We’ve superceded the abilities of traditional ground based telescopes with devices like the Hubble, but even that can’t let us look as deeply into the universe as we’d like to. However, there is a way to exploit the power of gravity to bring incredibly distant objects into view, and that is gravitational lensing – a phenomenon whereby the immense gravity of a star bends light passing around it just like an optical lens. An Italian astronomer has been pushing this idea for over a decade, claiming that a probe known as FOCAL should be sent out into the solar system far enough to enable the use of our own sun as a gigantic telescope, permitting us to observe distant star systems in sharp detail.

Check out Cory Doctorow’s “Truncat,” a sequel of sorts to Down and Out In The Magic Kingdom (on my list of personal favorite futurismic pieces).

The business and finance world, while happy to make hay while the sun shines, have been muttering about the possibility of a re-run of the dot-com bust after the current ‘web2.0’ hype engine runs out of steam. New grist for their mill today, with the arrival of once-lauded online calendar startup Kiko.com on the market – and that’s not the stock market. No, it’s being auctioned off on eBay, and the half-serious slogan ‘Google is the new Microsoft’ is gaining credence in some camps. If you’ll excuse me, I must call my broker…

Online multiplayer computer games are a great target for scaremongers, just as any fairly new cultural activity embraced by a young generation has always been. A new study reveals that, far from encouraging withdrawl from social life, virtual environments may actually promote ‘social bridging’ and the adoption of new wider worldviews. The researchers also theorise that the lack of ‘hangouts’ in meatspace, thanks to a climate of paranoia over everything from terrorism to paedophilia, may actually be one of the main forces driving the youth into the metaverse. This would certainly explain the social networking phenomenon – the world is their shopping mall.

There may still be no consensus on what makes a planet a planet, but at least there is agreement on when a star is a star, as opposed to being a ‘failed star’ or ‘brown dwarf’. This boundary occurs at around 80 times the mass of Jupiter, beneath which there is insufficient gravity to start off the fusion reactions that make stars what they are, and Hubble images of some of the dimmest stars in an ancient star cluster seem to bear out this long held theory.