such a deal: The IEM operation, sponsored by the University of Iowa's Tippie School of Business as a economic research project, is the only market in the country that has the tacit blessing of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to let traders lay real money down on political predictions. In other contexts, this might be known as a "bet."

Here's how it works: You can buy up to $500 worth of shares in a political proposition — for example, the proposition that Gingrich will finish either No. 1 or No. 2 in January's Iowa GOP presidential caucus. If the proposition pays off, you'll be paid $1 for each share. If it doesn't, the shares are worthless. Thus, the share price on a given day should reflect the traders' assessment that the prediction will come true.

Researchers have reviewed the IEM's record since the Bush-Dukakis faceoff of 1988 and report that political prediction markets are at least as accurate as traditional political polling. During the 2008 presidential campaign, traders leaned toward a Democratic win more than a year before the actual election. Not much changed in the market after that year's party conventions.

Gingrich, however, has experienced a huge shift in fortunes over the past six weeks, on the political circuit and on the IEM: His Iowa caucus shares were trading at just 0.3 cents on Oct. 13, but on Tuesday they reached 69.1 cents. (Ron Paul has just edged ahead of Mitt Romney as the runner-up.)

"Gingrich is soaring," University of Iowa spokesman Tom Snee told me today. "He's actually gone up from yesterday. Today he's at 75 cents a share."

That means every dollar invested in Gingrich in mid-October would yield $250 today.

Now, before your head starts swimming at the prospect of making tens of thousands of dollars in the political game, here's a reality check: There's a limit to how much you can invest in an IEM proposition, and it's not just the $500 account limit.

"You can only buy something if it's available for sale, and we're not going to have 166,000 shares for sale," Snee said. Right now, there's only about $5,000 total invested in the Iowa caucus market. The entire value of investments in all of the IEM's markets is about $185,000, held by about 1,200 traders. You couldn't possibly have spent the whole $500 buying up Gingrich shares at 0.3 cents per share.

Here's how Iowa professor Joyce Berg, director of the IEM, explained the issue in an email passed along by Snee:

"All IEM contracts in the RCONV [Republican Convention] market are issued by selling bundles (one of each contract in the market) for $1.  Because exactly one of the contracts will pay off, the IEM has exchanged $1 for something that will be worth $1.  In your example, for a trader to spend $500 on contracts selling at $0.003, there would need to be $500/.003 = 166,667 Gingrich contracts available.  The only way that could happen is if other traders had spent $166,667 purchasing bundles. The funds to trade the hypothetical trader’s gains come from other traders.  That is, for every gain, there is an equal loss in the market.

"In other markets where traders can sell short, there are banks that guarantee the trades.  In the IEM, we don’t have that issue due to the way we use bundles to create contacts."

So if you were hoping to use your political acumen to pay for a condo, the IEM can't help you. But there are some potential bargains out there. Heck, just a couple of weeks ago, Herman Cain's Iowa caucus shares were trading at more than 25 cents each. Now they're worth a penny. If you have a hunch that Cain can revive his fortunes, there's money to be made. How's that for an economic plan?

More about prediction markets:

• 2012 political market open for business
• Market lays its bets on Oscars
• Buying into all sorts of predictions
• Flu forecasts come true
• Pentagon kills 'terror futures market'

To handicap the political marketplace, check out NBC Politics on msnbc.com. And to find out what's going on in the financial markets, check in with msnbc.com's Business section.

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

GOP hopeful Mitt Romney slipped into scientific doublespeak this week when he told a rally that "we don’t know what’s causing climate change" — seemingly contradicting his earlier statement that "I believe humans have contributed" to the increase in global mean temperatures.

That’s par for the course when it comes to the intersection of politics and science, says Shawn Lawrence Otto, who addresses the topic at length in a new book titled "Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America." Otto said Romney is simply betting that he'll be able to zigzag away from his previous views on climate policy, in order to appeal to the Republican base during the primary season.

"He's doubled down a little bit further," Otto told me today.

Will Romney win the bet? It's hard to say at this point, but the fact that Romney is backing away from a view that has a fair amount of scientific evidence behind it doesn't bode well for the state of science policy ... and politics. "That is clear evidence to me of the level of anti-science among the Republican activists at the ground level," Otto said.

The theme of Otto's book — that politics and science usually don't mix — isn't exactly a bolt from the blue. Other books in the genre include "The Republican War on Science" and "Unscientific America," as well as "Merchants of Doubt," "The Body Politic," "Denialism" and many more. But Otto draws upon his experience on the front lines of the debate over science and politics. And when I say "debate," I mean that literally.

Otto's day job is in Hollywood, and he's perhaps best-known as the screenwriter and co-producer of "House of Sand and Fog" (and writer/director of the upcoming "Dreams of a Dying Heart"). But during the 2008 presidential campaign, he was the co-founder and CEO of Science Debate, a grass-roots effort aimed at getting the candidates to address the tough questions surrounding science and technology policy: What should be done about climate change? What about embryonic stem-cell research? How would you shore up American innovation and promote energy security and sustainability?

Otto and his colleagues didn't get the full-scale, onstage debate they were hoping for, but they did get Barack Obama and John McCain to answer 14 key questions about the science-based challenges facing America.

Otto thinks the candidates got as much out of the exercise as the voters did. "It's arguable that without that, Obama would not have had the science literacy that he had going into office," he said.

Three years after Obama won the White House, Otto says the president's record on those science-oriented issues is a "mixed bag." There are questions about environmental compromises, a less-than-transparent regulatory process and renewable-energy reversals. for example.

"We got on base, that's about all we managed to do," Otto said. "We didn't hit a home run."

But the big problem may be the state of the electorate. In his book, Otto outlines how today's political framework is based on "values" rather than facts, and how that has distorted the debate over issues that touch upon science and technology. If anything, America has slid backward over the past few decades, Otto said.

Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

President Barack Obama listens to student Alexandria Sutton, 16, during his visit to a classroom at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va., in September.

"In the 1960s, John F. Kennedy had to go out of his way to say that his religion would not interfere with his presidency," he said. "Now we're almost having candidates say the opposite: They're not going to let the science interfere with their religious convictions while they're in office. ... It's not family values that made America No. 1. It's our can-do spirit and our ability to deal with hardheaded science."

So what's the solution? Otto doesn't have any magic formula up his sleeve.

"To me, the question is whether knowledge is advancing to the point where democracy isn't able to handle making good decisions," he told me. "What happens when the level of knowledge required around all these issues that we have to be able to salve is so high that the general public really doesn't intersect with it? I don't really know the what the solution to that is, but it's very concerning."

He may not have the quick fix, but he does have some suggestions. For example, in the book he lays out an "American Science Pledge" that commits the signer to upholding scientific integrity and transparency, freedom of inquiry, open debate and policies based on knowledge rather than personal opinions.

To his credit, Otto avoids blaming religion for the sad state of scientific affairs. "This is a time for churches to reach out to scientists and to speak about science and politics, because these discussions are so important to the future," he writes. "We are in a moral crisis, and it matters little whether a preacher is conservative or progressive if he or she is incorporating knowledge into moral reflections."

Otto also calls upon scientists to get more involved in public engagement.

"I do think that scientists have the opinion that it's not really their job, but I think that's a mistake," he told me. "Right now, the public doesn't understand what they're getting for their money, and they don't appreciate what they're getting for their money. So right now there's a growing science gap, and scientists are the only ones who can do something about that."

You can bet these ideas will be coming to the fore during Science Debate 2012, which is just starting to get off the ground. How do you see the debate over science, technology, innovation and public policy shaping up? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

Further reviews of 'Fool Me Twice':

• Harvard Law and Policy Review: Stop the backward slide
• Science: Eagle Scout's prescription for democracy and science
• Point of Inquiry: Shawn Otto and the assault on science

More on science and politics:

• Climate controversy spotlights GOP science policy
• Funny science sparks serious political spat
• Will our 'Sputnik moment' fizzle out?

For more on the presidential campaign, check out msnbc.com's Politics section.

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding me to your Google+ circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

SpaceX

Artwork shows SpaceX's Dragon capsule delivering cargo to the International Space Station.

The lines of debate over the future of space exploration are becoming clearer — and it doesn't necessarily add up to a pretty picture. NASA's $35 billion Space Launch System is just a piece of the puzzle: This week's developments also touch upon SpaceX, the James Webb Space Telescope and next-gen technologies. Here are a few not-so-easy pieces to muse over during the weekend:

James Webb Space Telescope: A House panel stirred up a ruckus earlier this summer when it called for canceling the JWST, the grand observatory widely regarded as Hubble's heir. The problem is that the project is way behind schedule and over budget. Now the Senate Appropriations Committee has released its version of the fiscal 2012 bill that covers NASA's budget, and it provides just enough money to keep the JWST on track, based on NASA's current projections. Some observers are exulting that the next-gen telescope has been "saved," but there's a long way to go yet, including House-Senate budget negotiations.

Space Launch System: The same Senate bill follows through on the SLS plan that senators worked out with NASA and the White House. It would provide $3 billion during the next fiscal year ($1.8 billion for the rocket, $1.2 billion for the multipurpose crew vehicle), just as NASA projected. A $17 billion cost cap is also specified for work through fiscal 2017. That compares with NASA's estimate of $18 billion earlier in the week. New-space opposition to the SLS plan is continuing, with the Space Access Society and the Space Frontier Foundation weighing in against what they see as a money-gobbling white elephant. But one of the Senate bill's provisions would hold back $200 million of the $500 million allotted for NASA's commercial crew program unless NASA makes good on its promise to get to work on the SLS. For details on the Senate bill, check out the Space Politics blog and Space News.

SpaceX schedule: California-based SpaceX, which is arguably the country's most successful new-space venture, voiced support for the $500 million commercial crew plan laid out by the Senate bill. The company had been due to launch an uncrewed Dragon cargo capsule to the International Space Station on Nov. 30, as the final test opening the way for U.S. cargo resupply flights in the post-shuttle era. But this week, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said that mission might have to be postponed until January or February, due to the launch delays caused by last month's problem with a Soyuz rocket. What's more, RIA Novosti quoted a Russian space official as saying that SpaceX does not have permission to dock with the space station. "So far, we have no proof that this spacecraft duly complies with the accepted norms of spaceflight safety," said Roscosmos' Alexei Krasnov. That led NASA to issue a Twitter retort: "A decision has yet to be made regarding the upcoming @SpaceXer test flight to ISS."  

Wild-card technologies: There's good news and bad news for space technology fans. First, the good news: NASA announced awards totaling up to $3 million to five companies working on solar electric propulsion, the kind of technology that many experts think will be needed for a mission to Mars. Today, NASA announced additional awards amounting to more than $3.7 million for two "game-changing" space technologies: beamed power (for ground-to-air and ground-to-ground applications) and next-generation lithium-ion batteries (for future space missions). Now for the bad news: The Senate bill for fiscal 2012 trims almost $400 million from President Barack Obama's $1.02 billion request for space technology initiatives. (The good news is that it's more than what the House bill would provide.)

How do you see the space picture shaping up? Feel free to add your comments below.

More puzzle pieces to ponder:

• Big questions about big rockets
• Some scientists balk at telescope bailout
• Is Apollo's past spoiling our future in space?
• Houston Chronicle SciGuy: A splash of cold water

The best source for keeping up with the new space race is Clark Lindsey's RLV and Space Transport News. But if you're interested in this subject, you probably knew that already.

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding me to your Google+ circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.