Swiss scientists and engineers have announced a project, which will create ‘janitor’ satellites to clean up the ever increasing amount of space debris in orbit. The project is called CleanSpace One and it is due to launch in 3 to 4 years from now.

There are a few initial targets for CleanSpace One, either the Swisscube picosatellite, or its cousin TIsat, both 1,000 cubic centimeters (61 cubic inches) in size. When the janitor satellite reaches the space junk, it will extends its arm to grab the debris and then throw it to the earth atmosphere to burn up.

Julian Assange’s investors are in the process of purchasing a boat to move WikiLeaks’ servers offshore in an attempt to evade prosecution from U.S. law enforcement, Fox News reported, citing sources.

Multiple sources within the hacker community with knowledge of day-to-day WikiLeaks activities say Assange’s financial backers have been working behind the scenes on the logistics of moving the servers to international waters.

China has finished production of the first of its Chinese-built magnetically levitated (maglev) trains in Zhuzhou, Hunan. Described as low-cost and eco-friendly, the trains are to begin operating next year on the Daitai line between Haidian District and Beijing. The three-coached trains are able to carry up to 600 passengers and run at a top speed of 100 kph.

"It's ideal for mass transportation, as it is quiet and environmentally friendly", says Xu Zongxiang, general manager of Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive Company. "Its manufacturing cost is about 75 percent of a conventional light-rail train".

Meteorites that fell to Earth during a meteor shower in July of 2011 have been confirmed to be from Mars. The rocks, discovered in Morocco, were likely ejected off the surface of the planet during an ancient asteroid impact.

This is believed to be the fifth time in history that people have observed what turned out to be chemically confirmed martian material falling to Earth. Out of the approximately 24,000 known meteorites to have fallen to Earth, only about 34 have been verified to be martian in origin. Fifteen of these rocks are attributed to the meteorite shower last July. Some of the rocks, which are very rare on Earth, are being sold from US$11,000 to $22,500 per ounce, which is about ten times more than the cost of gold.

The White House released a statement commenting on the pending SOPA and PIPA anti-piracy bills in congress. While the Obama Administration sides with the opposition by saying that free-speech should be protected, censorship is evil, and that DNS-blocking is a no go, the statement doesn’t mean that the bills are off the table.

This week has once again been filled with news about the pending Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its Senate counterpart PIPA.

Scientists have identified what appear to be terrestrial versions of tranquillityite in billion-year-old rocksin Western Australia. Tranquillityite is a mineral consisting of iron, zirconium, yttrium, titanium, silicon and oxygen. It is named after the moon’s Sea of Tranquility, where it was first discovered on the Apollo 11 mission. Until now, it was only seen in samples returned from the moon, as well as in lunar meteorites.

Researcher Birger Rasmussen, a geologist at Curtin University in Bentley, Australia said it took more than 40 years to find tranquillityite in rocks on Earth. Tranquillityite was probably not found until now because it is relatively rare and small. Tranquillityite is also prone to alteration during later heating and fluid flow. 

The laboratory device manipulates the flow of light in such a way that for the merest fraction of a second an event cannot be seen, according to a paper published in the science journal Nature.

It adds to experimental work in creating next-generation camouflage – a so-called invisibility cloak in which specific colours cannot be perceived by the human eye.

“Our results represent a significant step towards obtaining a complete spatio-temporal cloaking device,” says the study, headed by Moti Fridman of Cornell University in New York.

The Indian government met with social media companies including Google and Facebook to discuss prescreening user content before it goes live on their respective websites. Executives from the companies organized a dicussion with telecommunications minister Kapil Sibal in order to negotiate the possibility of removing "disparaging" and "inflammatory" content before users are allowed to put it online. Microsoft and Yahoo representatives were also present at the meeting, although no consensus was reached.

The Washington Post reported that the government claimed the companies completely ignored their request for screening. According to eWeek, Sibal said about the government's proposed screening plans: "We have to take care of the sensibilities of our people, we have to protect their sensibilities. Our cultural ethos is very important to us."