Alt-week takes a look at the best science and alternative tech stories from the last seven days.
Well, here we are. It’s happening. We’re officially talking about setting up a human colony on Mars. Not only is this very real, it’s something you c…
Technologists have been drawing inspiration from the insect world for a long time. And folks working on robotics really seem to love their creepy-crawlies and buzzing arthropods. Researchers at the University of Illinois are looking to our eight-l…
If the crashing sound of lightning striking Saturn wasn’t enough to excite your inner-meteorologist, then perhaps footage of a raging extraterrestrial hurricane will win you over. After orbiting the ringed planet for nine years, NASA’s Cassini pro…
How are you celebrating Earth Day? If you’re one of 10,000 Leap Motion devs with an early unit, you could very well be exploring Mount Everest or venturing through the Amazon, just by waving your hands. Google’s Earth app, which has reportedly bee…
Despite all of HTC’s talk about unified branding in the West, the company’s model names are still diverse when looked at from a planet-wide perspective. This newest phone, the Desire L, appears to be a Taiwan-destined version of China’s One SU, wi…
Curious as to the effect that your poking wars are having on the planet? Facebook is outing power and water usage data for its Oregon and North Carolina data centers to show off its sustainability chops. The information is updated in near-real tim…
NASA’s Kepler telescope has discovered three “super-Earth-size” exoplanets that are close enough to their stars to make them possibly suitable for water. Two of the planets (Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f) orbit a K2 dwarf estimated to be around 7 billion…
If you figured Titan’s title of the world’s most powerful supercomputer would give the folks at Oakridge National Laboratory reason to rest on their laurels, you’d be mistaken. The computer is set to have its fleet of 18,688 NVIDIA K20 GPUs and equal…
The Thirty Meter Telescope has been under development for more than a decade, but the sheer amount of land needed on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea for its namesake main mirror has proved problematic: locals have formally challenged the multi-university effort o…
NASA’s Kepler space telescope hasn’t exactly been a slouch when it comes to planet hunting, but that effort will soon be getting a considerable boost courtesy of a new mission selected by NASA as part of its Explorer program. Dubbed the Transiting Ex…
