Temperature readings from the Cassini orbiter support the view that warmth is welling up through cracks in the icy surface of Enceladus, one of Saturn's most intriguing moons.

The readings were taken by the 6.4-ton spacecraft's infrared spectrometer and high-resolution camera during an August flyby, and discussed today in a series of news releases and advisories. In an e-mailed alert, Cassini imaging team leader Carolyn Porco said a "phenomenal amount of heat is emerging" through the south polar fractures known as tiger stripes.

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The hot spots might not sound all that hot: The warmest areas registered surface temperatures of 120 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, or 190 Kelvin. But Porco said that's staggeringly higher than the coldest temperatures in the south polar terrain, which dip as low as 365 degrees below zero F (52 Kelvin). She called particular attention to a warm fissure known as Damascus Sulcus.

The readings indicate that the relatively warm material cools off quickly as you look farther away from Damascus' central trench. The heat also varies dramatically within just a few miles running along the trench. An associate on the imaging team, Cornell University's Paul Helfenstein, was quoted as saying that the warm section of Damascus Sulcus "is among the most structurally complex and tectonically dynamic of the tiger stripes."

So what's behind the heating? Porco said it's "undoubtedly the result of the tidal flexing of Enceladus brought about by its orbital resonance with Dione," another one of Saturn's more than 60 moons. "However, details of this heating process are still unclear and are being studied at this very moment," she added.

The temperature-coded picture of the Alexandria and Cairo fissures reveals another intriguing feature: an isolated warm spot toward upper left, just beyond the fissures' "split ends."

"The ends of the tiger stripes may be the places where the activity is just getting started, or is winding down, so the complex patterns of heat we see there may give us clues to the life cycle of tiger stripes," said John Spencer, a Cassini team member based at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo.

Previous observations from Cassini have confirmed that geysers of water ice are welling up from the tiger stripes. The latest views add to the evidence suggesting that water or slush is pushing up through the fissures. And if there's a hidden ocean of water beneath the surface ice, could there be life as well?

A definitive answer to that question will have to be left to follow-up space missions. The August flyby served as Cassini's last chance to observe the active south polar region in sunlight. NASA says it was also Cassini's last chance to do remote thermal sensing at Enceladus until 2015. "The geometry of the many flybys between now and 2015 will not allow Cassini to do thermal scans like theses, because the spacecraft will be too close to scan the surface and will not view the south pole," NASA said in today's advisory.

A particularly close flyby took place today, when Cassini came within 30 miles (48 kilometers) of Enceladus' surface. Images from that flyby should be coming down over the next few days.

Enceladus isn't the only Saturnian moon in Cassini's spotlight: Today the spacecraft's science team also released images of Tethys, another moon that was observed during an August flyby. Just last week, Rhea and its thin, oxygen-rich atmosphere were in the news. And over the past couple of days, Cassini has gotten some good looks at Hyperion, a moon that's 165 miles wide (266 kilometers wide) and shaped like a potato.

For much, much more about the recent revelations, check out NASA's Cassini mission webpage as well as the online home for Cassini's imaging team. And be sure to check out our "Best of Cassini" slideshow.

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Rumors and speculation are swirling on the Internet about the subject of a news conference to be carried live at 2 p.m. ET Thursday on NASA TV "to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life."

"Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe," NASA explains in its advisory. And that's about as much as the space agency is saying about the discovery right now. However, the advisory includes a list of the speakers for the briefing. That's what led to the online guessing game.

Among those speakers is Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a researcher at the U.S. Geological Survey who says she's concentrating on "arsenic biogeochemistry, cyanobacteria, novel uses for as yet undescribed metalloenzymes and of course, arsenic-based life!"

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Other speakers include NASA astrobiologist Pamela Conrad, who specializes in planetary habitability assessment; Steven Benner of the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, who studies the chemical foundations of biology; and Arizona State University's James Elser, who focuses on life in extreme environments. 

Blogger Jason Kottke put all those pieces together and speculated that Thursday's announcement would be about the discovery of life on Saturn's moon Titan. But that suggestion was shot down as false in a Twitter post from The Atlantic Monthly's senior editor and science blogger Alexis Madrigal.

Will the secret survive until Thursday? Back in August, NASA let information slip out an hour before the embargo lifted on a report in the journal Science about the discovery of two giant planets in constantly changing orbits. In that instance, NASA made its news release and other information about the discovery publicly available. Going even further back, to 1996, there's the famous case of the Mars meteorite study that leaked out in advance of publication in Science.

What do you think has been found? Feel free to weigh in with your comment, but please respect any information known to be under embargo.

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John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).

Not all of the estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil that gushed into the Gulf of Mexico simply vanished when the Deepwater Horizon offshore rig exploded and sank earlier this year. Growing evidence suggests that a good portion of it reached the ocean bottom, where it remains.

NPR science correspondent Richard Harris reported Monday about a ride he hitched to the ocean floor aboard the Alvin submersible craft with University of Georgia researcher Samantha Joye. The sea churned with seemingly healthy life as they descended. On the bottom, they struck oil.

"If you look at the camera, you can see the brown coloration," Joye told Harris. The "brown stuff," Harris said, covers coral fans "like pine trees along a dusty road." The oil also hangs over formations of frozen natural gas -- deposits that usually harbor the worms that bottom-dwelling crabs eat.

"The crabs don't look healthy," Joye said. "See all the dark spots and lesion-looking things? That's not normal."

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Harris points out that it's impossible to say from a single dive how much damage the oil spill did to the Gulf's ecosystem. That's a story that researchers such as Joye will be piecing together over the coming months and years. But the finding serves as another reminder that the oil spill is having a lasting impact on the Gulf of Mexico.

The discovery of oil on the seafloor also begins to account for the 23 percent of the oil that was not recovered directly, dispersed chemically or naturally, evaporated or dissolved, burned or skimmed, according to a report released Nov. 23 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A key finding of that report, which updates controversial findings from August, "is the increase in the estimate for dispersed oil, specifically from 8 percent to 16 percent," NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco told reporters.

Some scientists and environmentalists criticized the use of chemical dispersants as potentially harmful to critters in the open ocean such as tuna and turtles.

Lubchenco added that the revised accounting for where the oil went, and for the effectiveness of the dispersants, does not take away from the seriousness of the oil spill.

"'Dilute' and 'dispersed' do not mean benign," she said. "We have been and remain concerned about the long-term impact on the Gulf and the people who rely on it for their livelihoods and enjoyment, and we remain committed to holding BP and the other responsible parties accountable for damages."

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John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).

Virgin Galactic's billionaire founder, Richard Branson, says that "we're about 12 months away" from flying paying passengers to the edge of outer space. But there are huge hurdles between now and then -- such as actually putting the spaceship through rocket-powered tests.

Branson delivered his latest prediction for the start of Virgin Galactic's commercial service on NBC's TODAY show this morning. He repeated his intention to get on board for the first operational flight of the SpaceShipTwo rocket plane, along with other members of his family. That includes his daughter Holly, who was at Branson's side during the TODAY interview. (The TODAY spot also served as the TV unveiling of The Project, Branson's iPad-based magazine.)

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After the Bransons take flight, hundreds of people who have paid $200,000 each will go on trips to outer space.

"We have nearly 500 people signed up to go," Branson said, "and so a year to 15 months from now, we'll start bringing members of the public up."

Those passengers will take a rocket-powered roller-coaster ride to a height of more than 62 miles (100 kilometers), watch the curving Earth beneath the black sky of space, and experience several minutes of zero gravity before descending to a gliding runway landing.

SpaceShipTwo is designed to accommodate six passengers and two pilots. The first SpaceShipTwo craft, which has been christened VSS Enterprise, follows in the footsteps of SpaceShipOne, the first privately built plane to take humans beyond that 100-kilometer boundary of outer space. That feat won the $10 million Ansari X Prize for the project's backers, and earned SpaceShipOne a place in the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.

How realistic is the timetable?
Will the Enterprise really be ready for passengers a year from now? Many previous predictions for the start of commercial service have turned out to be over-optimistic, but it's interesting that the time frame for the predictions is shortening. Just a couple of months ago, Branson declared during a conference in Kuala Lumpur that commercial spaceflights were 18 months away.

Since then, SpaceShipTwo's builders at Scaled Composites have begun subjecting the craft to unpowered glide tests. The rocket plane has been carried to an altitude of around 50,000 feet on its carrier airplane, known as White Knight Two, then dropped into the air to test its aerodynamics. The third piloted glide test took place just a couple of weeks ago over California's Mojave Air and Space Port.

The next major step will be to light up SpaceShipTwo's hybrid rocket engine for powered tests. The Scaled Composites team, guided by aerospace guru Burt Rutan, will conduct a series of increasingly ambitious test flights -- leading up to the full takeoff-to-landing flight profile, which qualifies as honest-to-goodness spaceflight. If everything goes well, SpaceShipTwo could conceivably fire up and perhaps even cross into the space frontier before Rutan's retirement next April.

If SpaceShipOne's development timetable is any guide, that part of the job might be doable. It took less than a year for SpaceShipOne to go from its first glide test to its first spaceflight.

But SpaceShipTwo will need a lot more testing to make sure it's safe enough for passenger service, and any snags along the way could force Branson to revise his timetable. Virgin Galactic has repeatedly said that safety comes first -- and would you expect anything less?

Feel free to weigh in with your own thoughts about the dawn of the age of commercial spaceflight.

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What do you give a science geek? How about a digital spoon, or a fractal construction set? Pick out your favorite gewgaw with a scientific angle -- and help someone win a holiday grab bag of geeky goodies.

Last week we put out the call for gift suggestions suited for the science geeks on your list -- you know, those hard-to-buy-for types who already have the "Battlestar Galactica" boxed set or the latest, greatest calculator. The favorites from past years include the nuclear-powered spinthariscope toy, an xkcd T-shirt and a six-dimensional crystal sculpture.

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This year, we're serving up 14 suggestions gleaned from the comments to this year's initial posting about the Science Geek Gift contest, and from Facebook comments as well. The most important step takes place right now: We're asking you to vote for your favorite gift, using the ironically unscientific online survey gadget at right.

Here are the finalists for the 2010 Science Geek Gift award:

Unicorn Meat, from Pirate C: "I want a few boxes of that unicorn meat from that GeekSomething website. (It's not a real sale but it would be so cool if it was.)"

Fractals, from Jamesian: "I think Benoit Mandelbrot did not get enough attention for dying this year. Fractals are about as geeky, and marvelous, as anything. I don't know whether there is a Benoit-fractal-building kit or a Benoit T-shirt. But I think he embodies geekdom." Suggestions might include a Fractile magnetic tiling toy for kids, or fractal-making software such as the Fractal Science Kit or Fractal Explorer, or a Mandelbrot-themed gift from Zazzle.

Chemistry book, from Paula NiBride: "As the mother of two grown geeks, I would give both my sons a blast from a baby boomer's past: first editions of 'The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments,' originally copyrighted in 1960. It sold for $1.95, and it was later banned in many places because it taught children to create things such as mustard gas. A printed version of the book is difficult to find. (I kept checking it out of the school library, but my mother didn't allow chemical or biological experiments in her house.)"

Element shower curtain, from Daphnenews: "I am in love with this shower curtain featuring the Periodic Table of the Elements as well as the beryllium/erbium "Be|Er" T-shirt from Think Geek. Way cool!"

Lightsaber chopsticks, from The Barber of Civility: "How can any sushi-eating geek survive without a pair of lightsaber chopsticks?"

SpikerBox, from Tip184: "Neuroscience for everyone! Check out the SpikerBox, from Backyard Brains. For $99.98 assembled, or $49.99 in kit form, you get a device that allows you to listen in on the firing of neurons in invertebrates. It's built by neuroscientists to help everyone appreciate the function of the nervous system. The SpikerBox provides audio, but it can feed a computer or some popular mobile phones for a visual display of neural activity. I'll have mine next week -- Backyard Brains will sponsor a 'Make and Take' -- meet with the designers, build the box, and learn how to use it, all for less than the cost of the fully-assembled model."

'Time Flies Like a Cow,' from Sarcastoid: "A book about almost everything that brings a new outlook on favorites like quantum physics and time. It's also quite funny."

Periodic table toy blocks, from Cher630: "ABC blocks are so 1950s -- you gotta start your little genius early [with these building blocks]."

Mole Day T-shirt, from Mermaidmichelle: "What geek feels completely dressed without a Mole Day T-shirt? Celebrating Avogadro's number (6.02 x 10 to the 23rd power), Mole Day T-shirts are available online [via Moleday.org]. No, I don't have any affiliation with the website; I just think they're really cool."

3-D printer, from Aritchie: "Assuming they don't already have it, a subscription to Make Magazine is a great geeky gift. Give Wired to the wannabe geeks. A much more expensive option is the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic 3d printer. Short of a backyard nuclear power plant, it's the ultimate geek toy."

Endorphin necklace, from Acharabelle: "This would be an awesome Christmas gift for the geek girl in your life. Bought here [at MadeWithMolecules.com].

MythBuster bobbleheads, from Ariel Hansen: "What true geek wouldn't want a set of Adam and Jamie bobbleheads?" Ariel also suggests a cocktail chemistry set or space food.

Electronics kit, from William Wood: "My 6-year-old daughter loves the Elenco electronics kit and can do most of the projects on her own. I'd recommend getting the Student Guides to help explain the principles involved in each project." You'll find lots more suggestions from Wood and others on the Minnesota Planetarium Society's Facebook page.

Digital spoon scale, from Pat Bahn: This gift could be a hit with kitchen geeks as well as science geeks. Pat also suggests a magic-wand remote control, a cat's-eye camera, a brainwave-powered toy, a USB microscope or an astronomy poster.

Check out the links, run these products through your personal neuron networks, then click the vote for your favorite choice on the form above. If an alternative suggestion from a finalist strikes your fancy, feel free to vote for the finalist's listed suggestion in the ballot. The top vote-getter as of noon ET on Friday will receive a nice little stack of goodies, including these items:

• "Moon 3-D" and "Mars 3-D" by Jim Bell, complete with built-in 3-D glasses.
• Two extra sets of 3-D spectacles in case you want to look at the books with a friend.
• "Hubble: A Journey Through Space and Time," published this year to mark the Hubble Space Telescope's 20th birthday.
• An autographed copy of "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversy surrounding that little icy world.
• Two fuzzy tribbles, just to add a little "Star Trek" geekery to the mix.
• Plus any other swag we can dig up between now and Friday. Due to the logistics involved, the goodies can be sent only to a U.S. address.

May the best geek win!

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You don't need to buy me a present. All I ask is that you connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter.

To be 30 years younger is the wish of many an aging soul. For actor Jeff Bridges, movie magic makes the dream a reality in "Tron: Legacy," the sequel to the 1982 sci-fi blockbuster, in which the actor plays his younger self in a digital universe with his long-lost son.

The feat is the result of new technology that allowed filmmakers to record the actor's facial movements and superimpose them onto a digital model of Bridges' younger self.

"He's the first actor in cinematic history to play opposite a younger version of himself," the movie's visual-effects supervisor, Eric Barba, said in a Daily Mail profile of the 60-year-old actor.

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In the original movie, Bridges played video game hacker Kevin Flynn, who got sucked into a computer and was forced into playing gladiatorial games. In the $300 million sequel, which opens Dec. 17, Flynn's son enters the "Tron" virtual universe -- where he encounters a youthful version of his dad captured in the digital body of Clu 2, one of his creations. The Daily Mail explains the tech behind Clu2:

"Bridges' face was scanned in three dimensions and a 3D model produced, marked with 52 points on the cheeks, eyes, forehead and mouth –- everything that moves when we express an emotion. This digital version of the actor's face was then 'de-aged,' based on footage of the young Bridges from 1984's 'Against All Odds.'"

While acting as Clu 2, Bridges had his own face marked with dots in the same 52 places and wore a tiny head-mounted camera that tracked their motion. The facial expressions of the real Bridges were then mapped onto the digital Bridges.

Ohio State University computer scientist Rick Parent predicted the ability of movie technology to turn back time on an actor in a 2002 msnbc.com interview -- which was sparked by Andy Serkis' virtual performance as Gollum in the "Lord of the Rings" movies. 

The new "Tron" movie, he told me, shows that the technological goal of replacing real actors with virtual actors has been reached ... "to a degree."

"With a movie like 'Tron,' the whole premise of that lends itself to computer graphics because it's inside a computer, and therefore the audience has some tolerance for not exactly a real person," he said. But there's a difference between that kind of movie and using a virtual or synthetic replacement "for an actor in a real live scene," he added.

That type of technology still requires advances in motion control, as well as the ability to portray realistic effects such as light reflecting off skin and hair. Faster computers and bigger studio budgets are bringing the technology closer and closer, Parent said, "but there's still a ways to go."

If digital technology continues on its current course, Bridges said the day may come when he could appear in movies without actually acting. "I could still make films," he told the Daily Mail. "I can say, 'I'll lease you my image.'"

Maybe. But Parent said Bridges would still need to do the motion capture work -– the recording of facial and body movements for mapping onto his synthetic likeness. For better or worse, the technology is nowhere near completely replacing real live actors.

"With removing the actor completely, now you've got a whole different problem of building those body motions, those facial motions, the speech -– which is a whole other problem. Building that essentially from scratch … that's a whole other level of complexity, and we are not there at all," Parent said.

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John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).

The Andromeda Galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds -- the Milky Way's most prominent galactic neighbors –- took on their current shape because of a huge collision between two galaxies billions of years ago, according to new numerical simulations.

Our celestial neighborhood, known as the Local Group includes nearly 40 galaxies in all. But it's dominated by two giant spiral galaxies: Andromeda and our own Milky Way. Researchers have long thought that Andromeda -- which is 2.5 million light-years away in the constellation of the same name -- formed from a mash-up of two galaxies of smaller mass. To get at the details surrounding the galactic merger and its consequences, a team of astronomers led by the Paris Observatory's Francois Hammer modeled the galaxy's structural evolution.

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The team was able to reproduce most of the Andromeda Galaxy's peculiar properties, such as its large, thin disk and massive central bulge. That lent confidence to an analysis indicating that the two galaxies – one slightly more massive than our Milky Way and the other a third as massive –- started to merge about 9 billion years ago. The mash-up was complete about 3.5 billion years later.

The researchers noted in a news release that the collision must have been particularly violent to generate the rotation required to form the Andromeda Galaxy's giant disk.

The simulations also predict that an amount of mass equivalent to one-third that of the Milky Way could have been expelled during the interaction through the formation of gigantic tidal tails –- thin, elongated regions of stars and interstellar gas. The gas within one of these tails may have formed the Magellanic Clouds, which today are satellite galaxies attached to the Milky Way.

The implication is that the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds were actually space invaders from the galaxy next door, coming at us at a velocity of 620,000 mph (1 million kilometers per hour).

"If confirmed, these results may have important consequences in cosmology, by supporting both the hypothesis that most spiral galaxies have been formed by mergers, and the prediction that many dwarf galaxies may originate from tidal tails during such events," researchers said in the news release.

The team's results are being reported in two research papers, published by The Astrophysical Journal and Astrophysical Journal Letters.

More information on Andromeda and the Magellanic Clouds:

• Milky Way, Andromeda had similar origins
• Andromeda is a cannibal and heading our way
• Collision caused rings around Andromeda
• New Hubble photos show galaxy collisions
• Milky Way clouds are speeding through space
• Galactic neighbors are just passing through

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"Does M31 Result From an Ancient Major Merger?" is being published in the Dec. 10 issue of The Astrophysical Journal, with Hammer as well as Y.B. Yang, J.L. Wang, M. Puech, H. Flores and S. Fouquet listed as authors. Yang and Hammer are the authors of "Could the Magellanic Clouds Be Tidal Dwarves Expelled From a Past-Merger Event Occurring in Andromeda?" -- which was published Nov. 20 in Astrophysical Journal Letters. Yang and Wang represent the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the other researchers are from the Paris Observatory.

John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).

Airplane passengers tangled up in sluggish security lines this holiday weekend might wish they could take to the air themselves. Unfortunately, we've yet to evolve self-propelled flight, but scientists and engineers are busy taking lessons from nature to improve our barely century-old flight technology.

Take geckos, for example. Scientists at the University of California at Berkeley led by Ardian Jusufi have figured out how the lizards employ their tails to turn and right themselves as they fall from trees, helping them to always land on their feet. They even built a robotic model gecko that does the same trick. Check out this video of the falling gecko:

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The work with robo-geckos "suggests that inertial appendages could simplify control of a variety of robots and unmanned aerial vehicles, because this solution allows for simple body reorientation," reads the opening editorial in a special issue of the journal Bioinspiration and Biomimetics, devoted to flight technologies inspired by Mother Nature's fliers.

The journal also features research from the University of Maryland, showing that micro helicopters could be much simpler if they imitated the falling maple seed’s wing pitch for controlled hovering and forward flight.

Virginia Tech biologist Jake Socha reports on how the slithering of flying snakes allows them to glide from tree to tree – research that could one day lead to small and agile flying vehicles.

The challenges of building insect-sized robots with flapping wings similar to those on flies are explored by Harvard researchers Benjamin Finio and Robert Wood. While more work remains to be done, such robotic insects could one day serve as spies -– in effect, serving as the proverbial "fly on the wall."

The special edition also covers hovering hummingbirds, birds' intuitive exploitation of thermal updrafts, and seagulls' sense of flight environment, which allows them incredible angles of attack and increased control in crosswinds.

"Because biologists and engineers are typically trained quite differently, there is a gap between the understanding of natural flight of biologists and the engineer's expertise in designing vehicles that function well. In the middle, however, is a few pioneering engineers who are able to bridge both fields," David Lentink from Wageningen University and Andrew Biewener from Harvard University write in their editorial.

One of the best things about this special issue is that all the articles are freely accessible, which makes it easier to let your imagination take flight. 

More on nature-inspired technology:

• Space escape craft airbags designed like seed sacs
• Future robots will run like cockroaches
• Why bats are more efficient fliers than birds
• Flight of the robo-butterfly
• Spy plane maneuvers like a bird

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John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).

The ninth annual Science Geek Gift roundup features holiday presents for the science-minded types on your list. But we’ll need your help to make the smartest choice.

Sure, there are lots of other msnbc.com holiday gift guides you could turn to. You could check out Life Inc., the Holiday Tech Guide, the TODAY Holiday Guide, even a list of crazy kitchen gadgets. But would any of those guides tell you where to get a nuclear-powered toy, a T-shirt to do science in or a six-dimensional crystal sculpture?

I didn't think so.

The guiding principle behind the Science Geek Gift Guide is to seek out the most educational and enlightening gifts, the items that best capture the scientific zeitgeist, or gewgaws that are just plain gooey with geekiness.

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For example, let us consider brains. Braaaaains. If zombies were hot this Halloween, and "The Walking Dead" is the "most satisfying new series" of the current TV season, surely brains are just the thing for Christmas. You could decorate your desktop with the 4-inch-high Learning Resources' Brain Anatomy Model ($13 to $18), which gives you a cerebral cortex about the size of a Granny Smith apple (according to one not-completely-satisfied buyer). Or you could go with the pricier but life-sized Budget Brain With Arteries ($44). Or take your pick of brains at the Brain Mart.

This is also going to be the last holiday season for NASA's space shuttle fleet, so if there's a space geek on your holiday list, you'll want to beat the rush. Take a look through the shuttle memorabilia in the Kennedy Space Center's online space shop and on The Space Store website. And if you're looking for something that's handcrafted rather than mass-produced, check out the selection of NASA-themed craft items on the Etsy website.

Speaking of space, how about decking the halls with a solar system? I believe the holiday season is a time to be generous with our planet definition, particularly because I've written a book about "The Case for Pluto." That's why I favor planetary displays that don't stop at Neptune. The Authentic Models mobile is stylish, but perhaps too pricey ($85 to $165). Learning Resources' inflatable solar system ($28 to $50) and Geosafari's motorized desktop planetarium ($40) are more kid-friendly. And if you want to give your child the moon, Uncle Milton would be only too happy to oblige with Moon in My Room ($20 to $30).

But enough about my ideas ... I'd love to hear yours. Between now and Monday, leave your science-gift suggestions as comments below. Please don't suggest electronic gear such as audio/video/phones, or video games or game devices. Those sorts of things are handled by other folks here at msnbc.com. Board games are OK, as long as they're geeky. The more creative the gift idea, the better.

I'll put together a collection of the best suggestions and put them up to a vote next week. The biggest vote-getter as of Dec. 2 will win a grab bag of geekiness, including the following books:

• "Moon 3-D" and "Mars 3-D" by Jim Bell, complete with built-in 3-D glasses.
• "Hubble: A Journey Through Space and Time," published this year to mark the Hubble Space Telescope's 20th birthday.
• An autographed copy of "The Case for Pluto."

Due to the logistics and cost of mailing, the grab bag can be sent only to a U.S. address. I'll let you know about additional goodies next week. In the meantime, here are some websites and archived gift guides to get you inspired:

Previous Science Geek Gift Guides:

• The gift of science (2002)
• For the scientist who has everything (2002)
• Toy traditions go back to the future (2003)
• Your toys will be assimilated (2004)
• Gifts for space geeks (2004)
• Find your star (2005)
• The top gift for science geeks (2006)
• Season's readings for kids ... and for grown-ups (2007)
• The top geek gift of 2008
• Gifts from the sixth dimension (2009)

More sites for science gifts:

• Edmund Scientific: The classic science store 
• Educational Innovations (don't miss the Oil Spill Kit)
• Exploratorium Science Gift Guide 2010
• GeekDad Holiday Gift Guide 2010
• Home Science Tools gift guide
• Imagination Soup math and science gifts
• MakeZine Holiday Gift Guide
• Robot Snob Holiday Gift Guide 2010
• Sheldon Shirts: Big Bang Theory gifts
• ThinkGeek: Stuff for smart masses
• xkcd store

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You don't need to buy me a present. All I ask is that you connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter.

Did King David and Solomon actually exist? The long-running debate over the accuracy of biblical accounts is resurfacing on TV and in print.

David is one of the best-known figures in Jewish scriptures -- thanks to his stone-slinging victory over the giant Goliath, his divine selection as king of the Israelites, his purported authorship of the Book of Psalms, and of course his linkage to Christian and Muslim tradition. His son, Solomon, was described as the builder of the first Jewish Temple, famed for his wisdom and wealth but also for his failings.

The biblical stories raise a huge question for archaeologists: If these guys were so famous, why did they leave virtually no trace on the region's historical record? Some experts suggested that the real-life David and Solomon were, at best, minor figures in the ancient Middle East whose reputations grew in the centuries that followed. According to these experts, the Jerusalem of the 10th century B.C. was little more than a hill-country village, and nothing like the glittering city described in the Books of Chronicles.

This is why there's been such a buzz over a few pieces of evidence that have emerged in recent years:

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• An inscription on a stone monument found at Israel's Tel Dan archaeological site has been dated to the 9th century B.C. and appears to refer to a royal "House of David," although that interpretation has been disputed.
• Another inscription, found on a pottery sherd from the 10th century B.C., represents the earliest-known example of Hebrew writing. The inscription's similarity to biblical texts suggests that at least some parts of the Bible really do go back to David's day.
• The Israeli site where that shard was found, Khirbet Qeiyafa, appears to have been a fortified city taking in about six acres of area. Archaeologists found hundreds of bones from cattle, goats, sheep and fish -- but no pig bones, which led them to claim that this was a Judean rather than a Philistine settlement.
• Researchers have also found the remains of a huge copper-mining operation in Jordan that could have gone back to the 10th century B.C. and provided Solomon with his wealth.

Such trails of evidence are the focus of "Quest for King Solomon's Mines," premiering tonight on PBS public-TV stations; as well as "Kings of Controversy," National Geographic's cover story for the December issue.

The TV show, which is a joint production for National Geographic and the "Nova" documentary unit, focuses on the copper mining operation in Jordan. That excavation, led by anthropologist Thomas Levy of the University of California at San Diego and Jordanian archaeologist Mohammad Najjar, has turned up ancient copper-smelting equipment and a huge ancient cemetery -- as well as carbon-dating samples that suggest the site was at its peak during Solomon's reign. The evidence also suggests that the operation was disrupted at the end of the 10th century, just as described in the Bible.

Skeptics say that carbon dating isn't precise enough to confirm whether the copper-smelting site was controlled by the biblical Solomon or by a later local dynasty. And in an interview, Levy acknowledged that the evidence collected so far could not conclusively link Solomon to the lucrative copper trade.

"To be honest, we can't put our finger on it yet," he told me. "We have to do more digging."

But Levy said the copper mining site holds ample evidence that local authorities rather than the Egyptians or Assyrians were in control of the operation. What's more, the scale and complexity of the work that needed to be done -- including the maintenance of a huge force of slave laborers -- would be beyond the organizational capability of hill-country villagers.

"There were state-level societies living in southern Jordan at the time," he said.

When Levy began this work, he didn't set out to prove that David and Solomon actually existed. "I'm an anthropologist," he told me. "I'm not a biblical scholar. The way that I excavate is how prehistorians work. ... I didn't really have an ax to grind in that debate."

In light of the recent discoveries, however, Levy has come around to the view that "we need to re-examine the relationship between all the historical texts," including the Bible.

"It's an important resource that we shouldn't neglect," he said.

Levy and his colleagues detail their point of view in the September issue of the journal Antiquity. "We used the biblical archaeology experience in Jordan as an example of how you could do this anywhere in the world," he said. For example, he said, Icelandic sagas could be useful for untangling Scandinavian archaeology, or the Mahabharata could shed light on the ancient history of India. 

How much historical truth do you think ancient texts contain? Watch "Quest for King Solomon's Mines," read the National Geographic article, and feel free to let me know what you think in your comments below.

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Check out this UCSD news release and this project website for more information about Levy's efforts, including the campaign to have Khirbat en-Nahas and the ancient mining and metallurgy district declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Levy also plays a leading role in the Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and Archaeology. 

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

As hopes dim for 29 men trapped in a New Zealand coal mine, a U.S. robotics expert isn't surprised that an army bomb-disposal robot short-circuited today when it hit water just 1,800 feet into the Pike River mine.

''The environment is tough -- dark, wet, cold -- so even on a level floor that would be easy for a person to walk on, a 'regular' robot can quickly short out, get its sensor covered in muck, mechanically seize up, or the operator makes a mistake," Robin Murphy from Texas A&M University's computer science department told The Sydney Morning Herald.

News reports indicate that the robot has since been restarted and traveled another 1,640 feet, and a second bomb-disposal robot is also on the way into the mine. But experts are not optimistic about a successful rescue, given the fact that they have had no contact with the trapped men for four days.

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Murphy told the Herald that using the bomb-disposal robots is "worth a shot" in such rescue efforts, but noted that a U.S. robot specially adapted for coal-mine rescue work stands the best chance of navigating the New Zealand mine's harsh environment.

The robot, called the ANDROS Wolverine Robot and nicknamed V2, is propelled by explosion-proof motors that drive rubber tracks similar to those of a military tank, according to the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration.

The robot was used during the Sago Mine disaster in 2006. It's approximately 50 inches tall, weighs 1,200 pounds, and is equipped with navigation and surveillance cameras, lighting, atmospheric detectors, night vision capability, two-way voice communication and a manipulator arm.

In the future, next-generation sensor technology will help robots navigate through mines as they go on search-and-rescue missions.

In the Sago accident, "they sent people underground, not the robot, and the people walked right by dead and dying miners," Sean Dessureault, an associate professor in the Department of Mining and Geological Engineering at the University of Arizona, told TechNewsDaily. "You can have machines with amazing sensors on it looking for people."

Check out the stories below for more information about mining technology, disasters and rescues:

• Tech that will save the trapped Chilean miners
• Lessons for NASA from Chile rescue
• Utah mine collapse caused seismic waves
• World's largest truck goes robotic
• Mine safety agency OKs wireless tracker

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John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).

Crime scene investigators with little more to go on than a drop of blood have a new test that can help them determine the age of the person who was bleeding, according to a study in today's issue of Current Biology.

The test will work even on dried bloodstains -– perhaps even those revealed by a heat-vision camera. This could help detectives reopen cases that went cold years ago. And it's only a matter of time before screenwriters start working the technology into the plotlines for "Law and Order" or "C.S.I."

The technique, developed by scientists at Erasmus MC University Medical Center Rotterdam in the Netherlands, is based on the fact that certain DNA molecules in some blood cells decrease with age, TG Daily reports:

"The molecules used are residues of the immune system known as sjTREC molecules. These special DNA molecules are released in blood cells as a result of the adaptations that have to be made by newly formed specific immune cells -- T cells -- to recognize bacteria, viruses, parasites or possibly cancer cells. Their number decreases with age."

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The age test is accurate to within nine years. That should be sufficient to place unknown people –- criminals or missing persons, for example -– into generational categories spanning about 20 years.

Study co-author Manfred Kayser, a professor of forensic molecular biology, said in a news release that this is a harbinger for what's to come, as researchers uncover new methods designed to reconstruct the appearance of unknown persons from biological samples at crime scenes.

One test, for example, can determine eye color from DNA and has already been put to forensic use.

"Conventional DNA profiling applied in forensics can only identify persons already known to the investigating bodies, because the approach is completely comparative," he said. In cases where the DNA at the scene doesn't match any known suspect tested, "it is expected that appearance information estimated from evidence material will help in finding unknown persons."

More about the forensic frontier:

• New camera 'sees' invisible blood stains
• Cat fur puts criminals behind bars
• Crime labs cut to the bone
• Readers, pick your poison

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John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).

Doing highly publicized, invasive screening on a random basis will probably never catch a terrorist … but that’s not the point, experts say.

The nationwide phase-in of full-body airport scanners that work like Superman's X-ray vision, along with pat-downs that include checking your private parts, are the latest moves in an arms race between would-be attackers and the authorities. This time around, the escalation is a delayed response to the "underwear bomber" airliner attack that was attempted last Christmas -- but which failed because the bomber couldn't detonate his explosives-laden briefs.

Unfortunately, it's an arms race that has caught the traveling public in the crossfire. The pat-downs and body scans have sparked a wave of outrage that could break with full force on Wednesday, when fliers are being asked to "opt out" of the body scans and undergo the intrusive pat-downs instead. The result could be a massive jam-up of airport security on the year's busiest travel day.

Responding to the outcry, John Pistole, the head of the embattled Transportation Security Administration, told NBC's TODAY show that only "a very small percent" of air travelers have had pat-downs. Which raises a statistical question: If only a small percent of passengers are being checked, doesn't that mean there's a large chance that a terrorist would slip through?

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The TSA doesn't talk about the details of its security policies, which is arguably behind some of the agency's public-perception problems. But in a paper that was published in the online journal First Monday back in 2003, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said the typical airport puts 2 to 8 percent of its passengers through extra screening. Today, NBC News' Tom Costello quoted the TSA as saying that less than 3 percent of passengers are being selected for pat-downs:

Those figures might seem to imply that a terrorist would have more than a 90 percent chance of getting through security undetected, if he or she were using a method of attack that could not be detected through normal screening.

So why bother? Well, those calculations don't consider the deterrent effect of random screening.

Brian Michael Jenkins, a senior adviser at the RAND Corp. and a former member of the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security, noted that the rate of attempted terrorist hijackings and sabotage has declined dramatically since the 1970s, even through the post-9/11 era. "We can claim, No. 1, that the security measures do represent a deterrent," he told me. "And we can also claim that the security measures have increased the operational difficulties for our adversaries, to the point that their devices are increasingly unreliable." Underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as well as the shoe bomber Richard Reid have demonstrated that last point.

At the same time, Jenkins acknowledged that the escalation of the arms race was reaching the point at which bombs could conceivably be undetectable except through the most intrusive types of searches -- which is where we're heading today.

"We have to accept the possibility that sometimes our adversaries may succeed," Jenkins said. "That dynamic notion of security is hard for people to accept. We are in the risk business, not the prevention business."

How intrusive should searches be?
The past few days have brought a succession of horror stories ... about a breast-cancer patient who was forced to show her prosthetic breast, for example, or a traveler whose urine collection bag spilled during a search. But when properly done, the searches should be no more intrusive that "what one would get from an airport in Germany or France," Jenkins said.

Douglas R. Laird, a former security director for Northwest Airlines who now has his own Nevada-based consulting firm, echoed Jenkins' view that some of the controversy over "touching your junk" was unjustified: "If you're going to do a physical pat-down, then you should do it correctly, and the only way to do it correctly is to be invasive," he told me. "If you can't touch the privates, that's where the terrorists are going to put the stuff."

So what's next? Body-cavity searches?

Actually, Jenkins, Laird and many other experts on aviation security favor switching over to an entirely different approach. "We cannot have our security system rely exclusively on a search for objects," Jenkins said. "We are going to have to move toward a more discerning system that also measures risks according to the person."

Aviation authorities have already been experimenting with programs for registered travelers -- in which frequent fliers give up some information about themselves and, in return, are allowed to take a fast track through the airport security lines. "There won't be an absence of security for such people, but we'll move toward a pre-9/11 screening regime, or a somewhat lighter version," Jenkins said.

On the other side of the spectrum, some fliers might be singled out for more intensive screening -- based on the behavioral cues they're sending out (for example, sweating or looking around while being questioned) or on their flight history (for example, showing up on the records as having taken a trip to Yemen). "I'm not against profiling, but it has to be done using the right parameters," Laird said. "I'm against doing it for the wrong reasons. It shouldn't be based on race or ethnic origin."

Jenkins acknowledged that the idea of separating fliers into different categories would probably rub lots of passengers the wrong way ... just as some passengers are saying today that they're being rubbed in the wrong way.

"To me, the issue is not this fake controversy that's going on now," he said. "That is a distraction from a more fundamental question -- which is, given increasing passenger loads and increased security requirements, and a determined and creative foe, how do we best manage this risk and not cause the system to break down?"

Here's how risk-communication consultant David Ropeik, author of the book "How Risky Is It, Really?" (and a former msnbc.com contributor), put it today in a posting on the Psychology Today blog:

"Most risks involve tradeoffs of some sort. In this case it's a risk-risk tradeoff, between getting blown up on the one hand and feeling coerced into having your privacy invaded while being exposed to minute doses of radiation on the other. If Risk 1 -- getting blown up -- doesn't feel like a real possibility, you're less willing to live with Risk 2. If the negative qualities of Risk 2 -- radiation, coercion, invasion of privacy -- feel bigger, Risk 2 will matter more than Risk 1.

"It all adds up to a kind of a silly way to think about how to protect ourselves from the constant and real threat of bad guys and bombs on planes. But then, risk perception isn't just about thinking. It's about feeling too. And in this case, what feels right ... resisting a procedure that could keep us safer ... may actually make things worse."

I realize this perspective may be completely different from what you've been hearing over the past few days. I'd love to hear your perspective as well. Please feel free to sound off in the comment section below.

More about the airport security controversy:

• Tell the TSA 'Don't touch my junk' -- here's how
• TSA has met the enemy -- and they are us
• New U.S. security rules not common elsewhere
• TSA workers face verbal abuse from travelers
• More news from msnbc.com's Travel team

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For more about Jenkins' perspective on aviation security, check out this article on Scientific American's website.

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

A thin channel on Mars has a naturally occurring bridge over it, as seen in an image from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera, or HiRISE. The channel runs through a stretch of knobby terrain called Tartarus Colles.

The origin of the channel itself is unknown, Kelly Kolb from the HiRISE team said in an image advisory, though it was probably not formed by running water as there are no obvious source or deposit regions. "The channel is probably a collapse feature," she wrote.

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The bridge itself is "probably a remnant of the original surface," Kolb added. She noted that a depression extending northward from the channel, but not as deep as the majority of the channel, might be in the process of collapsing and enlarging the chasm.

When the image first came to light several years ago, the Planetary Society's Emily Lakdawalla speculated that the channel likely started as a covered lava tube, but that most of the roof has collapsed over time. The remnant left behind bridges the gap. In time, that remnant will most likely fall into the channel as well. That's what happens to natural bridges on Earth. 

Bridges also abound on the moon, and you can check them out in 3-D. These features were captured by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera -- and, like the bridge on Mars, were left behind when the surrounding material on the surface fell into a chasm.

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Tip o' the log to Universe Today's Nancy Atkinson.

John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).

Future cars may well mix and match alternative-fuel options … flexfuel and biofuel, diesel and hybrid, plug-in plus gas or all-battery. The exercise is aimed at changing America's energy economy to favor renewable resources and reduce the need for imported oil.

A prime example of the mix-and-match strategy comes in the form of Volkswagen's line of Touareg sport-utility vehicles. The German automaker is coming out with three flavors of the car: gas-powered, diesel-powered and gas-electric hybrid.

The Touareg hybrid's drivetrain is designed in such a way that the gasoline engine can be disengaged and turned off at speeds of up to 32 mph on a level road, or up to 75 mph rolling downhill. Regenerative braking recovers electric power during deceleration.

 The price isn't cheap: a little more than $60,500 for the hybrid's base price, compared with about $44,450 for the gas-powered version, and $47,950 for the diesel. The highway-fuel economy figure for the hybrid is 25 miles per gallon, which is a tad lower than the diesel version's 28 mpg and just a little higher than the gas-powered version's 23 mpg.

 Although the Touareg's fuel economy may not match that of a Toyota Prius, VW's triple choice shows that even in the luxury SUV class, there's a place for energy options.

 

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Kai Philipp, a VW engineer who focuses on hybrid drive technology, explained that the hybrid version was being offered as an alternative for potential buyers who put a premium on fuel efficiency but just don't want a diesel, for whatever reason.

"For both groups of customers, we wanted to provide an option," Philipp said.

Philipp said VW "took a good look at diesel-hybrid" and its potential to maximize fuel savings, but ultimately decided combining the technologies would just be too expensive. "Hybrid technology doesn't come for free," he said.

The company's next goal is to come out with a Jetta hybrid. Down the line, there may be all-electric VWs as well, although Philipp acknowledges that the move toward electric driving may not be coming "as fast as some customers expect it to."

Electrification as a national goal
Philipp said customer preferences aren't the only reason behind the move toward hybrids and electric vehicles. "The national goal is going to regeneration, and going to electrification," he said.

President Barack Obama has set a goal of putting 1 million plug-in hybrid electric vehicles on America's roads by 2015, and Philipp noted that other countries have voiced similar aspirations. Last month, for example, Chinese officials were quoted as saying they want their nation's output of electric vehicles to reach 1 million cars by 2020.

Urban centers may well enact their own limitations on carbon emissions: London, for example, is already phasing in a "Low Emission Zone" that would charge drivers an extra fee of their cars exceed emission standards.

The move toward electrification will require dramatic upgrades in the infrastructure for electric vehicles: The $230 million public-private EV Project aims to put nearly 15,000 charging stations in six states (Arizona, California, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas and Washington) plus the District of Columbia over the coming year.

But that's just a start: A Pike Research report on EV infrastructure predicted that almost 1 million charging points would be set up in the United States by 2015. When you add in the energy requirements for at-home charging, automotive electrification may require a remake of the nation's electricity distribution network — with an increased emphasis on smart-grid technologies.

Cars to watch
There's a chicken-and-egg problem surrounding electric vehicles: Automakers are reluctant to go too far down the road to electrification due to concerns about the lack of infrastructure, and the companies that can provide that infrastructure — utilities, for example — are still trying to assess where the market is headed.

Will the coming crop of plug-in vehicles finally crack open the market? That's a multibillion-dollar question to be answered in the next two or three years. For Kurt Lutterman, a Seattle-area resident who put down a $99 reservation fee for an all-electric Nissan Leaf, the answer is definitely "yes."

Lutterman gave the Leaf a thumbs-up after his first test drive, which he took as part of Nissan's nationwide "Drive Electric Tour."

"We want to be very supportive of electric cars," he said. "We would have bought one years ago if it were available."

Over the past few weeks, we've driven through some real-world tests with the Nissan Leaf as well as the Chevy Volt, an electric car that's powered by batteries plus a gasoline-fueled engine. But there are other players in the hybrid/electric vehicle market, as a recent visit to the Seattle Auto Show demonstrated. Virtually every major automaker is offering (or promising) a hybrid vehicle.

Here are just a few of the cars to watch for:

• Toyota Prius PHV, a plug-in hybrid that's due to make its debut in the 2012 model year. The advance word is that the car will have about 13 miles of electric-only range, and that the batteries can be recharged in three hours on 110-volt power, and 90 minutes on a 220-volt circuit. Rumored price is around $27,550.
• Ford Focus Electric, which is expected to go on sale in late 2011. The all-electric car's driving range is projected at 100 miles. A full charge would take more than 12 hours at 110 volts, or six to eight hours at 240 volts. The price has not been disclosed, but it's expected to be competitive with the $32,780 pre-incentive cost of the Nissan Leaf.
• Mitsubishi I-MiEV, which is coming to the U.S. market in the 2011-2012 time frame. The four-seater is expected to be priced at around $30,000. No specific range has been announced, but the charging times are said to be 16 hours at 110 volts, or 8 hours at 220 volts. That would suggest a range similar to the Nissan Leaf's 100 miles.
• Coda EV, which is said to be coming to America in 2011. The battery-powered sedan is expected to sell for just less than $45,000. Its all-electric range is said to be around 100 miles. Last month the venture got a P.R. boost when Enterprise Rent-A-Car said it would introduce up to 100 Codas to car rental locations next year. But it also suffered a setback with this month's resignation of CEO Kevin Czinger.

To learn more about energy innovations that are transforming the automotive industry, check in regularly with Dan Carney's MotorHead columns and "The Driver's Seat" by Paul Eisenstein, as well as the rest of msnbc.com's automotive coverage and the "Green Machines" special report in the Environment section.

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

This posting, which is part of Cosmic Log's "Electric Road Trip" series, originally appeared in msnbc.com's Future of Energy section on Nov. 19, 2010, under the headline "Automakers Mix and Match Energy Alternatives."

Two of the latest craters encountered by NASA’s Opportunity rover during its nearly seven-year trek on Mars pay tribute to the sailing ships of old -- 41 years old, to be precise. Intrepid Crater and Yankee Clipper Crater are named after the lunar lander and command module for Apollo 12, which landed on the moon on today's date in 1969.

Opportunity drove past Yankee Clipper Crater on Nov. 4, and stopped at Intrepid Crater five days later. It's been a tradition for the craters encountered by the rover to be named after historic ships of exploration, such as Endeavour (Pacific explorer James Cook's vessel) and Endurance (polar explorer Ernest Shackleton's ship).

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James Rice, a member of the rover science team from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, picked up on that tradition -- and added in the topical twist from Apollo 12, the second mission to land on the moon.

"The Apollo missions were so inspiring when I was young, I remember all the dates," he explained in a news release from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which serves as the Mars rovers' mission control. "When we were approaching these craters, I realized we were getting close to the Nov. 19 anniversary for Apollo 12."

Rice sent pictures of the craters to Apollo 12's Alan Bean and Dick Gordon, and this week the rover team received this reply:

"I  just talked with Dick Gordon about the wonderful honor you have bestowed upon our Apollo 12 spacecraft," Bean wrote. "Forty-one years ago today, we were approaching the moon in Yankee Clipper with Intrepid in tow. We were excited to have the opportunity to perform some important exploration of a place in the universe other than planet Earth where humans had not gone before. We were anxious to give it our best effort. You and your team have that same opportunity. Give it your best effort."

The aptly named Opportunity is just past the halfway point in a years-long trek from Victoria Crater to the 13-mile-wide Endeavour Crater, which would be the biggest impact site ever explored on Mars. Intrepid and Yankee Clipper are puny in comparison, measuring about 66 feet (20 meters) and 33 feet (10 meters) wide, respectively. Intrepid is about the same size as Eagle Crater, the place into which Opportunity rolled during its "hole-in-one" landing on Mars, almost seven years ago. (In case you're wondering, Eagle Crater was named after the Apollo 11 lunar module. Remember? "The Eagle has landed.")

Since Opportunity's landing in January 2004, the rover has rolled 15.53 miles (25 kilometers), which serves as a milestone in the metric system.

"Importantly, it's not how far the rovers have gone, but how much exploration and science discovery they have accomplished on behalf of all humankind," JPL's John Callas, Mars exploration project manager, said in the news release. Over the past six years, Opportunity and its twin Spirit have turned up ample evidence that Mars was once much warmer and wetter than it was today, and could conceivably have harbored life.

Speaking of Spirit, that rover is still mute on the other side of the Red Planet, stuck in a sandy mire with two gimpy wheels. NASA's team tried to put the solar-powered robot in the best position available to weather the dim Martian winter -- but there's a chance that the big chill killed the rover's electronics.

No communication has been received from the rover since March, but NASA is continuing efforts to contact the rover using a paging technique known as "sweep and beep." If Spirit wakes up, NASA is ready to put it to work on a full agenda of stationary science. If Spirit has given up the ghost, as some scientists suspect, NASA can still take solace in the fact that it's gotten six years of exploration from a machine that was projected to last just 90 days on Mars.

Update for 6:55 p.m. ET Nov. 19: In a follow-up phone call, Callas said it's too early to give up on Spirit. The weather models for Mars indicated that last month was the earliest time for hearing from the rover, but as the Martian summer approaches, the sun is getting brighter every day where Spirit is sitting. "The peak of the solar insolation is around mid-March," he said. The sweep-and-beep strategy is aimed at getting the rover's attention just in case it wakes up but has lost track of time. So does this mean the rover team is keeping hope alive? "That's right," Callas said.

Correction for 12:15 p.m. ET Nov. 20: I originally referred to Dick Gordon as a moonwalker, but as Brant and Jeff pointed out in their comments below, Gordon never walked on the moon. He was orbiting above as the command module pilot while Bean and Pete Conrad went down to the surface. Gordon was slated to have his moonwalk as the commander of Apollo 18, but that mission was canceled due to budget cuts. Sorry about the error, and thanks for keeping me honest. (I've also corrected the projected lifetime for the rovers.)

More about Apollo 12 ... and Mars:

• Apollo 12's Alan Bean: The right-brained astronaut
• Timeline: NASA's Glory Days on the Final Frontier
• See a Martian milestone in 3-D
• Still more from the Mars rover website
• Still more about the Apollo 12 mission

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Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Does Bristol Palin, the daughter of that politically powerful hockey mom from Alaska, have the best moves on "Dancing with the Stars"? Some critics say she's definitely improved as the season has progressed. But the judges consistently give her among the lowest marks -- meaning it's the people, the voters, who have kept her around for Monday night's finale.

And these voters, according to theories swirling on the Internet, appear to be politically motivated. Having Palin tear up the dance floor on national TV is considered a boost for the conservative Tea Party movement. To keep the votes coming in, the party is using social media effectively to rally the base behind the young Palin mom.

The campaign apparently includes exploitation of a loophole in ABC's e-mail voting feature. The loophole is explained as a technicality in the system that allows voters to register an infinite number of email addresses and vote, vote, vote. The e-mail addresses are never validated, such as what happens when you sign up for a Facebook or PayPal account.

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"Lord have mercy, I voted for 3 hours online! I got 300 in," one Palin fan wrote in a comment on the HillBuzz blog, which is leading the charge on Bristol Palin's behalf.

ABC tries to safeguard against such abuse. "Computers must allow cookies, have Javascript enabled and have the latest version of Flash installed," the company explains on its Web site. The implication is that cookies are used to determine whether the computer user has already voted. An integrity assessment is conducted against each online vote, including security measures that are meant to catch and remove fraudulent voting.

The New York Daily News quoted the show's executive producer, Conrad Green, as saying that multiple e-mailed votes would be wiped out if they came from the same IP address -- though he declined to spell out exactly how the system matches up e-mails with those numerical Internet routing codes.  

Even all of those safeguards may not be enough. The pro-Palin groundswell is reportedly leading ABC to consider changing its voting system to give more weight to the judges' assessment -- and less weight to the voice of the people. 

Open voting process
Thad Hall is an associate professor of computer science at the University of Utah and a research affiliate with the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project. He told me that the voting systems on reality-TV shows such as "Dancing With the Stars" and "American Idol" are designed to gauge popular support for the various contestants, and "they do that by creating a very open process." In other words, this isn't supposed to be a "one person, one vote" election.

Stopping voter fraud is likely a low priority, Hall said. They could put in controls to more stictly authenticate voters such as requiring viewers to register through their cable box and limit households to a set number of votes. But at the end of the day, "the show is interested in one thing: they are interested in ratings," he said.

Measures to more strictly police the voting would only be put in place if the controversy about the fairness of the system drove viewers away. As long as the controversy boosts ratings, it's "a good thing."

Elections that matter
As important as Bristol Palin may be for keeping the Tea Party in the public eye, the fairness of the voting process on "Dancing With the Stars" pales in comparison with an election that actually has political consequences. Consider, for example, the race for the White House in 2012, in which Bristol's mom could be a contender.

In a real-world online election, steps can be taken to cut down on voter fraud, Hall said. The key is an authentication process that separates the act of registering to vote from the act of voting. Estonia, for example, has successfully held nationwide online voting, under conditions that independent security audits have shown to be effective and reliable. Estonia's rigorous authentication process makes it difficult for an individual to vote more than once.

Hall said nationwide online voting is unlikely to ever take hold in the U.S., but efforts are under way to make it an option for difficult-to-reach populations such as overseas military personnel. While there's "always a possibility of people doing bad things" with such a system, he said, election officials "can make it really hard to do bad things."

What do you think? Will online voting ever be secure and fair enough to reliably choose winners of reality shows and the White House? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

More on the Palins and reality-TV voting:

• Palin girls' hateful words common on Facebook
• Upset by Bristol's 'Dancing' luck, man shoots TV
• Palin's success raises tempers, boosts ratings
• Bristol says 'haters' are trying to 'destroy' her
• Poll: Sarah Palin most polarizing of 2012 crowd

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John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on http://twitter.com/b0yle. 

Lindsy Stewart Cieslewicz, a stay-at-home mom and dance educator in Utah, has reason to be doubly thankful this Thanksgiving season: She just found out that she's a descendant of the Pilgrims as well as the Native Americans who attended the first Thanksgiving in 1621.

"It's been exciting for my little family to be involved in this," the 34-year-old told me. "It takes us back not only to historical figures, but also to the Wampanoag tribe. We don't look Indian by any means, but to feel that, you get a sense of how varied and rich your culture can be without your even knowing."

The detective work was done by GeneTree, a company that blends genetic testing with genealogical research to firm up the links to ancestors. GeneTree draws upon more than 110,000 sets of pedigrees and DNA records that have been collected over the past decade for the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation.

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Cieslewicz vaguely remembered contributing her information (as well as a DNA sample) to the foundation's database about a decade ago, just as I did, but she didn't give it much thought until GeneTree decided to sift through the database looking for Thanksgiving-themed connections. Cieslewicz was one of 297 people in the database whose ancestry could be traced to William Bradford, who was governor of Plymouth Colony for the first Thanksgiving. But out of all those people, Cieslewicz was the only one who was also related to the Wampanoag.

The pedigree laid out by GeneTree shows that Bradford was one of Cieslewicz's 10th-great-grandfathers, while her ninth-great-grandfather on a different line was a member of the Wampanoag tribe living during the era when Chief Massasoit worked out an alliance with the English. The exact identity of Cieslewicz's Indian forefather isn't known.

"There had been a family rumor passed down by my grandfather that we were related to Native Americans," Cieslewicz said. "My grandfather, who was an author and historian himself, never believed it. So that was a funny thing that we all laughed about, because my grandfather passed away exactly a year ago -- and he would have been really interested to hear that the family rumor was actually true."

How rare is it?
Statistical studies have shown that virtually everyone in the Western world is related to Charlemagne, who ruled over the Holy Roman Empire 1,200 years ago. But geneticist Scott Woodward, who's president of Utah-based GeneTree, says Cieslewicz's case is more unusual.

"Almost everybody can trace their lineages through one of these royal-type lines when we get 700 or 800 years into the past," he told me. "It's a little rare when we go back just 300 years, and it's more rare when you have to go through two of those lines."

Believe it or not, tracing Native American ancestry can be tougher than figuring out whether or not your ancestors came over on the Mayflower. "We know it's fairly rare, and one of the reasons we know that is because Native American records and the connections into that population are very rare," Woodward said. Even if the connection was known, it was often hidden -- in part because of the stigma that was once associated with being of "mixed blood."

Nowadays, however, having a little controversy in your family tree can add to the appeal of doing genealogy. For example, researchers recently determined that the descendants of the defendants in the Salem Witch Trials include actress Sarah Jessica Parker ... as well as Scott Woodward himself.

"When I found out that I really am connected to one of those accused witches, it made the story come alive for me," Woodward said. "And when we notified Lindsy about her connection, her words were, 'This is the most exciting e-mail that I have ever received.'"

A new perspective
Cieslewicz confirmed Woodward's account. She said the rest of her family -- including her husband and their five children -- were excited as well, especially with Thanksgiving just around the corner.

"We always go and collect books for the different holidays with my children," she said. "We sat down to read one the other day, and it was the children's story about Thanksgiving. I said, 'Wait, look, we're related to this side, and we're related to that side.' What an amazing thing to be able to sit down with my children and talk to them about the Thanksgiving story, and be able to say, 'One of these Pilgrims is your great-grandfather, and a Native American was also.'"

Cieslewicz said her brother mused that if the first Thanksgiving didn't turn out the way it did, neither of them might have existed. "It sure makes me glad that they decided to have dinner together instead of killing each other," she quoted him as saying.

Holland said his newfound genetic relatives in Cameroon's North West Province were planning a full schedule of celebrations and tours over the next three weeks. One of the places they'll be staying is the palace of the Mankon tribe's chief, His Royal Highness Fo Angwafo III.

"I don't know how we're going to take all this," Holland told me just before the family's departure for Africa. "My mother said, 'I think I'm going to run.'"

He said his family tree includes links to three prominent families in Cameroon, and representatives from all three clans were due to greet the visitors from America. Another high-ranking figure was due to show up as well, to render an apology of sorts. The way Holland explained it, Africans from the area around Bamendjinda in Cameroon played a part in the slave trade of the 18th century. Holland said the present-day chief in Bamendjinda, Jean-Marie Tanefo, wanted to tell Holland about the circumstances that brought his ancestors to America in chains durng the 1770s.

"It's hard to put your finger on it," Holland said. "You have a family you're related to, and then you have a family that wants to make up for something they did wrong. I'm a little nervous, a little excited -- all rolled into one."

If I hear anything from Holland while he's on his trip, I'll be sure to pass it along.

More about genealogy:

• Genealogists discover royal roots for all
• DNA takes on a family's mysteries
• Prince William's fiancee has impressive Yankee lineage
• Special report on genetic genealogy

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

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From magic wands to invisibility cloaks and personal memory receptacles, the magical devices in the fantastical world of Harry Potter are slowly turning into real-life technologies.

As avid readers of J.K. Rowling's books settle in to watch "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1" at movie theaters across the country, some will have to reach back into the recesses of their minds to recall what exactly happened when Harry and his sidekicks were unleashed from the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The task, no doubt, would be easier if they could just open up a bottle of recollections or gaze into a Pensieve, the magical stone bowl that provides access to memories.

It turns out that a similar technology is not too far off: Researchers at IBM Research Labs, for example, are hard at work on software that "that uses the images, sounds, and text recorded on everyday mobile devices to help people recall names, faces, conversations and other important information," according to a 2008 press release.

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Yaakov Navon, the lead researcher on the project with the company's Haifa Research Lab in Israel, likened it to "having a personal assistant for your memory." For example, let's say you meet someone at a conference and take a picture of them with your GPS-equipped cell phone, and then take another picture of their business card. The memory assistant would associate the two pieces of data because they were taken in the same place and time. Those images would be stored for easy recall prior to a future meeting with the contact.

In a tangentially related development, scientists reported in Nature last month on experiments that show how individuals control specific neurons in their brains. Subjects, for example, were able to bring a photo of a preferred celebrity into focus on a computer screen. Could such understanding of  mind control one day better give us access to our memories -- or read those of others?

Magic wands? Got 'em
The magic wand, another staple of the Harry Potter series, is also within our reach. Technolog's Helen A.S. Popkin brought our attention to the Kymera wand buttonless remote control this August -- which, as its name suggests, lets users flip through the channels or gain power over another remote controlled device with a flick of the wrist instead of those pesky buttons.

Other modern-day wands include high-tech video game controllers such as the Nintendo Wii MotionPlus and the PlayStation Move.

Flying cars and brooms
In "Chamber of Secrets," Harry and Ron Weasley borrow an enchanted car for a quick flight to Hogwarts -- but flying cars look arguably cooler in the non-fiction world. The Terrafugia, a car under development by the Massachusetts-based company, is nearly street legal, and Moller International is hard at work on its vertical takeoff and landing cars, including the M400 Skycar.

Inventors might not be working specifically on the flying brooms that play such a big role in Harry Potter's Quidditch matches, but New Zealand's Glenn Martin has been working on a turbofan-driven jetpack that might be the closest thing in the real world. The latest news is that Martin Aircraft Co. Ltd. needs at least another $10 million to bring the jetpack to market. 

Invisibility? Of course!
What would a roundup of Harry Potter technology be without mention of that oh-so-cool invisibility cloak? This August, researchers at Tufts and Boston universities announced success in creating an invisibility cloak made from silk. For now, the metamaterial, as it is called, works in the terahertz range -- a region of the electromagnetic spectrum between radio and infrared light -- but the researchers say it could work in the visible range too.

For more information on Harry Potter technology wending its way into our everyday lives, check out this slideshow on Discovery News -- as well as the articles linked below.

More about Harry Potter technology

• 'Harry Potter' technology could be coming your way
• Harry Potter and the genetics lesson
• Invisibility cloak closer than ever to reality
• Here's how to make an invisibility cloak

More about 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows'

• Can 'Potter' stars maintain career magic?
• To 3-D or not to 3-D? 'Potter' people disagree
• Rowling says 'Hallows' is her favorite Potter film
• Meet the characters of 'Harry Potter'

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John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on http://twitter.com/b0yle.