Our own moon is something of a dead, crater-ridden boulder careening around the Earth, doing little of interest in the meantime. Sure, it’s got some interesting features and it probably has more than a few secrets left to be uncovered, but nothing is really going on up there. Jupiter’s moons, on the other hand, tend to be a little more active. Io, for example, has a vast sulfur landscape and hundreds upon hundreds of active volcanoes. Now, for the first time, we have a full geologic map of the moon’s surface, indexing all of its harsh alien glory, including 425 volcanoes and not a single crater.

Sure, you have a general idea of how gravity works, how things orbit other things and the like, but it can be hard to really parse those kinds of things because they generally happen on such an enormous scale. That’s why experiments in micro-gravity can be so enlightening, and moreover, cool to watch. Check out this video of a water droplet orbiting a knitting needle, the first of many as part of a series being developed by NASA and the American Physical Society who aim to bring more cool videos from the International Space Station — and astronomical knowledge in general — down to Earth.

With legislation like SOPA threatening to destroy the Internet in a flurry of misaimed, poorly executed censorship, what’s a freedom of information advocate to do? That’s easy: Team up with others and work on a plan to launch a series of DIY satellites into low Earth orbit for the purpose of creating a completely uncensored Internet that lives in space. This is exactly the kind of plan that was discussed at the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin. Also, they want to put an amateur astronaut on the moon. But first, space Internet.

In a bid to go beyond the impossible, NASA has created a material that is blacker than black. Sort of. The material, comprised of something like a shag carpet of carbon nanotubes, boasts a ridiculously high light absorption rate of 99.5% in the visible and ultraviolet ranges. It’s not as good with far-infrared bands, dropping to a still respectable 98% or so. Plenty of other people have been working on similar materials, but NASA blows competitors out of the water.

Residents of the northeast U.S. coast got a bit of a surprise this past weekend when a freak snowstorm dumped a load of heavy, wet snow well in advance of November. The storm, dubbed Snowtober, apparently broke records across the coast, dropping 32 inches of snow in some areas and leaving over 3 million homes without power. Amazingly, this storm actually did more damage in some areas than Hurricane Irene did.

Now, a totally different view of the weather comes from NASA’s Terra satellite, which captured the above image on October 30th. Doesn’t seem so bad from up there.

Flying into space is, for the most part, far more gritty and uncomfortable than Desrumaux Celine’s slick animated short film “Countdown.” However, this animation does capture the incredible effort and tension in the days and moments before a space launch. No matter how impressive future space vehicles may be, I doubt they’ll ever look this good.

We’ve covered some pretty cool LEGO creations in the past, but I’m not sure that any of them can hold a candle to this behemoth, 43,000 piece, 8 foot long, 180 pound, Venator Class Star Destroyer built by Iomedes. Now, this isn’t the first LEGO Venator Star Destroyer ever built. In fact, this is a deliberate replica of a model build by Erik Varszegi years ago. The difference is that that original model, while made primarily of LEGOs, was also screwed and glued. This interpretation is held together by nothing but LEGOs. Whether or not Iomedes will be able to move the beast from its current resting place and where it may ultimately end up are anybody’s guess, but whatever the case, that is one amazing, amazing, amazing LEGO construction.

Ever wanted to know what a meteor sounds like? Well, wonder no more. The recent 2011 Perseid Meteor Shower was recorded by the U.S. Air Force Space Surveillance Radar in Texas. The sound the meteors made as they filled the sky could make for a good horror movie soundtrack, or maybe just something to play at a high volume and annoy a roommate.

The radar station that made the recording is located in Lake Kickapoo, Tx, and is part of the United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM). The purpose of the USSTRATCOM is to detect, track, catalog, and identify artificial objects orbiting Earth. If there were aliens approaching, these guys would be some of the first to know about it, but most of their time is spent watching active and inactive satellites, rocket bodies, or fragments of space debris. Listen to the sound of space with the recording after the jump.

Two teams working with researchers from the California Institute of Technology have discovered the largest mass of water yet observed. The gaseous, watery cloud was spotted around the quasar APM 08279+5255 some 30 billion trillion miles from Earth. And yes, there will be a lot more “-illions” used before the end of this post.

The water surrounding the quasar is in the form of vapor, but taken all together it is about 140 trillion times the amount of water in Earth’s oceans and is 100,000 times more massive than our sun. Because the quasar is so far away, its light has taken 12 billion years to reach Earth. This fantastic distance gives scientists a unique look at what the universe looked like when it was a mere 1.6 billion years old. (For reference, NASA estimates that the universe is about 13.7 billion years old.) Interestingly, water is not uncommon throughout the universe, though the amount of water around this quasar alone is estimated to be 4,000 times the water in the Milky Way.