More research at the University of Notre Dame has led to a first working prototype of magnetic processing technology. Processors using magnetic domains rather than semiconductors will have numerous advantages: they’ll be faster; denser; less power-hungry; more adaptable; and impervious to the hard radiation of space environments.

Data from the Cassini probe has led the team working with the images to conclude that Saturn’s inner moons are not ice-balls as previously thought, but accretions of rubble and rocky debris held together by their own mass.

MSNBC’s Cosmic Log has an article about space elevator company Liftport testing their climber on a baloon floated tether.

I like to watch Bay Area real estate prices rise with the kind of sick, nervous anticipation I used to reserve for Gilligan’s Island. The plot’s utterly unrealistic, the characters are impossibly stupid, and it’s going to get get much worse before the whole structure comes crashing down in a melee of palm fronds, feather boas and histrionic recriminations. Zillow is the perfect tool for keeping up with the price of property. I can enter any address I want to get a surprisingly accurate market price for the property.

Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Foundation, has some less than complementary things to say about NASA’s new budget, and its continued codependence on the space shuttle.