A bit of light reading for the hard sf and cosmology geeks in the audience; via Next Big Future, arXiv has a paper which argues that life – indeed, even complex civilisations – may “inhabit the interiors of supermassive black holes, being invisible from the outside and basking in the light of the central singularity and orbital photons”. Stephen Baxter and Greg Egan, eat your hearts out. 🙂

A little closer to home (and also via Next Big Future), there’s a new start-up kicking around in Silicon Valley. Which isn’t news in itself, of course, but rather than designing the latest portable device or niche-focussed social network, MoonEx has scored a NASA contract that could be worth US$10m with a business model based on building autonomous robotic rovers designed to mine the Moon’s regolith for the increasingly rare metallic elements that our electronic systems depend upon. No doubt they’ll be keeping a close eye on SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy.

[ Any Monday in which you can squeeze a Soundgarden song into a post title is, by definition, a good day. ]