As well as being able to chip in with opinions about what constitutes a planet, the team are letting students develop data mining experiments, looking for patterns that could assist in the discovery of alien life -- or just look neat when graphed visually.

ENGADGET: Alt-week 1.26.13: quadruple DNA helixes, Byzantine mutants and battling hospital bugs

The car was tiny, Continental-looking, green-colored with a lighter-green leaf stencilled on the door, as distinctively alien in the car park as Hilda had been among the shoppers inside.

NEWYORKER: She��s the One