The old consensus in astonomy used to be that we’d only find terrestrial planets around stars much like our own sun. But as is the way of consesus, especially in astronomy, that view is changing, with more researchers saying that binary star systems are just as likely to have planet systems as singletons. Let’s just hope the governments of the world decide to spend more money on researching and (maybe) exploring them – as opposed to filling LEO with weapon systems.

If you’ve found your daily RSS diet has lost its sense of challenge, why not make things a little harder for yourself – by building yourself a steampunk-style replica telegraph sounder that converts your feeds into morse code? Seems like the sort of project that’ll involve a lot of time and some skill with machine tools, but hey, it looks awesome. [Engadget]

You can’t move for people linking to this one today, but if all my friends stuck their hands in the fire I’d be damned if I was the one who got called a loser. So I heartily recommend that you click through to a webpage that shows you all the known bodies in the solar system larger than 200 km in diameter. Because sometimes feeling really small is a lot of fun. [Scalzi]

As Jamais Cascio points out, the future feels close enough to reach out and touch these days. What else can you say about a world where you can buy a 3D printer (or fabricator) for your business for a mere $40k? Oh, that might sound a bit pricey right now, but think how much the same tech will cost in a decade. Or two. Interesting times, ladies and gentlemen, interesting times.

So many programs, sites or systems we use every day need a password to keep them secure, and remembering them all can be a nightmare – especially if you follow the wise advice of the experts and don’t make the mistake of having them all set to the same four letter word. Help may be at hand for the forgetful, however, with the announcement of a webcam that can double as a visual user recognition device by scanning faces in 3D. After all, it’s pretty hard to forget to take your face to work.