Two independent groups have developed a fiber optic cable capable to transferring data at an incredible rate of 100 Terabits per second. This unbelievable speed is far greater than anything available today.

The Czech Republic intends to build the world’s most powerful laser – an exawatt beast – by 2015. This is a part of the European Union’s commitment to remain at the forefront of research in modern physics.

NASA has just called off the launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour by at least three days due to a glitch in one of the thermostats onboard ths shuttle. The Kennedy Space Center has issued an explanation why the launch, STS-134, was postponed.

It’s a rare spectacle, rare enough to make anyone get up just a bit early and gaze at the brightening eastern sky. From the 28th of April, continuing till the 1st or even 2nd of May, the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter will be seen along with the Moon, all on the eastern sky just above the horizon.

On the 29th of April, the space shuttle, Endeavour, will liftoff, primarily, to deliver a multi-billion dollar instrument – the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) – to the International Space Station. The liftoff is scheduled for 1947 GMT on 29th April, from the Kennedy Space Centre, Florida.

Electrical engineers at the University of Michigan have built a device that takes up less area than a cent and can produce electricity from vibrations. In doing so, they have created a machine with the highest efficiency per unit are than any other machine ever built.

The famous Allen Telescope Array (ATA) has been put on hibernation by the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) due to fund crunch. For SETI, which is almost five decades old, this is the worst it has ever seen.

The bill dreaded by scientists, teachers and educationists across the US – the Tennessee ‘anti-science’ bill has been put on hold by the Tennessee Senate, after being passed by the House by a majority of 70-23.

Rumor is floating around since Saturday that the LHC has detected the Holy Grail of particle physics – the Higgs Boson – in its ATLAS detector. A mysterious peak at 115 GeV has been found and a memo reporting this find has been leaked. This has got the hopefuls buzzing.

Exciting news has been tumbling out of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), since today morning. Scientists have found the distinct signature of an anti-helium nucleus, the heaviest anti-matter particle detected till date. They can also figure out the production rates and compare them to theoretical values, verifying known calculations. This is big news!

A radical new notion might kill nearly all inconsistencies in modern physics and cosmology in one fell swoop. Prof. Dejan Stojkovic, assistant physicist at Buffalo University and team has proposed the startling hypothesis that the nascent Universe may have had just one dimension. They suggest that the Universe begins to ‘grow’ dimensions as it expands and cools.

A team of Japanese researchers has come up with a ceramic lasers that can be triggered every nanosecond for powerful blasts, which hold their intensity over very short ranges. They are just 9 mm in diameters. They might find use in the unlikeliest of places – the engine of a car, sounding the death knell for spark plugs and twitchy car engines.

If you’re planning on staying up late on Friday night and into Saturday morning, do take an hour or two out to gaze up into the sky. Peaking on 22nd April, the Lyrid meteor shower will illuminate the night sky with numerous streaks. The only dampener in this cosmic show: The moon will be too bright.

The message is loud and clear: Our planet needs help to sustain us and we need to stand up and be counted. Earth Day is a concept, which intends to amalgamate all pro-environmental activities into one.

If the Cosmos is the place of all things beautiful and unusual, the Hubble Space telescope (known simply as ‘Hubble’ or HST) is the ultimate eye to see it with. Launched on 20th April, 1990, aboard the Discovery space shuttle by NASA, as the best of the space-based optical telescopes, Hubble has reached out to all.