Are we alone in the universe? The famous SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) program has been trying to answer this question since 1959. American astronomer Carl Sagan, and many others, believed that other human-like civilizations must exist, and that we could communicate with them. But skeptics are not convinced, arguing the lack of evidence for such civilizations suggests they areexceedingly rare. But if other human-like civilizations are unlikely to exist, could there exist other forms of life – perhaps better suited than us to spread in the cosmos?...

If you keep an eye on Microsoft job postings and project leaks concerning its entertainment divisions, you might be confused. Microsoft’s efforts in media, gaming, and content are a bewildering pile of odd titles and code names: Ventura, WEC, IEB, Dorado, Orapa, and so forth. In fact, the milieu is so darned hard to parse, even the best of the Microsoft watchers cannot decide if it is the PC or the Xbox that is going to be the company’shub of choice for the living room of the future....

How mimicking asteroid collisions can make diamonds in minutes There’s more than one form of diamond Carbon atoms can bond together in a number of ways to form different materials including soft black graphite and hard transparent diamond. There are many well-known forms of carbon with graphite-like bonding, includinggraphene, the thinnest material ever measured. But did you know there’s also more than one type of carbon-based material with diamond-like bonding?...

Therecent awardof an £1.8m grant from the British government’s Technology Strategy Board to the likes of BT, Yahoo for the creation of a “cloud radio” service has done a lot to underline how seriously this kind of technology and the platforms that utilise it are starting to become. Founded in 2008, London-basedMixcloudcan certainly be said to be one of the major pioneers of web-based radio and has since gone on to establish itself as a popular and highly regarded platform in this space....

The idea for our running theme this week was to talk about things that can help to improve your health. You see, we have some very healthy people around here at TNW. Courtney Boyd Myers is a fan of bending herself into unnatural positions and calling it yoga, Zee appreciates traveling great distances on foot and ending up in the same place he started. Some call it running. Joel Falconer and I?...