As far as size and age go, nothing can top the universe – it’s ridiculously huge and very ancient, at least in terms we humans can comprehend. But recent measurements indicate that scientists may have underestimated the dimensions of the universe by as much as 15% – which won’t make much difference to you and I, but will doubtless have the cosmology brigade tearing pages out of the textbooks yet again.

It’s probably fair to describe building a space elevator as a long-term business plan. The Liftport Group aren’t letting the grass grow under their feet en route, though – they’re branching out into providing wifi internet relays suspended from weather balloons. The idea is to use them to serve remote rural communities, or regions devastated by disasters. That should keep the cashflow looking good while they work on the main project.

Planetary-mass objects, or planemos, are a relatively new addition to the astronomy pantheon. There remains a great deal to be discovered about them, and the mysteries are compounded by the recent discovery of a binary pair of objects too small to be stars in their own right, but which have no parent star either. It’s unclear whether this is a common occurance or a rare fluke, but the answer could tell us a lot about how planemos are formed.

Some great news for bookworms with internet connections – publishing giant HarperCollins, one of the first to digitise its entire back catalogue, is going to allow potential buyers to browse excerpts of selected titles online. Of course, it’s not all good news – one of the books is by Michael Crichton. You can’t expect miracles to happen right away, I guess.

Astronomers have puzzled over the equatorial lump on the moon’s dark side for centuries, but a solution to the conundrum has now been proposed. The theory goes that the lump was created by orbital forces long ago, when the moon was still molten, much closer to Earth, and in a far more eccentric orbit than at present. Since then, it has gradually moved away from the Earth, its spin and orbit becoming steadily more sedate.