In case you’ve been living under a rock or spending every conceivable moment on Facebook and nowhere else on the web here’s a list of five stories from the past week that are worth taking a look at.

1. YouTube Sending User-Submitted Science Experiments Into Space

How cool would it be to have Stephen Hawking and a group of his peers choose your science experiment to launch into outerspace. YouTube is holding a contest through their YouTube Space Lab which allows users to submit 2-minute experiment ideas. Two winners will watch live as their experiments are carried out aboard the International Space Station. This is social media meets social experimentation at it’s finest. read more

Crowd-based funding platform Kickstarter announced on Tuesday that more than 1 million people have donated $100 million to help fund various projects.

Kickstarter works by allows users to post projects that need funding while asking Kickstarter community members to help fund their project with special offers for their products.

In just under two-and-a-half years the $100 million milestone is great news for Kickstarter however the last five months have been the most impressive with 400,000 new “backers” for the website. Kickstarter considers anyone who puts down a credit card number or pledges money to be a backer.

With their milestone achievement Kickstarter also announced some interesting statistics, for example approximately 16% (166,823 people) have backed multiple projects while 23,601 users have backed five or more projects.  read more