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Alt-week takes a look at the best science and alternative tech stories from the last seven days.

When constructing a feature whose very reason for being is to explore the most far out aspects of our universe, it's fair to say that we're leaning towards the red pill. But that doesn't mean there's nothing here for those of the blue persuasion. We think you'll love the rainbow sun, for example -- until you realize, technically that's very real too. This is alt-week.

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Swiss researchers have created a metallic cube that can "walk" across a surface. Staff at the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich crammed a series of inertia sensors and constantly-spinning rotors (called reaction wheels) into a 15-centimeter cube, dubbed Cubli, that enable the contraption to move around on its own. When one or more of the weighted rotors abruptly stops spinning, the machine sort of jumps on its edge -- all thanks to centrifugal force. Once upended, the rotors act like a gyroscope to maintain Cubli's position. Halt another wheel and things get really crazy: the device defies gravity, tipping up and balancing on one of its eight corners. By repeating these motions in succession, the gizmo uses a series of controlled falls to slowly hop across a surface. In terms of practical applications, the Swiss researchers said this tech could aid in remote planetary exploration, possibly giving the Curiosity rover and its ilk some company. All noble goals, but for now the lab says that Cubli is just a high-tech toy. And that? That's perfectly fine.

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Scientists from York University in Toronto are using alcohol as a method for sending text messages. How, exactly? By converting sprays of isopropyl alcohol into binary code, using off-the-shelf components. The researchers used an Arduino Uno board, an Adafruit LCD, a desk fan and a household spray bottle to transmit a short message across a tabletop, via molecular diffusion. In the experiment, the fan pushed bursts of alcoholic mist across a table, where a sensor at the other end measured the alcohol content of the air. From there, the vapor was reassembled into non-binary characters and the phrase was successfully reconstructed. Naturally, the transmitted words were "O Canada."

The university says that this chemical form of data transmission could easily be shrunk to the microscopic level and find use in the medical field for targeted drug delivery. Conversely, the system could expand in size and offer communication through sewer systems or be used in search and rescue situations; basically, anywhere that traditional radio signals just won't work.

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When thinking about powerful cameras, most gadget nuts would be happy with a Lumia 1020 or a 5D Mark III, but neither of those can match what's just left the planet. The European Space Agency has launched the Gaia satellite with a mission to photograph and map the galaxy surrounding us with an unprecedented level of detail and accuracy. Armed with a one billion pixel camera, the lens can pinpoint a far-away star with an error margin of seven micro-arcseconds, or measure a person's thumbnail on the moon -- from Earth. The satellite will now travel 1.5 million kilometers away from our home, a which point it'll begin a five year mission to, you know, explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations and boldly photograph where no one has photographed before.

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Exoplanets are seemingly easy to find these days, but their moons have been all too elusive -- at least, until now. Researchers at the University of Notre Dame claim to have spotted what may be the first exomoon. By looking for gravitational effects on starlight, they've found a relatively small, planet-like object orbiting a much larger object that isn't a regular star. Don't be quick to reach any conclusions, however. The two astral bodies are too far away from anything else in space to have an obvious explanation; while we may be looking at an orbitless planet and its moon, both about 1,800 light years away, the pair could also represent a failed star and an ordinary planet. Even if the objects remain mysteries, though, the techniques used in their discovery should help astronomers locating exomoons in the future.

[Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech]

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Head over to Indiegogo today and you'll find a particularly wacky (and risky) project bidding for your investment. It's a device that goes by the name of No More Woof, which admittedly sounds like it does horrible things to dogs' vocal cords, but which actually promises something very different. It's a canine-sized headset that consists of EEG recorders connected to a small Raspberry Pi computer and a loudspeaker, supposedly allowing "ionic current flows" in a dog's brain to be translated into human speech. A $65 model is said to distinguish between three different thoughts, including tiredness and curiosity, while more expensive options will have more sensors and more powerful software.

The only hold-up (and it's a big one) is that this project is being offered for crowdfunding while still at the concept stage, and all investment will be kept even if the funding target isn't met. According to a disclaimer on the Indiegogo page:

"Yes, we HAVE achieved some results, but we are very far from a mass-producable product. That said, we believe that within a few years the technologies we are working with will revolutionize our relation to pets and animals."

Indeed, there's no evidence that ST, the Scandinavian research lab behind No More Woof and last year's equally strange iRock rocking chair, has managed to come up with anything like a working prototype -- or at least there's no sign of one in the long-but-vacant video embedded below. Nevertheless, if dog barks are eventually mistranslated by this sort of "novelty science" (a word ST actually uses to describe its own research), who'll be any the wiser?

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The holidays are upon us and the New Year is rapidly approaching, so it's probably time to ditch the cryptic text messages and get on the horn for a proper chat with friends and family. The folks at Numbridge are offering some incentive for those who choose nice over naughty by giving away a svelte new iPad mini with Retina display to one lucky reader. Numbridge is the iPhone and Android app that's "redefining proximity" by making all international calls into local ones and freeing you from WiFi and broadband dependence. The rates are said to be some of the lowest on offer, with access to 50 countries around the globe, smart caller ID and even local callback numbers. So while you're listening to that distant relative tell the "longest story ever," you could also be enjoying a session of Plants vs. Zombies 2 on one of Apple's latest slates -- just don't forget to turn the sound off! All you need to do is head to the Rafflecopter widget below and enter for your chance to win.

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There's something oddly romantic about taking a piece of archaic technology and giving it new life as a work of 21st century art. Take the Royal Empress typewriter you see above. This particular model was built in 1961 and eventually landed in the hands of Amanda Gelb as graduation gift. She and her fellow classmates, Jinyi Fu and Quingyuan Chen, looked at the hunk of aging metal and saw potential instead of an obsolete writing tool. For their installation at the ITP Winter Show, they wired up each of the keys to an Arduino for tracking what a user types, then paired that with a tiny projector that displays the letters on a sheet of paper wrapped around the platen.

The "face" part of the equation comes from the webcam mounted to the top of the typewriter case. It uses brightness to map a silhouette of the person sitting in front of it and fills only the darkened areas with letters, creating an ASCII portrait in real time. The code also automatically loops the letters you type, so even if you press only a single key the picture will appear. Of course, you could also type out a love letter or a quick blog post and the whole thing will be wrapped inside the confines of your outline. When you're done, you can press the re-labeled print key and a laser printer spits out your portrait.

While there are already plenty of apps and sites out there that will automatically create ASCII versions of images, there's something alluring about sitting in front of gorgeous piece of hardware and creating it live. Plus, there are few things in this world as satisfying as pressing down the stiff keys of an old typewriter, hearing the titular onomatopoeia and seeing the letter appear before you. Especially when you know you're creating a work of art, even if you're a terrible writer.

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Alt-week takes a look at the best science and alternative tech stories from the last seven days.

There are big questions, and then there are big questions. Pastrami or ham? That's a big question. Solid universe or hologram? That's a big question. New research has made some headway toward one of those. Spoiler alert, it's not the one about sandwich-meat. This is alt-week.

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Oliver Schmidt's team at the Institute for Integrative Nanosciences in Germany has created a controllable spermbot. Not a word we'd ever think we'd be writing either. After adding cone-shaped nanotubes to bull sperm, Schmidt's team observed that when one swam into the wider end of the tube, it would become trapped, but with the flagella free, enabling it to carry on swimming. Next, the team added magnetic fields into (or rather, near) the mix, and was able to control the direction in which the spermbots moved. It's not a stretch to imagine obvious applications in fertility, but it could go beyond that. Schmidt believes that sperm cells could be used for "robotic micro-systems," as they are harmless to the body, and come with their own power source. Micro-robots were always destined to be a part of our future, but we're betting no one had their money on this.

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Holidays are coming... and with all those chocolate liqueurs being passed around, your memory of those special days can sometimes get, well, a little hazy (liqueur responsibly, please). What you really need is a fancy-pants camera to keep your family moments safe, preserved in photo form. If you're living in the UK, then our friends at Ebuyer.com have sent us a Samsung NX2000 to give to one of you lucky readers. All you gotta do is head past the break, and enter via our ever-so-simple widget. So, put that mini-chocolate kahlúa down and get right on it. And please, read the rules.

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It's always a good idea to keep track of your finances, but since the holidays tend to open up the cash flow floodgates, having some extra help couldn't hurt. As luck would have it, the personal finance gurus over at Mint are celebrating the app's arrival on Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8 by giving away two Dell Venue 8 Pro tablets to a couple of Engadget readers. This 8-inch slate is fully compatible with Mint's free app, making it a great way to monitor account activity, track spending and even get suggestions on how to save more of those hard-earned dollars. So before all that cyber spending blows a hole in your wallet, consider quantifying those expenses with Mint and head on down to the Rafflecopter widget below for your chance to win.

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Samsung's EMC Laboratory is right in the middle of its huge "Digital City" compound in Suwon, Korea. This site goes through roughly 4,000 products a year, with different rooms tasked with testing different sections of Samsung Electronics' admittedly broad range. What you see above is a 75 by 59 feet chamber set up for the electromagnetic interference test, with three antennas pointed at a yet-to-be-released TV (not shown in the photo for obvious reasons). All of this is simply to gauge precisely how much interference the product outputs, to ensure it doesn't exceed certain levels. Do read on if you want more detail -- we've also got a video tour waiting for you.

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