Sugar-based rechargeable battery is pretty sweet

Japanese researchers have discovered a way to make rechargeable batteries more effective for less money by using the sucrose found in common sugar. Not only would this ideally make the latest battery-powered technology more accessible to more people, but the availability of sugar would promote a much more sustainable tech industry.

Currently, the popular choice for rechargeable batteries is lithium-ion, but mining the rare lithium metal has become a problem in places like Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, and China where politics can interfere. This has challenged Japanese scientists to look at cheaper materials such as those found in the promising sodium-ion batteries. But it was this sodium-ion research that led the team at Tokyo University of Science to experiment with sugar as well. By heating the sucrose to 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit in an oxygen-free atmosphere, they were able to create a hard carbon powder that could be embedded into a sodium-ion cell to allow 20% more storage capacity than that of lithium.

Associate Professor Shinichi Komaba predicts that we'll see this sugar-based battery available commercially in around five years.

This article was written by Shawn Schuster and originally appeared on Tecca

More from Tecca:

·         Your cell phone battery could soon recharge ten times faster

·         In 10 years, your electric car could be recharged in just 10 minutes

·         24-hour ATM dispenses cupcakes instead of cash for your midnight sugar cravings

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Are you an internet addict? Psychologists are working to find out how much online time is too much

It's official. After months of debate and study, the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM) will include "internet use disorder" as an area "recommended for further study." The fifth edition of the DSM, the standard for classifying and diagnosing mental illness, is due out in May 2013, and the consideration of including internet addiction has raised many eyebrows. This doesn't mean you'll be sent to a psychologist's couch if you spend a couple hours online every day. However, it does mean that there will likely be more investigations into why and how people spend so much time on the internet. It is possible that it will become classified as a diagnosable mental illness in the future.

There is research showing that the internet can indeed act like a drug, and use of social networks has been linked with depression. Even the leaders of many popular online games and networks have recognized the importance of unplugging on occasion. But the idea of a professional organization attempting to codify and criticize something that feels so personal as time spent surfing the web has understandably given some folks the creeps. We'd recommend that you take honest stock of your online time. If it's not interfering with your work or personal life, you're probably not going to be diagnosed as an addict any time soon.

[Image credit: Chris Gilmore]

This article was written by Anna Washenko and originally appeared on Tecca

More from Tecca:

·         Depressed? Late night computer use may be the culprit

·         Facebook introduces real-money game, gambling addictions can't be far behind

·         6 tricks and tools for kicking your Facebook addiction

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Permira takes the lead in Ancestry sale talks: sources

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Permira Advisers LLP has emerged as the front-runner to take genealogy website Ancestry.com Inc private, two people familiar with the matter said, in a deal that could top $1.5 billion.

Ancestry is focusing its discussions on Permira after it asked the private equity firm and its competitors - Hellman & Friedman LLC and TPG Capital LP - to improve on their offers, the people said. Talks with Permira could still fall apart and there is no certainty a deal will be reached, they added.

The price under negotiation could not be learned, but sources familiar with the matter had previously told Reuters that Ancestry was seeking more than $35 per share for a sale, valuing the company at over $1.5 billion.

Provo, Utah-based Ancestry, whose website helps users trace their family roots by scouring online records, declined to comment. Permira and TPG declined to comment while Hellman & Friedman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Ancestry received offers from the three private equity firms in August and none of the bidders met the company's price expectations at the time, sources familiar with the matter previously told Reuters.

Ancestry closed trading on Tuesday down 1.7 percent at $29.69.

Ancestry has about 2 million paid subscribers. The website said in July it had discovered that U.S. President Barack Obama is the eleventh great-grandson of John Punch, the first documented African enslaved for life in the American colonies.

Ancestry suffered a blow in May when U.S. network NBC decided not to renew the company's TV show for a fourth season. The company sponsored the U.S. version of the popular British series "Who Do You Think You Are?"

The show, built around tracing celebrities' family histories through Ancestry.com's databases, was a major driver of new subscriber additions for the company's website.

Spectrum Equity Investors LP first made a minority investment in Ancestry in 2003 and four years later partnered with management to purchase a majority interest. Spectrum's stake in Ancestry was 31 percent as of the end of June.

Frank Quattrone's Qatalyst Partners is advising on the process, the sources said. Qatalyst was not immediately available for comment.

(Reporting by Greg Roumeliotis and Soyoung Kim in New York; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Bernard Orr)

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Google withdraws U.S. patent complaint against Apple

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Google subsidiary Motorola Mobility has dropped a complaint of patent infringement against Apple without explanation.

In a brief filing with the International Trade Commission on Monday, Motorola Mobility said it was dropping without prejudice a complaint that Apple had infringed on seven Motorola patents.

Apple did not return telephone calls seeking comment and Google said only: "As we have said many times before, we will continue to vigorously defend our partners".

Google and Apple have been locked in an international patent war since 2010, as Apple has sought to limit the growth of Google's Android system. The fight has embroiled Samsung, HTCand others that use Android.

Reuters reported in August that the two companies were in settlement talks. Google said in its filing, however, that "there are no agreements between Motorola and Apple, written or oral, express or implied, concerning the subject matter of this investigation."

The complaint can be re-submitted.

Florian Mueller, who was first to report the withdrawal on his blog, said he believed that Google withdrew the complaint to prevent it from being consolidated with an earlier case, thus slowing that case down.

In that case, an ITC judge had said in a preliminary ruling that Apple infringed on a patent for eliminating noise and other interference during voice and data transmissions. A final decision is due next April.

"Maybe they ... wanted to maintain their chances of at least getting some win against Apple in the U.S. in 2013," Muller said in an email interview.

The biggest victory in the smartphone patent war so far belongs to Apple. On August 24, a jury in a California federal court ordered Samsung to pay $1.05 billion in damages after finding that Samsung had copied critical features of the iPhone and iPad.

Samsung was the top-selling mobile-phone maker in the second quarter of 2012, with Apple in third place, according to data from Gartner Inc.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz; editing by Leslie Gevirtz and Andrew Hay)

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Samsung allowed to sell Galaxy Tab in U.S. as court lifts ban

(Reuters) - A U.S. court removed a temporary sales ban against Samsung Electronics Co Ltd's Galaxy Tab 10.1 won by Apple Inc in a patent dispute, allowing the South Korean company to sell the product in the United States.

While the Galaxy 10.1 is an older model, the lifting of the ban could still help Samsung in the run-up to the pivotal holiday shopping season.

"We are pleased with the court's action today, which vindicates our position that there was no infringement of Apple's design patent and that an injunction was not called for," Samsung said in a statement.

Separately, Samsung filed a motion against Apple saying the iPhone 5 had infringed on some of the company's patents.

The world's top two smartphone makers are locked in patent disputes in 10 countries as they vie to dominate the lucrative market.

The legal fight began last year when Apple sued Samsung in multiple countries, and Samsung countersued.

The injunction on the Galaxy tablet had been put in place ahead of a month-long trial that pitted the iPhone maker against Samsung in a closely watched legal battle that ended in August with a victory for Apple on many of its patent violation claims.

However, the jury found that Samsung had not violated the patent that was the basis for the tablet injunction and Samsung argued the sales ban should be lifted.

The sole basis for the preliminary injunction no longer exists since the jury found that Samsung'sGalaxy Tab had not violated Apple's D'889 patent.

"The court does not agree with Apple that Samsung's motion for dissolution of the June 26 preliminary injunction cannot be fairly decided without resolving Apple's post-trial motions," Judge Lucy Koh said in her ruling.

Apple could not immediately be reached for comment outside regular U.S. business hours.

The case in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, is Apple Inc v. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd et al, No. 11-1846.

(Reporting by Sakthi Prasad; additional reporting by Miyoung Kim in Seoul and Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bangalore; Editing by Chris Gallagher and Ryan Woo)

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Space station may move to avoid passing junk

HOUSTON (AP) — The International Space Station may have to move to avoid some space junk.

NASA said debris from an old Russian satellite and a fragment from an Indian rocket could come too close to the station on Thursday. The station would be moved Thursday morning if necessary, NASA said Wednesday.

There are three astronauts living at the orbiting outpost.

Space junk moves so fast that it can puncture the station. Engineers try to give debris a wide berth whenever something comes close. NASA said it didn't know the size of the Russian debris.

The engines of a European cargo ship docked at the station would be used to push it out of the way. A communications glitch prevented the craft from leaving the station earlier this week.

___

Online:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/living/index.html

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Buddhist statue found by Nazis made from meteorite

BERLIN (AP) — An ancient Buddhist statue that a Nazi expedition brought back from Tibet shortly before World War II was carved from a meteorite that crashed on Earth thousands of years ago.

What sounds like an Indiana Jones movie plot appears to have actually taken place, according to European researchers publishing in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science this month.

Elmar Buchner of the University of Stuttgart said Thursday the statue was brought to Germany by the Schaefer expedition. The Nazi-backed venture set out for Tibet in 1938 in part to trace the origins of the Aryan race — a cornerstone of the Nazis' racist ideology.

The existence of the 10.6-kilogram (23.4-pound) statue, known as "iron man," was only revealed in 2007 when its owner died and it came up for auction, Buchner told The Associated Press.

German and Austrian scientists were able to get permission from its new owner, who wasn't disclosed, to conduct a chemical analysis that shows the statue came from the Chinga meteorite, which crashed in the area of what is now the Russian and Mongolian border around 15,000 years ago.

The meteorite was officially discovered in 1913, but Buchner said the statue could be 1,000 years old and represent a Buddhist god called Vaisravana.

The Nazis were probably attracted to it by a left-facing swastika symbol on its front. The swastika has been used by various cultures throughout the ages, but the Nazis tried to appropriate it as the symbol of their ideology, going so far as to put a right-facing version of it on their red and white flag.

Scientists not involved in the study told the AP that the research linking the statue to the meteorite was credible.

"Looks like a solid piece of geochemical 'forensic' work," said Qing-Zhu Yin, a researcher in geology at the University of California, Davis. "No terrestrial artifact would generally contain that much nickel content. Chemical elements don't lie."

Rhian Jones, an associate professor at the University of New Mexico who specializes in meteorites, said the claim appeared conclusive.

"There is a clear and convincing argument that the meteorite the statue is made from is the Chinga iron meteorite," she said.

But Yin cast doubt on the claim that the statue represented a Buddhist deity.

"I am not a historian. But the 'iron man' does not look like a Buddha to me from my cultural background," he said. "It looks more like a warrior with a sword ... (a) resemblance of Genghis Khan. ... I have never seen a Buddha with a sword or knife."

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Mars rover Curiosity finds signs of ancient stream

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The NASA rover Curiosity has beamed back pictures of bedrock that suggest a fast-moving stream, possibly waist-deep, once flowed on Mars — a find that the mission's chief scientist called exciting.

There have been previous signs that water existed on the red planet long ago, but the images released Thursday showing pebbles rounded off, likely by water, offered the most convincing evidence so far of an ancient streambed.

There was "a vigorous flow on the surface of Mars," said chief scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology. "We're really excited about this."

The discovery did not come as a complete surprise. NASA decided to plunk Curiosity down inside Gale Crater near the Martian equator because photos from space hinted that the spot possessed a watery past. The six-wheeled rover safely landed Aug. 5 after a nail-biting plunge through the Martian atmosphere. It's on a two-year, $2.5 billion mission to study whether the Martian environment could have been favorable for microbial life.

Present day Mars is a frozen desert with no hint of water on its radiation-scarred surface, but geological studies of rocks by previous missions suggest the planet was warmer and wetter once upon a time.

The latest evidence came from photos that Curiosity took revealing rounded pebbles and gravel — a sign that the rocks were transported long distances by water and smoothed out.

The size of the rocks — ranging from a sand grain to a golf ball — indicates that they could not have been carried by wind, said mission scientist Rebecca Williams of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz.

Though Curiosity did not use its high-tech instruments to drill into the rocks or analyze their chemical makeup, Grotzinger said scientists were sure that water played a role based on just studying the pictures.

It's unclear how long the water persisted on the surface, but it easily could have lasted "thousands to millions of years," said mission scientist Bill Dietrich of the University of California, Berkeley.

Curiosity chanced upon the dried-up streambed while driving to Glenelg, an intriguing spot where three types of terrain meet. Its ultimate destination is Mount Sharp, a mountain rising from the center of crater floor, but it was not expected to travel there until the end of the year.

Finding past water is a first step toward learning whether the environment could have supported microbes. Scientists generally agree that besides water and an energy source such as the sun, organic carbon is a necessary prerequisite for life.

While an ancient streambed holds promise as a potentially habitable environment, scientists don't think it's a good place to preserve the carbon building blocks of life. That's why the rover will continue its trek to the foothills of Mount Sharp where there's a better chance of finding organics.

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Alicia Chang can be followed at http://twitter.com/SciWriAlicia

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Study: Fraud growing in scientific research papers

WASHINGTON (AP) — Fraud in scientific research, while still rare, is growing at a troubling pace, a new study finds.

A review of retractions in medical and biological peer-reviewed journals finds the percentage of studies withdrawn because of fraud or suspected fraud has jumped substantially since the mid-1970s. In 1976, there were fewer than 10 fraud retractions for every 1 million studies published, compared with 96 retractions per million in 2007.

The study authors aren't quite sure why this is happening. But they and outside experts point to pressure to hit it big in science, both for funding and attention, and to what seems to be a subtle increase in deception in overall society that science may simply be mirroring.

Fraud in life sciences research is still minuscule and committed by only a few dozen scientific scofflaws. However, it causes big problems, said Arturo Casadevall, a professor of microbiology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Casadevall is the lead author of the study which looked at the reasons for 2,047 retractions among many millions of studies published in journals and kept in a government database for medically focused research.

Fraud was the No. 1 cause of retractions, accounting for 43 percent of them. When fraud was combined with other areas of misconduct, such as plagiarism, it explained about 2 out of 3 retractions, the study found.

"Very few people are doing it, but when they do it, they are doing it in areas that are very important," Casadevall said. "And when these things come out, society loses faith in science."

Prominent retractions that Casadevall cited for fraud include a notorious British study that wrongly linked childhood vaccines to autism, nine separate studies on highly touted research at Duke University about cancer treatment, and work by a South Korean cloning expert who later was convicted in court of embezzlement and illegally buying human eggs for research.

Casadevall said he was surprised because he didn't set out to study fraud. His plan was to examine the most common avoidable errors that caused retractions. What he found was that 889 of the more than 2,000 retractions were due to fraud or suspected fraud.

While other studies have shown a rise in retractions, no previous study has found scientific misconduct as the leading cause, said Nicholas Steneck, director of the research ethics program at the University of Michigan, who wasn't involved in the Casadevall study. That shows a need for better, more honest reporting of retractions by the science journals themselves, he said.

He and others also said the findings suggest there may just be better detection of scientific fraudoverall.

Most "scientists out there are well meaning and honest people who are going to be totally appalled by this," Casadevall said.

The study was published online Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which had the second most retracted articles for all reasons, behind only the journal Science.

The publication with the most fraud-based retractions was the Journal of Biological Chemistry. PNAS ranked fifth.

Casadevall said that even if society as a whole has become more deceptive, "I used to think that science was on a different plane. But I think science is like everybody else and that we are susceptible to the same pressures."

In science, he said, "there's a disproportionate reward system" so if a researcher is published in certain prominent journals they are more likely to get jobs and funding, so the temptations increase.

"Bigger money makes for bigger reasons for fraud," said New York University bioethicist Arthur Caplan. "More fame, more potential for profit... Some of the cheating and fraud is not too dissimilar to the cheating and fraud we've seen in banking."

Science historian Marcel LaFollette, author of a book about science fraud "Stealing into Print," said researchers can't prove that more people are lying in general in society, but they get the distinct feeling it's happening more. And in 2006 an Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that while most people say they don't approve of lying, 65 percent of those questioned said it is OK to lie in certain situations.

The world has become accustomed to lying and forgives politicians when they do it in relationships, LaFollette said. But it's different when it's a doctor, scientist or an engineer because people can get hurt, she said.

Casadevall and Caplan pointed to the 1998 study in Lancet by Andrew Wakefield temporarily linking childhood vaccines to autism — a study later retracted because it was found to be what another scientific journal called "an elaborate fraud."

"Think about the damage society took when mothers started to question vaccines," Casadevall said. "That's damage and it's still going on."

Reached at home in Texas, Wakefield, who was banned from practicing medicine in his native Great Britain and whose claims are contrary to what prevailing established medical research shows about vaccine and autism, said: "There was no fraud and to use this and to use me as a poster child of fraud really compounds that error."

Casadevall said his work is about science trying to clean its own house. And because it's about fraud, he said he did one extra thing with his study: He sent reviewers not just a summary of their work, but all the data, "so they can check on us."

___

Online:

The journal: http://www.pnas.org

___

Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears

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Skydiver aims to break sound barrier in free fall

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — His blood could boil. His lungs could overinflate. The vessels in his brain could burst. His eyes could hemorrhage.

And, yes, he could break his neck while jumping from a mind-boggling altitude of 23 miles.

But the risk of a gruesome death has never stopped "Fearless Felix"Baumgartner in all his years of skydiving and skyscraper leaping, and it's not about to now.

Next Monday over New Mexico, he will attempt the highest, fastest free fall in history and try to become the first skydiver to break the sound barrier.

"So many unknowns," Baumgartner says, "but we have solutions to survive."

The 43-year-old former military parachutist from Austria is hoping to reach 690 mph, or Mach 1, after leaping from his balloon-hoisted capsule over the desert near Roswell.

He will have only a pressurized suit and helmet for protection as he tries to go supersonic 65 years after Chuck Yeager, flying an experimental rocket plane, became the first human to go faster than the speed of sound.

Doctors, engineers and others on Baumgartner's Red Bull-sponsored team have spent as much as five years studying the risks and believe they have done everything possible to bring him back alive. He has tested out his suit and capsule in two dress rehearsals, jumping from 15 miles in March and 18 miles in July.

Baumgartner will be more than three times higher than the cruising altitude of jetliners when he hops, bunny-style, out of the capsule and into a near-vacuum where there is barely any oxygen and less than 1 percent of the air pressure on Earth.

If all goes well, he will reach the speed of sound in about half a minute at an altitude of around 100,000 feet. Then he will start to slow as the atmosphere gets denser, and after five minutes of free fall, he will pull his main parachute. The entire descent should last 15 to 20 minutes.

He will be rigged with cameras that will provide a live broadcast of the jump via the Internet, meaning countless viewers could end up witnessing a horrific accident.

Baumgartner is insistent on going live with his flight.

"We want to share that with the world," he says. "It's like landing on the moon. Why was that live?"

His team of experts — including the current record-holder from a half-century ago, Joe Kittinger, now 84 — will convene inside a NASA-style Mission Control in the wee hours Monday for the liftoff of the helium balloon at sunrise.

"All the things that can happen are varying degrees of bad," offers Baumgartner's top medical man, Dr. Jonathan Clark, a former NASA flight surgeon.

Clark was married to space shuttle astronaut Laurel Clark, who was killed aboard Columbia while it was returning to Earth in 2003, and he has dedicated himself to improving astronauts' chances of survival in a high-altitude disaster.

NASA is paying close attention, eager to improve its spacecraft and spacesuits for emergency escape, but is merely an observer; the energy drink maker is footing the bill and will not say how much it is costing.

The No. 1 fear is a breach of Baumgartner's suit.

If it breaks open — if, say, he bangs into the capsule while jumping or supersonic shock waves batter him — potentially lethal bubbles could form in his bodily fluids. That's what's known as boiling blood. A Soviet military officer died in 1962 after jumping from a balloon at 86,000 feet; the visor of his helmet hit the gondola and cracked.

During the descent, the temperature could be as low as minus 70. Baumgartner's suit will be all he has between his body and the extreme cold.

Then there's the risk of a flat spin, in which Baumgartner loses control of his body during the free fall and starts spinning. A long, fast spin, if left unchecked, could turn his eyeballs into blood-soaked, reddish-purple orbs, and he could be left temporarily blind. Also, a massive blood clot could form in his brain.

A small stabilizing chute will automatically deploy if he goes into a flat spin and blacks out or otherwise becomes incapacitated. He also has an emergency chute that will automatically deploy if he is unable to pull the cord on his main chute.

Baumgartner's team has a plan for every contingency but one: If the balloon ruptures shortly after liftoff because of a gust of wind or something else, the capsule will come crashing down with him inside. He won't have time to blow the hatch and bail out.

"I have every expectation that he'll come through this successfully based on our analysis," Clark says, "but you know, it still is an unknown."

Kittinger leapt from an open gondola on Aug. 16, 1960, from an altitude of 19.5 miles and reached 614 mph, or Mach 0.9 — records that stand to this day. He was a captain in the Air Force, and the military's Excelsior project was a test bed for the nation's young space program.

Kittinger has been Baumgartner's mentor, signing on with this new project after decades of refusing others' requests.

Fearless Felix insists he would not attempt the jump if the odds were against him.

"I think they underestimate the skills of a skydiver," says Baumgartner, who has made more than 2,500 jumps from planes, helicopters, landmarks and skyscrapers, with no serious injuries.

If he makes it back in one piece, Baumgartner plans on settling down with his girlfriend and flying helicopters in the U.S. and Austria, performing mountain rescues and firefighting.

"After this," he promises, "I'm going to retire because I've been successfully doing things for the last 25 years and I'm still alive."

___

Online:

Red Bull Stratos: http://www.redbullstratos.com

National Museum of the U.S. Air Force: http://tinyurl.com/2dsnn6

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Skydiver aims to break sound barrier in free fall

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — His blood could boil. His lungs could overinflate. The vessels in his brain could burst. His eyes could hemorrhage.

And, yes, he could break his neck while jumping from a mind-boggling altitude of 23 miles.

But the risk of a gruesome death has never stopped "Fearless Felix"Baumgartner in all his years of skydiving and skyscraper leaping, and it's not about to now.

Next Monday over New Mexico, he will attempt the highest, fastest free fall in history and try to become the first skydiver to break the sound barrier.

"So many unknowns," Baumgartner says, "but we have solutions to survive."

The 43-year-old former military parachutist from Austria is hoping to reach 690 mph, or Mach 1, after leaping from his balloon-hoisted capsule over the desert near Roswell.

He will have only a pressurized suit and helmet for protection as he tries to go supersonic 65 years after Chuck Yeager, flying an experimental rocket plane, became the first human to go faster than the speed of sound.

Doctors, engineers and others on Baumgartner's Red Bull-sponsored team have spent as much as five years studying the risks and believe they have done everything possible to bring him back alive. He has tested out his suit and capsule in two dress rehearsals, jumping from 15 miles in March and 18 miles in July.

Baumgartner will be more than three times higher than the cruising altitude of jetliners when he hops, bunny-style, out of the capsule and into a near-vacuum where there is barely any oxygen and less than 1 percent of the air pressure on Earth.

If all goes well, he will reach the speed of sound in about half a minute at an altitude of around 100,000 feet. Then he will start to slow as the atmosphere gets denser, and after five minutes of free fall, he will pull his main parachute. The entire descent should last 15 to 20 minutes.

He will be rigged with cameras that will provide a live broadcast of the jump via the Internet, meaning countless viewers could end up witnessing a horrific accident.

Baumgartner is insistent on going live with his flight.

"We want to share that with the world," he says. "It's like landing on the moon. Why was that live?"

His team of experts — including the current record-holder from a half-century ago, Joe Kittinger, now 84 — will convene inside a NASA-style Mission Control in the wee hours Monday for the liftoff of the helium balloon at sunrise.

"All the things that can happen are varying degrees of bad," offers Baumgartner's top medical man, Dr. Jonathan Clark, a former NASA flight surgeon.

Clark was married to space shuttle astronaut Laurel Clark, who was killed aboard Columbia while it was returning to Earth in 2003, and he has dedicated himself to improving astronauts' chances of survival in a high-altitude disaster.

NASA is paying close attention, eager to improve its spacecraft and spacesuits for emergency escape, but is merely an observer; the energy drink maker is footing the bill and will not say how much it is costing.

The No. 1 fear is a breach of Baumgartner's suit.

If it breaks open — if, say, he bangs into the capsule while jumping or supersonic shock waves batter him — potentially lethal bubbles could form in his bodily fluids. That's what's known as boiling blood. A Soviet military officer died in 1962 after jumping from a balloon at 86,000 feet; the visor of his helmet hit the gondola and cracked.

During the descent, the temperature could be as low as minus 70. Baumgartner's suit will be all he has between his body and the extreme cold.

Then there's the risk of a flat spin, in which Baumgartner loses control of his body during the free fall and starts spinning. A long, fast spin, if left unchecked, could turn his eyeballs into blood-soaked, reddish-purple orbs, and he could be left temporarily blind. Also, a massive blood clot could form in his brain.

A small stabilizing chute will automatically deploy if he goes into a flat spin and blacks out or otherwise becomes incapacitated. He also has an emergency chute that will automatically deploy if he is unable to pull the cord on his main chute.

Baumgartner's team has a plan for every contingency but one: If the balloon ruptures shortly after liftoff because of a gust of wind or something else, the capsule will come crashing down with him inside. He won't have time to blow the hatch and bail out.

"I have every expectation that he'll come through this successfully based on our analysis," Clark says, "but you know, it still is an unknown."

Kittinger leapt from an open gondola on Aug. 16, 1960, from an altitude of 19.5 miles and reached 614 mph, or Mach 0.9 — records that stand to this day. He was a captain in the Air Force, and the military's Excelsior project was a test bed for the nation's young space program.

Kittinger has been Baumgartner's mentor, signing on with this new project after decades of refusing others' requests.

Fearless Felix insists he would not attempt the jump if the odds were against him.

"I think they underestimate the skills of a skydiver," says Baumgartner, who has made more than 2,500 jumps from planes, helicopters, landmarks and skyscrapers, with no serious injuries.

If he makes it back in one piece, Baumgartner plans on settling down with his girlfriend and flying helicopters in the U.S. and Austria, performing mountain rescues and firefighting.

"After this," he promises, "I'm going to retire because I've been successfully doing things for the last 25 years and I'm still alive."

___

Online:

Red Bull Stratos: http://www.redbullstratos.com

National Museum of the U.S. Air Force: http://tinyurl.com/2dsnn6

Read More