Coming soon to a refugee camp near you, the latest idea in quick-to-build housing involves concrete and chemical reactions, two of my very favorite things. Just think of it as the ruggedized version of glass-blowing and you’ll be on the right track.

When the boffins can’t provide a consensus on the definition of ‘planet’, it would appear. The International Astronomical Union has been arguing over this particular issue for a few years now, and it seems that so far all they can manage is to agree that they all disagree. [NewScientistSpace]

Researchers from NASA and the SETI project have been using simulations to determine which of the myriad stars in the universe might hold life, and to imagine what that life might be like. The results are reminiscent of many of the critters that have inhabited space operas for years. [KurzweilAI.net]

Astonomers at the UK’s Cambridge Institute of Astronomy have come up with the first ‘measured properties’ for dark matter. It turns out the stuff is much warmer and faster-moving than was previously thought, and that our own Galaxy is much more massive than earlier data suggested. [BBC]

Space Politics has one of the first looks at the proposed NASA FY07 budget. Exploration systems is up. Bumps in science, aeronautics gets a nip and a tuck.