Space.com is reporting a potentially dangerous dust storm which right now, covers the entire southern hemisphere of Mars. It is reducing direct sunlight to Mars’ surface by nearly 99 percent, and the Rovers are solar-powered. Even though they are battery-powered, being without sunlight for a long time could drain the batteries and then they would not be able to recharge at all.

"This thing has been breaking records the past few days. The sun is 100 times fainter than normal. We’re hoping for a big break in the storm soon, but that’s just a hope."

Okay, so, it’s really a toilet, but as a member of the mail gender, I find that thing utterly terrifying. Consider the tube sticking up between the strap-down feet restraints. Scary. But on a more serious note, it looks like the Russians have something going on here, because NASA was willing to lay out $19 million. They’ll be used, ironically, only in the American section of the International Space Station, while the Russians will continue to use whatever it is they’re currently using. And, oh, by the way, this contraption includes turning urine into potable water, and while I’m familiar with the concept from Dune, that doesn’t mean I’m comfortable with it.

Someday, we’ll scare the bejeebers out of alien species with our own odd-looking, jumping robotic oddities. I understand that the fundamental the need to create such strange little beasties is to enable travel across landscapes that would be inhospitable for the typical legged and wheeled robots, but I think the secondary creepiness factor should be an important consideration.

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt MD, will house the agency’s new Beyond Einstein Program which seeks to investigate strange cosmic phenomena, such as dark energy, black holes, and microwave background radiation.

The Beyond Einstein Program proposes five new missions of two major observatories and three smaller probes. Technology development is under way on the proposed observatories. The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna would orbit the sun and measure gravitational waves, while the Constellation-X observatory would peer at matter falling into supermassive black holes.

Dan Havel and Dean Ruck have done something amazing, they have created the first black hole on earth! Well, not really, but it sure looks awesome. They managed to convert an otherwise normal house into a work of art, basically a “funnel-like vortex running between the two that ends in a small hole in an adjacent courtyard.” It really does look like either some futuristic space weapon was tested on a house, a black hole, or a really cool art project. It just happened to be the latter.

It’s a cool effect particularly for those who always wanted to experience a black hole without the whole ‘being crushed to a quantum singularity’ end result.