NASA spent $420 million to send the Phoenix Lander to Mars last year. Festooned with state-of-the-art detection equipment, the rover's task was to scour the red surface in search of elusive Martian ice. And today, the NASA mission finally did uncover some extraterrestrial frost, and it did it with its simplest tool, a shovel.

As a cargo ship empties or takes on load, its ballast tanks fill or release water in order to balance the boat properly. Ballast is generally needed to increase the draft of a vessel (how deeply it sits in the water) so that its propellers are adequately submerged. The consequence of taking on these huge quantities of water is that they are most frequently released in environments thousands of miles from where they originated, when a ship reaches its destination.

Has the law of gravity suddenly taken a vacation? Au contraire. Is the trickster in this video using sleight of hand? Nope. Can you use this trick to pick up women at cocktail parties? Possibly. Let’s analyze just what's going on here.

Day 1,464 of the Mars rovers' 90-day mission to Mars (for those of you keeping track), and Steve Squires, the head of science operations for the Spirit and Opportunity rovers is getting us up to date on their latest findings. Most important: serendipity in action. The Spirit rover's right front wheel has broken, so engineers turn the rover around, drive it in reverse, and drag the wheel behind the rover. As it slogs across the planet, it carves a trench. And my, what a trench it carves.

Running the hot water for five minutes burns as much energy as leaving a 60W light bulb on for 14 hours, according to Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute.

NASA hopes to someday use a robot like Bill Stone's DepthX to explore Europa, a frozen moon of Jupiter and one of the most probably places in our solar system to support life.