ethericalzen writes "A BBC article highlights a theory that the first stars may have been powered by dark matter. A group of US scientists published a paper in Physical Review Letters speculating that, unlike the stars of today, which are powered by nuclear fusion, early stars might have been powered by the abundant dark matter crowding the universe after the Big Bang. The theory suggests that these stars would have collided and destroyed one another before nuclear fusion had a chance take hold." The BBC perhaps overstates the certainty with which the dark-matter theory is held, and doesn't mention that the postulated properties of such particles are completely speculative.

An anonymous reader sends us to Wired for a piece about some declassified Pentagon research from 1998 that has been revealed in a freedom-of-information filing. Apparently the Pentagon has investigated lasers that put voices in your head, among other non-lethal technologies such as microwave heating. The report suggests the techniques could be useful for controlling crowds or in negotiations. There is no context for the research or any indication whether it has continued, although the microwave heating bit sounds rather like the Active Denial System we have discussed recently.

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The US Supreme Court refused without comment the ACLU's appeal of a lower court ruling that prevented them from suing over the government's warrantless TSP program. The problem was a Catch-22: they lack legal 'standing' to sue over it because they can't prove that they were suspected terrorists, but neither can they find out who was actually suspected, because this is a matter of national security." Update: 02/20 00:17 GMT by KD : Removed an incorrect statement after a reader pointed out that, with the expiration of the Protect America Act this weekend, foreign surveillance will revert to oversight by the FISA court.

alphadogg is one of several readers to note the opening of the Mozilla Foundation's new subsidiary, Mozilla Messaging, charged with developing the free, open source Thunderbird email software. Mozilla Messaging will initially focus on Thunderbird 3, which aims at improving several aspects of the software, including integrated calendaring and better search. ZDNet UK's coverage leads with the interest the new organization has in developing instant-messaging software.

crocoduck writes "Right before the deadline passed for filing comments in the FCC investigation of Comcast's traffic-management practices, telecoms and other cable companies submitted a slew of comments defending Comcast's actions to the FCC. 'Just about every big phone company has filed a statement challenging the FCC's authority to deal with this problem. AT&T, Verizon, and Qwest all submitted lengthy remarks on February 13th, the last day for comments on the proceeding (parties can still reply to comments through the 28th). "The Internet marketplace remains fundamentally healthy, and the purported 'cure' could only make it sick," AT&T's filing declared. "At best, the network-management restrictions proposed by Free Press and others would inflict wasteful costs on broadband providers in the form of expensive and needless capacity upgrades — costs that would ultimately be passed through to end users, raise broadband prices across the board, and force ordinary broadband consumers to subsidize the bandwidth-hogging activities of a few."' P2P fans have also weighed in."

Engadgets is reporting that researchers at Penn State have built a new kind of solar cell that can harvest hydrogen directly from water. "The folks at Penn State have now developed a process that more closely mimics the photosynthesis process in plants, and while we won't pretend to understand all the nitty gritty of dye usage and other such nonsense, we do know that such a system could eventually attain 15% or so efficiency, providing a nice and clean way to gather power for that fuel cell car of the future."