Crowdfunding and crowdsourcing has been a popular area of experimentation for the last few years, but people still haven't quite figured out how best to work a crowd. Some projects are insanely successful. Other projects seem to fall far short of their goals. Here are just a few examples of projects that could use some help.

• A crowdfunded report on gun research might not get full funding on Microryza. The campaign ends soon, so if you want to see more independent research on gun statistics, pony up! [url]
• Galaxy Zoo is a crowdsourced astronomy project to classify the numerous newly-discovered galaxies seen by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and Hubble Space Telescope. The project started in 2007, and over 150,000 volunteers have helped categorize millions of galaxies. [url]
• The Archon Genomics X Prize challenges teams to sequence 100 complete human genomes in 30 days. The genomes belong to centenarians, but it doesn't look like many teams want to compete for the prize. [url]

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We've discovered thousands of exoplanets beyond our solar system, and some of them are even in the "Goldilocks zone" where liquid water could possibly exist. Some astronomers think life could be abundant in the universe, but there's not that much hard evidence (yet!). Here are just a few astronomical discoveries that might encourage researchers to look for signs of life a bit more carefully.

• Exoplanets have been discovered circling some extremely old, metal-poor stars, creating interesting curiosities that might expand the theories of how planets form. These exoplanets might not harbor any kind of life... or we may want to get a bit more creative about how we envision life on other worlds. [url]
• A free-floating planet named CFBDSIR2149 is not orbiting a star, and it's only one of about two dozen or so known examples of a starless planet. This rogue planet is relatively young compared to the Earth, and some spectroscopic measurements suggest this planet's temperature is about 430° Celsius -- a bit too warm for our tastes (but maybe not for aliens?). [url]
• Within our own solar system, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has detected spurts of water from Saturn's moon Enceladus. This evidence leads to some speculation of a habitable zone on some icy moons where microbes might be able to survive. [url]

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There are about 700 confirmed exoplanets that astronomers have indirectly observed. The Kepler Space Telescope has gathered a vast amount of data, and it suggests that there are probably planets orbiting nearly every star. Now that we know about all these planets, it's fun to speculate about how much life could exist on them. So here are just a few links for those of you who want to know where our alien neighbors might be.

• In just our galaxy, there could be 10 billion other planets that are similar to our own Earth. Gas giant exoplanets the size of Jupiter are easier to find, but they might not be as common as small rocky planets like ours. [url]
• The Habitable Exoplanets Catalog has a list of 7 planets that might support life, and this list has only just started to be compiled. A lot of these exoplanets are "super-Earth" sized, and it's tough to know much about their atmospheres with current telescopes. [url]
• Tau Ceti is a star system just 12 light years away that seems to have similar characteristics to our solar system. Astronomers are guessing that there may be 5 rocky planets in orbit around Tau Ceti, and that star is about twice as old as our Sun, so there would have been plenty of time for life to arise (but also to perish). [url]
• ATLAST is a space-based telescope specifically designed to look for signs of life on other planets, but it's only in the concept stage -- with vague plans to launch sometime before 2032. Directly observing exoplanets and their atmospheres could tell us more about how unique our Earth is and how lonely we might be in the universe. [url]

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The Hubble space telescope isn't the only piece of equipment above our planet that can look deep into the universe at the direction of astronomers, but it's certainly the most famous. The next telescope that's expected to be as well-known as the Hubble is the James Webb Space Telescope, but it's not scheduled to launch until 2018. Here are just a few more telescopes that could be hovering above us and keeping astronomers busy.

• The US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) donated a couple of huge space telescopes to NASA. Instead of spying on earthlings, these telescopes could be outfitted with equipment to look for ETs in distant star systems. [url]
• A starshade fitted to a helium blimp could help astronomers pick out exoplanets more easily. The starshade blocks light from a parent star so that its orbiting planets can be detected directly. [url]
• NuSTAR is an orbiting space telescope that's looking for sources of high-energy X-rays that potentially come from black holes or radioactive material in supernova remnants. This telescope is still calibrating, but it should start collecting some cool data soon. [url]

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Our solar system is a pretty big place, and we haven't really seen that much of it. But as we send out more and more probes and get fancier telescopes, we're learning about a ton of interesting phenomena that occur beyond our own planet. Here are just a few fascinating factoids and links on how we're exploring space without sending astronauts anywhere (yet).

• While the Earth and other rocky objects in our solar systems aren't perfectly round, our Sun is remarkably spherical... almost too spherical. The Sun isn't perfectly spherical, but it's actually one of the roundest objects humans have ever measured, and it's a bit puzzling why it should be so round. [url]
• NASA's Cassini spacecraft has discovered that Saturn's moon Titan could hold bodies of liquid water under its crust. This could mean there's yet another place in our solar system with water that could possibly sustain life. [url]
• A geochronometer is an instrument that could help determine how old various things in our solar system are. Portable geochronometers could be sent to other planets (like Mars) to improve our estimates of how long it takes for certain planetary features to develop. [url]

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There's a lot we don't know about the universe. Until relatively recently, we weren't even sure how big the universe is. Telescopes looking deep into space have gathered a lot of interesting information, and we're finding all sorts of strange phenomena and types of extra-solar planets. Here are just a few cool tidbits about planets from far, far away.

• Nomad planets could be floating around our galaxy without orbiting a star in surprisingly large numbers. Based on some new estimates, there might be 100,000 times more nomad planets in the Milky Way than stars. [url]
• The Hubble telescope has found a totally new class of planet that is made of an enormous amount of water. Given the density of this waterworld, GJ1214b has more water than Earth and much less rockiness. [url]
• The Kepler Space Telescope has discovered over a thousand planets outside our solar system, and a few other star systems have interesting planetary orbit patterns. One "Kepler Object of Interest" (KOI) is a system in which there are planets that share the same orbit. In another KOI, all the planets circle their star in under a week. Strange, new worlds, indeed. [url]
• To discover more links on space exploration, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

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The universe is a big place, so it's possible to find pretty much anything you can think of -- if you're patient enough to scan the vastness of space. Here are just a few weird planets that astronomers have found recently.

• Kepler 16b isn't the lecture hall for your astronomy exam. It's the un-trademarked name of Tatooine. This is the first planet that's been observed orbiting a binary star system. [url]
• The Kepler telescope has been a busy bee. It's found two planets sharing the same orbit. These two co-orbiting planets, in the KOI-730 system, are always 120 degrees apart, so they don't collide. [url]
• The planet TrES-2b is so dark. How dark is it? It reflects less than 1 percent of the incident light from its parent star, and so it's darker than coal. (sorry, no joke here.) [url]
• Apparently, there are lots of "free agent" planets floating around the universe without a star to orbit. Expect a disaster movie where one of these lonely planets is headed straight for Earth (nevermind the statistical improbabilities). [url]
• To discover more links on space exploration, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

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Telescopes have taught us a lot about the universe around us. As we collect more data from other stars and satellites, we might figure out the mysteries of Dark Matter and the probability of other lifeforms existing. Here are just a few cool telescope projects out there.

• SETI's Allen Telescope Array is going to be turned back on, thanks to donations from viewers like you. The SETIStars program raised over $200,000 and exceeded its funding goal. (But next year, they'll have to interrupt their broadcasts with another pledge drive...) [url]
• Nanosatellites could help look for Earth-like planets in other star systems. Pretty soon, there'll be femtosatellites, too. [url]
• The RadioAstron mission is creating a radio telescope that's larger that the Earth. But the project still needs to tackle a problem of collecting data at 144 megabits per second from multiple receivers on the ground. [url]
• To discover more links on space exploration, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

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Astronomers are constantly discovering new phenomena (or really, really old stuff, depending on how you look at it) all the time. There is simply a lot of stuff in the universe and we're not going to ever finish looking at all of it. A sizable chunk of the cosmos isn't even observable to us. But it's still fascinating to try to catalog everything out there. Here are just a few discoveries keeping astronomers busy these days.

• A tiny blob of light named UDFj-39546284 is tentatively dubbed the most distant galaxy seen so far. The James Webb Telescope will confirm the classification, and until then there's a 20%(!) chance that this thing isn't a galaxy at all. [url]
• The Kepler telescope has found 54 planets in a "habitable zone" around their respective stars -- and 5 of those are approximately Earth-sized. There are plenty more to find still, too. [url]
• According to statistical analysis, the cosmos is at least 250 times bigger than what we can see. So you can't believe everything you see.. and there's lies, damn lies and statistics to back that up. [url]
• In a not-so-distant court, astrology has been re-affirmed as a "trusted science" in India. Apparently, India's Supreme Court had already ruled astrology as a science in 2004. [url]
• To discover more astronomy-related links, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

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The universe is filled with some weird stuff, and astronomers are always looking out to find new, unexplained phenomena. If our lives were really governed by the motions of distant stars, there'd be a looot of movements to take into account.... Still, there are plenty of folks who are wondering what their new astrology sign might mean. But however the stars move, astrologers probably enjoy all these new astronomical discoveries, if only because it makes their jobs more interesting. So, here are a few cool observations.

The Hubble is looking at a green gas cloud called Hanny’s Voorwerp. The object was discovered in 2007 by Dutch schoolteacher, Hanny van Arkel. [url]

The Kepler telescope found a solid planet about 40% bigger than Earth. That planet is more than a bit too hot for our biology, but there are at least a few hundred more planets in Kepler's sights. [url]

Mars might have giant caves! Or at least, it has big dark craters of some kind. [url]

Here's a "mysteries of space" timeline. Seriously not drawn to scale... especially a googol years in the future. [url]