Microsoft's Stephen Lawler gives a whirlwind tour of Virtual Earth, moving up, down and through its hyper-real cityscapes with dazzlingly fluidity, a remarkable feat that requires staggering amounts of data to bring into focus.

The Big Idea of planet discovery and the exploration of distant galaxies have taken a new direction in recent times. The James Wentz Space Telescope, or the JWST, is a large, infra-red optimized, space-based telescope that will be...