This week in science: It's the sun, stupid

A festive sun in green wavelengths. (Image courtesy of SoHo NASA/JPL/ESO) Science marches on! Will this be the decade of solar power? Only time will tell:

'When other solar companies saw Solyndra get $530 million from the government, investors pulled back in that industry,' he said. 'So instead of encouraging solar development, the Obama administration hurt it.'

Actually, the statement wasn't just odd. It was a flat out lie. In reality, the U.S. solar industry installed record amounts of solar in 2011 while bringing in nearly $2 billion in venture capital. And moving into 2012, that trend continued. In the second quarter of this year, U.S. solar installations jumped 116 percent over the same period in 2011, partly driven by large installations supported by the very loan guarantee program that Romney claimed was killing solar.

• Da Nile ain't just a river on Titan!
• A poisonous primate? If so, these particular cuties have reason for revenge on its larger cousin, man:

  They are also used in Asian traditional medicines. Ms. Nekaris posits that the extraction of medicines from slow lorises can be extremely painful. For instance, skewers are inserted into slow lorises' anuses and run through their bodies to obtain their tears. The still-living animal is then roasted over a fire and the tears that stream from their eyes are collected.

• What if we all took the blue pill?
• Superatural mumbo jumbo, angels and demons, hobbits and dragons, they're all good wholesome fun at the movies. But believing that stuff is real can have terrible consequences for innocent people:

  Police arrived at the Bartel home and found the boy shirtless and shivering, with a large pentagram carved on his back. Officers also found a box cutter at the house, which is believed to have been used in the attack, police said.