Should humans be cloned, do we need to worry about our Milky Way Galaxy colliding with its neighbours and how has science helped to make chocolate tastier?
These and other burning science questions will be answered over the next few days at the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Philadelphia.
The event gets under way this afternoon and promises an impressive list of speakers. President Clinton will take time from worries over Iraq and his complex social life when he addresses the association tomorrow on future US science policy.
Prof Ian Wilmut, the creator of Dolly the cloned sheep, is a keynote speaker on the rights and wrongs of human cloning.
New approaches to obesity, controlling chronic pain, treatment of cancer and the use of animal donor organs in human patients are all scheduled for discussion during the meeting, the 150th since the formation of the AAAS in 1848 in Philadelphia.
Attendance is expected to top 5,000 and the line-up includes 850 speakers.
The object of the exercise is to keep things non-technical and entertaining, all the while explaining real - and very current - science to a general audience.
The 1905 meeting of the association heard Nobel laureate T. H. Morgan explain his radical theory of sex-linked inheritance.
The first conclusive evidence of how the sea floor spreads and the continents drift was on the schedule in 1966 and in 1984 research on the connection between HIV and AIDS was delivered.
The AAAS has a mission to explain science to the people, hence its annual meetings. It also links with similar international organisations to open up channels of communication between scientists around the world.
"AAAS recognises that science today is increasingly global in nature," explained the organisation's president, Dr Mildred S. Dresselhaus. "The association's importance in the 21st century will be determined by how well we foster this larger, more international scientific community in its efforts to explore the frontiers of science and to use science to help solve some of society's most intractable problems," he said.
Over the next five days scientists will be explaining themselves to all comers in a series of lectures and presentations. Some will be deadly serious, such as discussions on the latest cancer therapies and the future of forensic DNA testing in criminal cases.
Others will be more light-hearted, such as how to make chocolate more chocolatey and how babies learn to recognise words in a sea of sound.
Running with the lectures is a major public exhibition where companies and educational institutions will be displaying their wares. There is a major exhibit on the planned international space station and a career fair to tempt newcomers into the sciences.
