If you’ve never seen Chichen Itza, take it from me – it’s an awesome piece of ancient history. Oh, you can’t afford a jaunt to Mexico? Me neither – I’m still paying off the last one, well over three years later. But hey – you’ve got broadband, right? So you can always go and visit a 3D scale model of the ancient Mayan city in Second Life … won’t cost you a penny. And talking of things that cost a lot to do in ‘Real Life’ but virtually nothing in the metaverse, geocaching seems to be taking off in SL too.

Publishers may not be so keen (even to the extent of making foolish gestures based on a misinterpretation of the situation), but twelve major United States universities can see the value in the Google Books project, and have agreed to having a significant part of their collections digitised. It’s won’t be an overnight process, thanks to the sheer man-hours involved, not to mention the price of the equipment – but the latter could fall in the wake of new technology like liquid camera lenses. At the other end of the scale, however, there are custom laser-wielding robots for creating 3D scans of millenia-old manuscripts.

A recent NASA report to Congress declares that the Agency is willing to share the International Space Station with other government agencies as well as commercial businesses. Of course, there’s a caveat – they want to wait until it’s finished, which is currently timetabled to occur in 2010. Which offers private space outfits like Bigelow a chance to not just undercut their prices but jump the gun as well …

There’s no shortage of people who’ll build you a jetpack, but they’re noisy, dangerous, and far from ecologically friendly. All that could be set to change, however, if the new design just patented for a remotely-powered ion-propelled jetpack makes it to the production line. Yeah, I’m a little skeptical, too … but apparently the patent has overwritten the ones NASA already had in the field, so there must be something to it. If PFS need beta-testers at any point, I hope they know who to email …

Science/tech story of the day has to be MIT’s wireless electricity system by a long margin. Looks like we’ve finally caught up with Tesla after Edison led us astray. Oh, and if you’re a Tesla fan, or a Mark Twain fan, or both – or if you simply appreciate quality graphic novels – you really should get hold of Fraction and Sanders’ Five Fists of Science.