(Photo: Twitter)

Renowned physicist and biggest baller alive Neil deGrasse Tyson is one of the Internet's favorite heroic figures; he is so beloved by science geeks and techies alike that at an event hosted by Gizmodo last summer, attendees broke into spontaneous applause at the mere mention of his name.

Mr. Tyson is the director at New York's popular Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space uptown. The Planetarium, as wondrous as it is, has a bit of a branding problem: namely, it boasts the same name as actress Hayden Panittiere, star of the new series Nashville, which we keep hearing is actually good but like, really? Is it?

Today, Mr. Tyson took to Twitter to express his love for the Bring It On 3 star--particularly her space-themed song, "Telescope." But naturally, he lamented the fact that Ms. Panettiere outranks the Planetarium in Google search results.

(Screencap: Twitter)

Some Twitter users spoke up to defend the Planetarium, saying that it actually surfaced above Hayden Panettiere in search results. Indeed, when we tried the query, we got the Planetarium directly above Ms. Panettiere's Wikipedia page in both regular and incognito windows.

This inevitably led us to wonder: which bored planetarium prankster rigged poor Mr. Tyson's computer to put Ms. Panettiere first? Sure, Bring It On 3 wasn't the best, but no need to drag the illustrious Planetarium into it. Or perhaps it was a higher up trying to convince him to work yet harder? Or did someone at Google see his tweet and automatically seek to correct what was obviously an error?

For now, it's a mystery; if only our eyes were like a telescope.

(Photo: Dvice)

Advanced 3D printing technology is getting close to resembling replicators from Star Trek and iPads look a whole lot like the gadgets Geordi was always carrying around. Now, physicists have taken another step towards making Starfleet technology a reality by inventing a working tractor beam, which is essentially a laser that can move things. Sure, currently it can only move itty bitty molecules, but the fact that it works at all opens up all sorts of exciting possibilities.

NYU professors David Ruffner and David Grier have developed a way to harness Bessel beams in order to pull particles towards a laser source. The result is the beginnings of a very tiny tractor beam capable of moving silica spheres suspended in water.

According to Geekosystem:

Rather than a single beam, Bessel beams are transmitted as concentric circles that converge around the point they’re directed at. This gives the beams a unique quality. If you place a small object between the source of the beam and its destination, the concentric rings of the Bessel beam can reform around the object. That makes it possible for Bessel beams to pull or push objects — a quality of the beams that had been hypothetical until now.

Mr. Ruffner and Mr. Grier discovered that by overlapping two Bessel beams and slightly distorting them through a lens they could create enough energy to move the molecules.

Phys Org, which originally posted the discovery, argues that this type of tractor beam would need such a hulking amount of energy in order to allow it to move large objects that it "likely would destroy those objects in the process." But, they add, "it does suggest that such a device might be possible using another less energy intensive source."

In Star Trek, tractor beams are used to manipulate cargo, guide ships into the landing dock and damage enemy ships. In real life, we just hope we'll be able to shine a laser on the TV remote across the room and have it magically float over to us. Dream big.

Mr. Milner. (Photo: Wikipedia/Debray Riveros)

It's a question as old as semiconductors: Once you've racked up a couple of billion dollars investing in the tech sector, what are you to do with all that cash? Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner--who's made himself quite a nice little nest egg betting on companies like Facebook and Groupon--has a somewhat novel answer. The New York Times reports that he's founded his very own Nobel Prize.

The Fundamental Physics Prize will dole out $3 million each to worthy, boundary-pushing thinkers. No experimental proof required, says Mr. Milner:

Sometimes a radical new idea “really deserves recognition right away because it expands our understanding of at least what is possible,” Mr. Milner said.

The Times says that the new prize is the academic world's most lucrative. The Nobel Prize is $1.2 million and usually split; MacArthur Genius Grants are a mere $500,000, doled out in quarterly increments.

One of the winners, MIT professor Alan Guth, told the Times, "It knocked me off my feet." Coming into a small fortune after a lifetime in academia will do that to you, even if you're the kind of person who spends his days contemplating "cosmic inflation," or the rapid post big-bang expansion in the universe. The Times adds:

The $3 million has already appeared in Dr. Guth’s bank account, one that had had a balance of $200. “Suddenly, it said, $3,000,200,” he said. “The bank charged a $12 wire transfer fee, but that was easily affordable.”

Mr. Milner's idea isn't entirely out of the blue, and in fact this kind of investment is very much in vogue. Look at Elon Musk betting the farm on Tesla Motors and Space X, or reread the rockets-and-immortality mission statement of Peter Thiel's Founder's Fund. Closer to Mr. Milner's home territory, there's the example of Dmitry Grishin, a.k.a. the "Russian Mark Zuckerberg," who's put $25 million into a new venture devoted to investing in robotics.

And lest anyone snicker at the sheer new-money swagger of Mr. Milner's move, let's remember that once upon a time Alfred Nobel was just the dude who invented dynamite.