So, we hear that Planet Earth is home to four billion phone lines. Now it can claim to house over one billion installed PCs -- what do those neighboring planets have on that, huh? According to research firm Gartner, the number of "installed PCs worldwide has surpassed 1 billion units," and it estimates that said figure is growing at around 12-percent annually. Should this trend continue, we'll be reporting on 2 billion sometime during 2014. It should be noted that this figure accounts for computers in use rather than units shipped, and while the current ratio remains slanted towards mature markets, Gartner expects emerging markets to (expectedly) account for a larger share as we climb to 2 billion. Unsurprisingly, the firm also suggests that around 180 million PCs will be replaced this year, with around 35 million of those hitting landfills "with little or no regard for their toxic content." Kind of puts a damper on things, wouldn't you say?

[Via Reuters, image courtesy of Wikimedia]

With all these batteries exploding vehicles running around, we aren't too surprised that researchers at the University of Arizona are getting fired up about stopping global warming, but dropping $2.5 trillion on such a project might just cool the whole idea down a bit. Nevertheless, astronomer Roger Angel thinks that launching a "constellation made of trillions of small, free-flying spacecraft parts a million miles above Earth" could form a long, cylindrical cloud to reflect "about 10 percent" of the sun's rays away from our planet. The lightweight flyers hanging around in the L-1 orbit would be crafted from "transparent film pierced with small holes," utilizing "MEMS" technology mirrors as tiny sails that hold them in line while drifting about. The idea gets even zanier when referring to shooting the "20 million ton structure" into space; it's been suggested that "20 electromagnetic launchers" running on hydroelectricity could launch a stack of flyers "every five minutes for ten years" to complete the project, and while he feels that even the massive sunshade is no substitute for "developing renewable energy," that's still a huge chunk of coin to drop on something so, um, outlandish.

[Via Primidi]