Saturn

Forget Mars! NASA has discovered signs of video gaming on a moon of Saturn. Recently released images from the Cassini mission show features on the icy moon of Thethys that look suspiciously like a famous '80s arcade creation.

The Pac-Man image was discovered in thermal data provided by Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer. You can read up on the nifty high-energy electrons bombardment theory for the shape over at NASA. The findings were published in the journal Icarus.… Read more

While the Mars rover explores the Red Planet, a group of engineers submitted plans for a new out-of-this-world space mission: landing a boat on the Saturn moon Titan, which NASA, the European Space Agency, and Italian space agency ASI explored in depth over the last decade as part of the Cassini-Huygens mission.

Building on the successful 2005 landing of the Huygens probe on Titan, the new mission would aim to explore and collect data from the weird liquid methane makeup of the lakes found on the Saturn moon's surface. To explore these uncharted methane flows, engineers at the aerospace company Sener -- working in collaboration with Spain's Centro de Astrobiologia -- submitted a proposal last week to the European Planetary Science Congress for a Talise (Titan Lake In-situ Sampling Propelled Explorer) boat probe. … Read more

The fissures seen here have lead NASA scientists to believe there may be "ocean-like" liquid salt water on Enceladus, one of the dozens of moons that circle Saturn. The fissures spray icy particles, water vapor, and organic compounds--erupting from beneath the surface and into the atmosphere, NASA said today. The cosmic dust analyzer aboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft found particles low in salt far away from the moon, but samples from closer to Enceladus' surface found that large grains rich with sodium and potassium dominate the plumes, suggesting a composition beneath the surface that's similar to Earth'… Read more

NEW YORK--If you want to see what outer space looks like, there may be no better way to do so than to have Carter Emmart take you on a ride there.

As part of my Road Trip 2010 project, I got a chance to go on that journey, and I can say with high confidence that there are probably few people on Earth better equipped for such a voyage than Emmart.

In his role as director of visualization at the American Museum of Natural History's Rose Center for Earth and Space, Emmart is the leading force behind the programming … Read more

When Sega announced recently plans to bring Dreamcast titles, including Crazy Taxi and Sonic Adventure, to Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, the vast majority of Sega fans were excited. After all, the Dreamcast is one of the better consoles ever released, and many of its titles were outstanding.

But it looks like the company isn't done yet. Speaking in a recent interview, Sega's Yosuke Okunari, who is in charge of bringing Dreamcast games to the new consoles, said that porting Saturn games is a real possibility.

"We're of course thinking about ports of Saturn games," … Read more

General Motors today announced its recalling 1.5 million 2007-2009 model cars, trucks, and crossovers to disable a heated washer fluid system module that could pose a fire risk. Because the feature will be disabled, GM will make a voluntary payment of $100 to the owner or lessee of each vehicle.

There are no known injuries or crashes related to the condition, according to a GM news release.

"While our analysis shows the number of incidents is very small compared with the number of vehicles on the road, we want our customers to have complete peace of mind," … Read more

Natali Del Conte replaces Justin Yu on today's show, as he's out looking for pickles. The name of today's show refers to the news that William Shatner of "Star Trek" fame will star in CBS' new sitcom "S**t My Dad Says," based on the same expletive-filled Twitter phenomenon. We think Jerry Stiller would make a better cranky old man. (By the way, CBS, you own a equally funny podcast/show/Twitter called The 404, available on @the404.)

Jeff has a beef with the number of 3D movie theaters out there right now. Apparently, the success of "Avatar" has led a swarm of 3D films to be released, and many theaters aren't equipped to handle the 3D projections just yet.

Next, we get to Sony building a universal game controller (a la the Logitech Harmony One, but for videogame consoles). We're not exactly sure how they plan on doing this, or whether it's useful in any way. We do, however, reminisce a bit about our favorite game controllers. The original Sega Saturn controller is Wilson's favorite for 2D games. "It melts in your hands," he says.

Finally, we get to some voice mails, and the racist polar bear on Xbox Live has really taken off as a meme now. We're encouraging our fans to send in their renditions of this meme. The best ones we will showcase on the show. Maybe a few Photoshoped images? Maybe a few voice mails as the racist polar bear? Send them in to the404 [at] cnet [dot] com or call us at 1-866-404-CNET (2638).

… Read more

I was reading an Associated Press article recently about all the soon-to-be-defunct product lines produced by General Motors: Pontiac, Saab, and Saturn. But another brand that's been on the way out for a while now was making headlines again, as GM looks all set in its selling off the Hummer brand to China-based Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Corporation. While it's not official yet, unless something goes awry it looks to be a done deal and GM will have washed their hands of the tanking SUV line.

With General Motors metaphorically taking its Hummer brand out to the … Read more

Solar System 3D Screensaver lets users view the solar system and see detailed information about each planet. We're kind of geeky about space-related stuff, so we were looking forward to trying out this screensaver. Unfortunately, it leaves a lot to be desired in both content and performance.

The first problem that we ran into was that the screensaver was slow and jerky. We've never had this problem before with graphics-intensive programs, but we gave the screensaver the benefit of the doubt and took a look at its built-in Help file, which suggested that we update our video card … Read more