VANCOUVER—The more popular Wikipedia seemed to get, the more Monica Freudenreich was told by her professors at the University of British Columbia to stay as far away from it as possible.
The ever-growing online encyclopedia’s strategy of letting anyone with an Internet connection edit and revise, the argument usually goes, makes it unreliable, unacademic—and off limits.
But then Freudenreich, 21, was given a surprising assignment by her Latin American literature professor: instead of writing term papers, the class would be writing Wikipedia articles.

WILMINGTON, Del.—John Roehsler took his wedding vows, exchanged rings with his bride—and turned to the webcam.
“Whoever’s watching . . . we’re sorry that you couldn’t be here,” the groom said. “But you are here, so that’s great. The 21st century rocks.”
Roehsler and his bride, the former Neperthey Velasco, used a webcast to allow friends and family from roughly 10 states and a dozen countries to view their wedding ceremony live. It’s a service now offered for weddings and funerals to allow far-flung family and friends to take part.

MEYRIN, Switzerland—The most powerful atom-smasher ever built could make some bizarre discoveries, such as invisible matter or extra dimensions in space, after it is switched on in August.
But some critics fear the Large Hadron Collider could exceed physicists’ wildest conjectures: Will it spawn a black hole that could swallow Earth? Or spit out particles that could turn the planet into a hot dead clump?

TORONTO—Ontario’s Liberal government will build Canada’s first new nuclear reactors in 15 years alongside the existing Darlington nuclear plant east of Toronto in hopes of generating additional electricity by July, 2018, the province’s energy minister announced yesterday.
Three nuclear companies—Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., American giant Westinghouse, and Areva NP of France—have been asked to submit bids by October, Gerry Phillips told a news conference.
A final decision on which company—and which technology—will be made by the end of the year, he added.

WASHINGTON—European astronomers have found a trio of “super-Earths” closely circling a star that astronomers once figured had nothing orbiting it, demonstrating that planets keep popping up in unexpected places.
Yesterday’s announcement is the first time three planets close to Earth’s size were found orbiting a single star, said Swiss astronomer Didier Queloz.
He was part of the Swiss-French team using the European Southern Observatory’s La Silla Observatory in the desert in Chile.
The mass of the smallest of these super-Earths is about four times the size of Earth.

TORONTO—Ontario’s Liberal government will build Canada’s first new nuclear reactors in 15 years alongside the existing Darlington nuclear plant east of Toronto in hopes of generating additional electricity by July, 2018, the province’s energy minister announced yesterday.
Three nuclear companies—Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., American giant Westinghouse, and Areva NP of France—have been asked to submit bids by October, Gerry Phillips told a news conference.
A final decision on which company—and which technology—will be made by the end of the year, he added.

HOUSTON—A few final tasks related to the international space station’s newest lab awaited space shuttle Discovery astronauts today.
The $1-billion lab’s robotic arm was going to be fully extended by astronauts. The 10-metre robotic arm was first moved on Saturday, but only very slightly.
“They will do a series of motions. It will practically extend all the way out,” said flight director Annette Hasbrook.
At the end of the test, the arm will be folded up and stored—out of the way of the lab’s windows.

WINNIPEG—Are you dynamic? Team-oriented? Willing to defy gravity in outer space?
The Canadian Space Agency has launched a rare cross-Canada campaign to hire as many as six new astronauts, with an International Space Station trip set for at least one recruit.
“We’re basically looking for someone who has excelled in whatever they’ve chosen to do,” said Steve MacLean, the space agency’s chief astronaut.

TOKYO—Engineers in Japan have created a noodle bowl so small it only can be seen through a microscope.
Mechanical engineering professor Masayuki Nakao and his students at the University of Tokyo created the tiny bowl in a project aimed at developing nanotube-processing technology.
Nakao says it has a diameter of just one-1,000th of a millimetre.
The Japanese-style ramen bowl was carved out of microscopic nanotubes.
Nanotubes are tube-shaped pieces of carbon, measuring about one-10,000th of the thickness of a human hair.

PHOENIX—Sharp new images received Saturday from the Phoenix lander largely convinced scientists that the spacecraft’s thrusters had uncovered a large patch of ice just below the Martian surface.
That bodes well for the mission’s main goal of digging for ice that can be tested for evidence of organic compounds that are the chemical building blocks of life.
Team members had said Friday that photos showing the ground beneath the lander suggested the vehicle was resting on splotches of ice.