It’s confirmed: Space is bubbling with the potential for life. The Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared—on board the Herschel Space Observatory —has sent a high resolution analysis of the Orion Nebula ’s chemistry. It has scientists very excited. More

BBC’s LIFE, or as we’ve called it, Planet Earth Part II, is finally coming to Discovery starting March 21st. In this clip, the crew teases some of the amazing technique that allowed the documentary to capture so many new “firsts.” If you haven’t seen our earlier coverage of LIFE, the clips you’ll find here are definitely worth your time, as is this behind the scenes of a few of LIFE’s most epic moments. It may be old news to our friends overseas, but for those of us in America, it’s definitely time to set the DVR.

What, it wouldn’t be a camera convention without Nikon (and everyone else, for that matter) showing off a basket of new point-and-shoots. We knew what the company was bringing — selections from its “Style” and “Life” series , as well as the P100 superzoom we covered earlier this week — and now we’ve gotten our hands on the L22, S4000, L110, and S8000. There isn’t much to say, frankly — a collection of pocket shooters of various feature sets and various price ranges to cater to various demographics and psychographics. Still, we know you need to get that “fix” when it comes to pictures of gadgets, so let’s get on with it, shall we?

Life , the BBC’s latest totally unbelievable nature documentary, is airing in 10 episodes between now and Christmas. Not only is the footage as incredible as you’d expect; the studio sent some production notes our way explaining how scenes were shot. “Filming the bouncing toad was very challenging; the remote mountain plateau is one mile high and 26 square miles in area, whilst the toad is one inch long and very elusive. The tarantulas which prey on them are also very hard to find. To give the crew the best chance of finding and filming them, the expert on these creatures came on the shoot.

Supermassive blackholes, heat death , and entropy could be wonderful dinner conversation as you toast to the end of the universe . Not sure when it’ll happen, but based on recent universal entropy re-calculations, it’ll be sooner than we expected. Entropy is the big topic in the whole “end of the universe” reasearch. Basically there’s speculation about whether there is such a thing as a maximum level of entropy, a point at which all molecular motion (and therefor life) will stop. The concept is thought of as “heat death” and these researchers want to know when it might happen

This is the sum of Microsoft researcher Gordon Bell ’s life since 2001, when he started digitally capturing and logging every possible moment of his life. Fortunately, as data has gotten richer—high definition video, for instance, storage has gotten cheaper. Which makes this kind of life archive not just possible, but really, inevitable. What would your chart look like? [ Wired via BBG ]

Hey, we started a Gizmodo Flickr pool , to make it easier for you to send us photos you think could make for an interesting post. All you have to do is be registered on Flickr, go here , join our group, and start hitting “send to group” on your individual photos you want to add to the pool. What kind of photos would we like to see in our Flickr pool , you may ask? • Gadget/product shots. Obviously, a gadget blog is nothing without its gadgets

Kevin Rose has some Tesla Model S imagery up on his Flickr account, including the first unshrouded pictures of the car, along with a rather wild interior shot. The all-electric sedan is styled beautifully — if rather predictably — but things start to get weird on the inside. In what looks to be a concept car mockup of the interior, there appears to be a large touchscreen taking the place of the entire center console, wrapped irregularly by dashboard padding. The instruments panel also appears to be a screen, though it could just be a mockup at this stage. Concept cars typically have rather strange and unlikely interiors compared to their tame street-legal counterparts, but even so, if this indeed isn’t some sort of cruel Photoshop trickery, we’d say Tesla really outdid itself here.

Yeah, we’d seen those fine mechanical workings from the back , but Ulysse Nardin has just taken the wraps of its entire Chairman handset, which they bill as a “hybrid smart phone” — and actually seem to mean it. Ulysse Nardin surprisingly hasn’t skimped on specs here, with a 2.8-inch multitouch screen, finger print reader for phone unlock, 5 megapixel camera, WiFi and the inclusion of an email app and a browser. There’s also that fancy kinetic rotor system for passive charging of the phone, but no word on how much battery life that will actually get you. Ulysse Nardin is currently showing off the phone in Rose Gold, Rose Gold & Blue, Rose Gold & Steel, Stealth Black and Steel & Blue trims, so there should be plenty of options to set you apart from your other billionaire friends. The device is currently on display at BASELWORLD; no word on price, but if you have to ask… [Thanks, Stefan I.] Gallery: Ulysse Nardin Chairman “hybrid smart phone” unveiled Filed under: Cellphones Ulysse Nardin Chairman “hybrid smart phone” unveiled originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Mar 2009 10:42:00 EST

Lots of us have been using the iPhone 3.0 beta full-time. Now we’re rolling back, because it is decidedly NOT ready. Here’s how to downgrade back to 2.2.1 if you are in a similar predicament. Now, we’re not saying we’re surprised, or angry, or anything. It’s beta software, and beta software is by definition not ready for everyday use. But in the pursuit of the latest and greatest thing, we all have learned that a little bit of inconsistency or crashiness is often a fair price to pay for being on the cutting edge