Cosmologists and physicists have been arguing about (and chasing after) it for years now, but NASA are pretty convinced that they’ve seen dark matter ‘in the wild’. Using Chandra and a group of other telescopes, they observed the collision of two clusters of galaxies, touted as the most energetic cosmic event beyond the Big Bang that we know of. The hot gases in the collision were slowed down by the collision, but other components appeared to not be affected – which is taken to mean that the mysterious dark stuff is there, just as the theories predict.

Please note that I am reporting this with the utmost skepticism – but a small Irish technology firm has announced that it has accidentally discovered a method of “generating clean, free and constant energy from the interaction of magnetic fields”, and has sent out an open invitation to scientists to come forward and test the equipment concerned. If it turns out to be true, then a huge number of our problems as a race have vanished overnight. Personally, I think it’s about as likely as me becoming world leader by universal decree, but there you go.

NASA has announced the winners of the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) demonstration program, a competition aimed at stimulating commercial space transport services that it can use to help build the ISS. The two winners, SpaceX and RocketPlane Kistler, will receive $278million and $207million respectively to develop their reusable rockets and ‘ballistic capsules’ before the demonstration deadline of 2010.

The debate over Pluto’s status as a planet (or otherwise) is still not finished, with the final vote set to occur at the IAU convention in Prague on Thursday August 24th. Thanks to one generous astronomer, you can read the legal-ese of the proposal that would demote Pluto online. Or you could always debate something a little more important, like whose turn it is to mow the lawn.

After George Bush announced to the world back in 2004 that the US would aim to send a manned mission to Mars, the underfunded yet persistant Russian space agency (the Lavochkin Association) began dusting off old plans of their own, with a view to reclaiming the crown of remote robotic planetary exploration. Despite the fact that many of the Association’s staff are paid little more than retail cashiers, they are confident that their unfortunately-named probe ‘Phobos-Grunt’ will fulfil its mission to land on one of the moons of Mars and bring soil samples back to Earth.