Strange but true - a real world mineral with most of the chemical properties of kryptonite has been discovered in Serbia, and now reposes (disguised by the harmless-sounding moniker "jadarite") in the Natural History Museum's mineral hall. Also in the science news this week, Harvard Medical School is conducting experiments that should lead to the development of Six Million Dollar Man-style bionic vision: stimulating the visual centres of the brain and routing the results through a prosthetic eye. Equally startling are the smart retinal implants being developed at the University of Bonn (reported in last week's New Scientist), where sighted users are "training" the software for the ultimate in vision-replacement. The research is medical, but one day, not far off, innovations like this will be giving us wearable computers: the eye that really is a camera; internet access at a blink. It's hardly surprising if the children of the 21st century find it difficult to distinguish between a scientific discovery, this year's new gadget, and utterly fantastic concepts such as the man with the 50s'do, who wears his pants over his tights and flies faster than a speeding bullet.