Italian astronomers using the prosaically named ‘Very Large Telescope’ have discovered that every time the globular cluster Messier-12 has passed through the Milky Way it has had thousands of its less-massive stars stolen. [EurekAlert!]

IBM announces a new method of working with silicon that boosts performance considerably. The boys at Big Blue have been compressing the semiconductor, which fundamentally changes certain properties of the material and allows faster operation. Moore’s Law has some life in it yet. [Wired.com]

When the boffins can’t provide a consensus on the definition of ‘planet’, it would appear. The International Astronomical Union has been arguing over this particular issue for a few years now, and it seems that so far all they can manage is to agree that they all disagree. [NewScientistSpace]

Researchers from NASA and the SETI project have been using simulations to determine which of the myriad stars in the universe might hold life, and to imagine what that life might be like. The results are reminiscent of many of the critters that have inhabited space operas for years. [KurzweilAI.net]

Astonomers at the UK’s Cambridge Institute of Astronomy have come up with the first ‘measured properties’ for dark matter. It turns out the stuff is much warmer and faster-moving than was previously thought, and that our own Galaxy is much more massive than earlier data suggested. [BBC]