Not content with dominating the mother-planet and its barren satellite, those lovable geeks at Google have now launched Google Mars, enabling the man-about-the-web to check out potential Martian real estate if he’s bored with terran and lunar landscapes. And if that’s not enough for you, PhysOrg.com are pointing to a page on the NASA site where you can watch a virtual flythrough of the Red Planet’s Valles Marineris canyon.

UK scientists have upped the efficiency of the tiny semiconductor devices known as ‘quantum dots’, which are now 70% effective at producing entangled photons. Applications for these devices abound in the fields of computing and communications.

The ‘Realiser’ from MCP is, essentially, a 3D printer/prototyper for metals. The von Neumann era approaches!

It really seems to be little Enceladus’ week in the spotlight. Not only has it been found to have water in its make-up, but it is also the source of Saturn’s E-ring.

Any apocalyptics disappointed by the world surviving the millenium can dust off their sandwich boards again; astronomers have given the asteroid ‘2004 VD-17’ a 1000 to 1 chance of hitting the Earth in 2102. Meanwhile, another wise post at WorldChanging.com explains why the issue of potential asteroid collisions is one that we shouldn’t get too paranoid about, but nor is it one we should sweep under the carpet and ignore completely.