Nearly 5m people in 226 countries have downloaded a screensaver that makes their computer available, whenever it is sitting idle, to process radio signals gathered from outer space.

ECONOMIST: The future of computing

As part of the kill process, the workers drilled into the annulus, or the outer ring of the well.

CNN: STORY HIGHLIGHTS

If the star's outer layers could be mixed into the core, that would slow the process of inflation down.

ECONOMIST: Is it time for a new approach to finding extraterrestrials?