The publishing world went ballistic with the lawsuits when Google started digitising their books and making them searchable online – then theory being that doing so would reduce the number of copies they would sell. However, some publishers are now speaking up to say that, on the contrary, having their material available in this way has actually increased the number of units they shift. The sweet smell of profit is sure to be an influence on other publishers realising that it’s better to move with the times than try to legislate against inevitable progress.

Science fiction and routes into space are two of my favourite subjects. Now there’s an opportunity to get both in one convenient package – the ESA sponsors an annual science fiction contest, the Clarke-Bradbury International Science Fiction Competition, and this year the theme was ‘space elevators’. The winning entries are collected in a book entitled ‘Running The Line’, available from print-on-demand site LuLu.

The Homeland Security Department certainly take their work seriously, but they come up with some strange (and occasionally sinister methodologies). Point in case, a new software package being developed to monitor foreign perceptions of the US by analysing newspaper and magazine articles. It’s hard to tell what the true deployment purpose of the program would be (being as it’s only in the very early development stages so far), but it would seem to be a rather roundabout and paranoid response to the problem of terrorism – how many terrorists write op-ed pieces, after all?

If you’ll forgive me acting a lttle out of character, I’d like to deflate some hyperbolic reportage. Anyone with an interest in science and technology who uses the web has inevitably seen the stories about successful teleportation by Danish physicists. While this transmission of entangled states is an exciting and important development in its field, it has nothing to do with physically transporting matter over a distance. If I had a penny for every mention of Star Trek in today’s science news, I’d be a rich man.

Those accelerator-ring people may have an idea, but do they have a roadmap? Because as of today, space elevator pioneers Liftport certainly do, outlining where they think the major landmarks of progress will be on their journey towards building a ‘beanstalk’. It’s a working document, subject to change with feedback from experts and the public, but they’re boldly stating their intents to the world. I expect they’re also pretty stoked by the news that the Spaceward Foundation now has a prize purse totalling $4million for forthcoming space elevator development contests.