All sorts of suggestions have been made to explain the mysterious dips in biodiversity that have occured on Earth every 62 million years. And here is the latest one – our solar system’s motion through the galactic disc, an up-and-down bobbing course, could be exposing it to fluctuations in the amount of cosmic rays it receives.

Seems there’s a growing trend of taking your cell phone with you when you go to meet your maker. I think this is more a comment on the intimacy some people feel for their cell phone than on burial practices per se. I can actually empathize. I’ve noticed that I’m much less comfortable allowing someone else to use my laptop, which is pretty heavily personalized, then my desktop.

Paypal has launched Paypal Mobile and some people think it’s the Next Thing. I’m a bit skeptical — seems a lot more complicated to text someone money than to hand them a fiver.

USS Spacenews has new graphics up that show more details about NASA’s proposed CEV lunar spacecraft.

Astrobio.net has a look at the guys working to create lunar modules for the eventual moon missions.