Proving that there's always a different way to approach a problem, researchers at Los Alamos National Lab have devised a pretty clever method of algae harvesting that could take a major chunk out of the cost of algae-based biofuel production. And all they had to do was create a magnetic organism.

Back in June when the latest edition of TOP500 dropped (TOP500 lists the world's top supercomputers), Japan's K Computer leapt ahead of China's Tianhe-1A supercomputer to become the biggest, baddest computing platform on the planet. But after more than a year of slipping down the ranks as its competitors across the Pacific surged ahead, Oak Ridge National Labs Jaguar supercomputer is poised to become the fastest computer in the world once more.

NASA has awarded the single largest prize handed down in aviation history to Team Pipistrel-USA.com for designing and demonstrating its Taurus G4 electric aircraft. Per the rules of the NASA- and Google-sponsored CAFE Green Flight Challenge, Pipistrel's Taurus G4 covered 320 kilometres in less than 2 hours and did so on the electricity equivalent of less than one gallon of fuel per passenger, scoring US$1.35 million for the effort.

Tomorrow American high-energy physics centre Fermilab will power down their Tevatron particle collider for the final time, marking the end of an era. But for some, that era is so over anyhow. Hadrons, like last season's handbag, have had their time in the spotlight. The next hot trend in physics is muons, and all the cool kids know it. That's why Fermilab physicists are already taking a hard look at muon colliding technologies as a possible next move in the game of international physics research.

European researchers working at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) in Grenoble, France, have trapped the largest number of neutrons ever held in place at one time. But while they've smashed the previous record (also held by the ILL), it's still not quite enough, the lead researcher tells BBC. Still, the new approach that got researchers this far may be able to trap far greater numbers of neutrons with a little finessing.

Scientists at CERN have run an experiment. A very simple time of flight experiment, measuring the time it takes a neutrino to get from A to B. The trick with this particular one is that this particle clocked in at a whole 60 nanoseconds faster than light. That small number is a big deal - if correct, it could overturn Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity, the cornerstone of theoretical physics for the last century.