The search for extraterrestrial life is serious science: its methods are precisely documented, its results painstakingly peer-reviewed. But at the same time it�s a field with curious standards when it comes to �advances.�

3-D printing is going viral. With 3-D fabrication technology at for the desktop, for LEGOs, and for nanoscale materials, it was only a matter of time before the paradigm found its way into space�and corporate science fiction. But this promising technology still has to prove itself in terrestrial infrastructure first.

The animated GIF may be little appreciated in the world of Web 2.0�but in the right hands, it plays with the unsettling riddle of our mechanical nature.

The Red Planet has been the object of science fiction, paranoia, and fakery. And with numerous spacecraft now beaming back publicly-available images from our neighboring planet, Martian fantasizing is a growth industry. This film is one of the most convincing, and it isn't even from Mars. Video after the jump.

The Tokyo-based Shimizu Corporation is one of the world's leading construction and engineering contractors. It's also a prolific producer of corporate science fiction: fanciful, high-concept design projects that offer glimpses of astonishing futures. Its "Luna Ring" envisions such a future for the moon�and for Shimizu.

It's sumptuous and elegant. But what is it�a puzzle or game? A clockwork cribbage player? A static electricity generator? Answer after the jump.

Pluto's loss of planetary status seemed to have been sealed by the 2006 discovery of a batch of similarly-sized planet-like objects in the same orbital neighborhood�one of which, later named Eris, was thought to be larger than erstwhile ninth planet. According to new findings, however, Pluto's diameter is larger than that of its more massive neigbhor. For now, Pluto gains in status as the largest of these so-called dwarf planets. Whether this will be enough to secure a record contract remains to be seen.

It's a new day at Gearfuse, powered by the light of science and the storm of progress.

It took 2,400 LEGO bricks, three Mindstorms NXT kits and nine additional NXT motors to complete, but Battlebricks’ MakerLegoBot has done it. The home-constructed LEGO 3D Printer is a LEGO-created device made to compose custom LEGO creations up to 12 bricks high. The 3D LEGO Printer assembles your LEGO designs brick by brick, following print commands through a USB connection ...

The Nobel Prize of Physics isn’t awarded to just any Tom, Dick or Albert, and the two scientists who took the stage to accept the honor this year for the creation of Graphene are no exception. Graphene has been touted as a super-substance, as strong as steel, as conductive as copper and only as thick as a single atom. But ...