Over the last five days, the Vatican invited 30 of the world’s leading scientists to participate in a “study week” on astrobiology that focuses on questions regarding life’s origins and the existence of extraterrestrial life. What conclusions they arrived at have not been made public, but there are plans in the works to publish the findings.

At any rate, this move is further evidence that the Vatican is taking a kinder, gentler, more active role in science and technological progress. After all, theology and science don’t have to be mutually exclusive. [Physorg via PopSci]

If you saw this over your head, what would you think? Aliens have come to kick our asses? God has come to kick our asses? Apparently, the bizarre cloud formation seen in Moscow recently is just a natural phenomenon.

Talking to the Daily Mail, a spokesman from Moscow’s weather forecasting service said: “Several fronts have been passing through Moscow recently, there was an intrusion of the Arctic air too, the sun was shining from the west – this is how the effect was produced.

“This is purely an optical effect, although it does look impressive,” he added.

Ok, so it’s just clouds — but when you watch the video you still expect an alien ship to drop through that hole with lasers blazing. [Telegraph]

It’s being developed by a Panasonic subsidiary called ActiveLink, who say they don’t expect to see it being used for things like disaster relief efforts until around 2015. At the moment it has an aluminium-allow frame weighing around 227kg, so hopefully they can shrink it down a bit. Very cool, though. Check out the vid: [Mainichi (translated) via PinkTentacle]

Remember those incredible live-action Halo shorts? Well, that director has his first full-length movie coming out, and it looks downright badass.

Neill Blomkamp originally made the Halo shorts with Peter Jackson as proof of concept for the Halo movie that he was supposed to direct. As it was to be his first film, the studios got nervous, and now that film looks unlikely to be made. So instead he made a movie based on his own ideas rather than Bungie’s.

So not only is Neill Blomkamp at the helm, but he’s again got Peter Jackson’s WETA doing the special effects for him. As for the story, it’s about a world where aliens have landed and settled on Earth. They want to leave, but we humans brilliantly make them second-class citizens and put them in ghettos while we try to figure their advanced technology out. Things don’t go well.

The movie is based on a non-Halo-related short film that Blomkamp made that you can see here. District 9 comes out on August 25th, and I will be seeing it that night.

Creator Alan Rorie says that the concept behind the Neuron Chamber is that there are alien brains inside the chamber that are under observation, and we’re watching the cerebral process at work. In this case, it’s an reaction moving from the Soma down the Axon of the neuron.

In actual terms, this is an arc puller causing an atmospheric reaction that looks like a flame moving down the rail. Rorie likens the design to a horizontal Jacob’s Ladder. Throw in some steampunky elements for good measure and you get a pretty neat art exhibit. [Almost Scientific]

The comment came up in a forum, and argued that the alien creature was obviously a carnivore because of his “narrow pointed small mouth.” Other commenters smashed the alien-spotter: “The coronal ridge shows ample structure to support the musculature of antennae, although none are visible in this view.”

Obviously—and unfortunately—it’s just a rock. A rock or an alien who covered himself in beach sand and fell asleep as the Martian seas evaporated. [Daily Telegraph]

The men at Area 51, among other projects, worked on the OXCART spyplane, now known as the SR-71 Blackbird. The mach-3 plane was unlike anything ever seen before, designed to spy on the Russians during the Cold War, and so it kind of makes sense that such odd flying objects were seen around Roswell back in the day.

The stories the Area 51 workers have are almost as crazy as UFOs, however. For example: During the first flight of the OXCART, the plane malfunctioned and the pilot ejected into a field, where three civilian passersby in a pickup truck stopped to help him. The pilot warned the men not to go near the top-secret plane, saying there was a nuclear weapon on board as a deterrent. The men, spooked, dropped him off at a police station where the CIA picked him up.

“As for the guys who picked him up, they were tracked down and told to sign national security nondisclosures. As part of [the pilot's] own debriefing, the CIA asked the decorated pilot to take truth serum. “They wanted to see if there was anything I’d forgotten about the events leading up to the crash.”"

The agents listed the crashed plane as a generic Air Force plane, and it’s still listed that way in the records today.

Check out the full article for more stories and explanations that are sure to fail to deter the crazy conspiracy nutballs. [LA Times via Boing Boing Gadgets]

I need a vacation. I was thinking Pavones beach, Costa Rica, or maybe some sailing in Hunnebo, Sweden. But no, the Japanese have convinced me with these videos: It’s going to be Hakodate, Japan.

This hilarious and absolutely outrageous advertising campaign did it. Where else can I get killed by giant alien robotic squids? “According to a survey of 100 aliens, Hakodate is the number one city they would most like to invade,” the video says. “OH YES!” I say.

The battle then continues in two more videos:

Apparently, there’s also a giant cannon hidden in fake mountains in Hakodate. Oh people, I’ll be there like shareware. [Pink Tentacle]

Jiang insists that the elaborate white designs were inspired by the theme of “watching,” and involve fully or partially obstructed faces on each model – like guests at a gala celebration wearing masks. But I’m not blind—I’ve been to many a gala celebration, and nobody has worn anything even close to this.

Nope. To me, the message in this collection is clear: “Welcome to China, space creatures. One Universe, One Dream.” [Jezebel and 3news]

Photo from Getty