Summary: Welcome to Friday Futures, our weekly guide to the latest visions of The Future from around the web. This week: NASA, MIT and a shape shifting airplane; filming the speed of light; asteroid death; new forms of conductor and Sci-Fi and space exploration. NASA and MIT are trailing a shape shifting wing A team from NASA and MIT has created a new type of airplane wing — and it could make air travel far more efficient. In a paper published in the journal Smart Materials and Structures on Monday. Read more… Watch as these guys film the speed of light Astronomers are watching an steroid tearing itself apart Astronomers noticed that a well-known asteroid that orbits the sun way out past Mars had sprouted a long, comet-like tail. Now, data from the Hubble Telescope reveals that something has set 6478 Gault off kilter and it’s self-destructing, spinning itself into pieces. Read more… Do humans have a built-in compass? Russia is exploiting gas under the Arctic The vessel carried construction supplies for a new liquefied natural gas plant on the remote Yamal Peninsula, but its route through the Kara Sea along the Northeast Passage was frozen. Read more… Finding new forms of topological conductors Several of the hotly studied topological materials to date are known as topological insulators. Their surfaces are expected to conduct electricity with very little resistance, somewhat akin to superconductors. Read more… Here’s how 100 plus years of Sci-Fi enabled space exploration (Compiled by Alex Leslie and edited by Tony Poulos) Likes