Another prop for Moore’s Law has appeared. An international science team has built a diode from a single molecule, making the component nearly 1000 times smaller than its current equivalents found in computer processors – which means hardware and gadgets can carry on shrinking as well.

As a child, Ronald Mallett wanted to travel back in time to try to prevent his father’s death, and hence went on to study physics. Despite now believing that the present cannot be affected by meddling with the past, he has announced his intention to build a ‘time machine’ based around circulating laser beams, using equations based on Einstein’s work on realtivity. The project is in need of financial backers, but he reckons he can have the desktop device made and ready to confirm (or falsify) his theory within a decade. Stop giggling at the back.

South Korea’s Ministry of Information and Communication has predicted (possibly rather rashly) that every household in the country will have a robot servitor by 2020, or sooner if the real enthusiasts have their way. Looks pretty blue-sky at first glance, but this is a country which has achieved connecting 72% of its homes to broadband in just the last five years.

Charles Simonyi, a leading programmer with Microsoft who worked on the MS Office suite, has signed a contract with the Russian Space Agency for a mission in space in 2007. Insert your own joke about ‘launch windows’ here.