Picture an optical telescope, a really good optical telescope, and you have to think big. The most powerful consumer-grade models often stand taller than their operators. The grand, institutionally owned ones are hidden beneath giant domes above the clouds on mountaintops. The world's best, the Hubble Space Telescope, is as big as a school bus and sits out in orbit, while its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, will be roughly the size of a Boeing 737.

What, then, could a telescope smaller than a trash can possibly do? Quite a lot, as it turns out -- if you can get it outside of the Earth's pesky atmosphere, that is. Planetary Resources plans to take rocks floating aimlessly in the solar system and turn them into valuable commodities. But, before we get there, the company hopes to revolutionize space exploration in the same way that 3D printing and microfunding have revolutionized manufacturing. Planetary Resources co-founder and co-chairman Peter Diamandis chatted with us, telling us why the company made the unusual decision to put its first orbital optical telescope up for grabs on Kickstarter.

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After seven months of cooperative tapping, Peter Molyneux's Curiosity experiment is finally over: the cube is open. As Molyneux's studio, 22Cans, teased the game's last layer over Twitter, players descended upon it, chipping away the last million cubelets in a matter of minutes. "We have a winner," the game's creator wrote on the social network. "They should get a message now." 22Cans is currently trying to validate the player who tapped away the final block. After the final block disappeared, so did the cube, presumably to be opened privately by the winner. So, what was inside the box? We may never know -- but if you just happened to win, fill us in, would you?

Update: The winner asked Molyneux to share the winner video with the community. Their prize? Godhood, according to 22Cans. The winner will be featured as a deity in the company's next game, Goddess, and will able to "decide on the rules that the game is played by." The winner will get a share of the revenue generated by the title. Check out the full video for yourself after the break.

Filed under: Gaming, Mobile

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