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Ok, I’m going to buy into some probable lunacy. Maybe it’s because I’m getting old and dotty, but the truth is that now that two of these things have been recorded by Curiosity, your Out There editor is–well–curious.

A could of years ago I was tempted to post the "floating spoon on Mars" story as a joke, but I didn’t because it was just too funny and I didn’t have time to confirm the image in the NASA original footage. But a couple of days ago, another of these objects was recorded. So, whatever these things are, they do qualify as a genuine mystery. They are pretty large, so if there are any aliens looming about who make use of them, there is going to be a rover photo eventually, perhaps of a huge hand?
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A researcher at Western University’s Nanofabrication Facility in Ontario, Canada, has built the world’s smallest snowman, measuring an extremely petite 3 microns tall. To put this in perspective, a human hair will typically be 50-75 microns (or micrometers) thick.

The tiny snowman was made using a stack of silica spheres — water crystals would be far too large for a sculpture of this stature. Each of the three globes is a mere 0.9 microns (0.0009 millimeters) in diameter. The arms and carrot-like nose are made from platinum, and the facial features were carved using the lab’s new focused ion beam.
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The National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration has released its annual Arctic Report Card, assessing the state of the climate above 60º north, and region’s grades are not good: higher temperatures, lower snow and ice cover, and alarming biological activity marred the report’s findings.
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