Let’s Talk About Space

On Tuesday, a Hubble astronaut posted on the micro-blogging site from the great beyond. Stay tuned — @Astro_Mike likes to update. Coming soon, we hope, @PopSci goes to space.

Also in today’s links: robots ask for help and make art, spacing out is good for you, and more.

• New research distinguishes credible witnesses from liars, with the difference being in the number of narrative details in their accounts. Whereas we include plenty of irrelevant information when remembering true events, we stick to our bare-boned script when telling a fabricated tale.
• This has “Pixar movie” written all over it: a spunky robot gets lost, asks passers-by for directions, says thank you, and reaches his target… five hours later.
• Another robot (a painter fellow) has a cameo in this video roundup of bizarre inventions by students in communications technology. A mud computer, anyone?
• Stargazers, are you paying attention? The words lazy and daydreamer often get paired, but considering the results of a recent fMRI study, it seems a revision may be in order. Counter-intuitive though it sounds, scientists have observed that while we daydream, parts of our minds remain active and engaged in complex problem-solving tasks behind the scenes.