Did life forms exist on Mars? Curiosity makes a big find, Ep. 187

Hey guys, my name is Stephen Beacham and here's what's happening this week on CNET's The Crave blog. [MUSIC] The U.S. Navy has a new drone. And it looks exactly like a shark. Now, this is terrifying for me because I'm even afraid of inflatable sharks in swimming pools. The drone is called the GhostSwimmer. Scary. All one word, and it is five feet long and weighs about 100 pounds. GhostSwimmer was developed as part of the Navy's Silent Nemo project, which sounds innocent because of the name Nemo. But it's actually terrifying if you think about the reality. The ghost swimmer drone shark can swim to depths of 300 feet and can be autonomous. Or piloted via laptop from 500 feet away. The Navy plans to use Ghost Swimmer for a variety of purposes, including aiding in low visibility intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions, as well as hull inspections of friendly ships. But you can bet your bottom dollar that eventually they will be outfitted with lasers on their heads Cool. In honor of the release of the Hobbit movie this week, Hollywood prop designer Tim Baker and a team of his colleagues built a Lord of the Rings cat litter box along with a Tower of Sauron cat scratching post, for superfan Misha and his kitty. [LAUGH] What? [MUSIC] The project was featured on YouTube's AWE me channel in an episode of Super-fan Builds where they build cools stuff like weapons that are featured in popular movies. Well, this cat litter box is an impressive work of Hollywood magic and fabrication. Worth taking a closer look at. [MUSIC] NASA scientists have announced that they have detected an increase in holiday lights that are visible from space. Images captured by Suomi NPP, a satellite that is a joint mission between NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. [UNKNOWN] show a seasonal increase in light coming from US cities. According to NASA scientist and member of the [UNKNOWN] land discipline team, Miguel Roman, it's a near ubiquitous signal. Despite being ethnically and religiously diverse. We found the the US experiences a holiday increase that is present across most urban communities. These lighting patterns are tracking a national shared tradition. Roman notes that the trend begins around Black Friday and continues through New Year's Day. [MUSIC] Mars' Curiosity has found organic matter on the planet Mars. Now my conspiracy theory friend, John, would say that NASA's been withholding this information for years. But this is finally some definitive proof, accompanied with an official statement from NASA. These organic molecules, consisting primarily of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms, are the building blocks. All life on earth. However, it is important to note that these molecules may not have come from life forms on Mars. The team responsible for curiosity sample analysis at Mars instrument suite have several hypotheses. The first is, of course, a biological process. Others include chemical reactions in water at ancient hot springs on the Red Planet. From off planet via dust, meteorites, asteroids, or comets. The molecules were found in a drilled sample in the sheet bed mud stone of the Gale crater, the location of Curiosity's exploration. The mud stone on the crater floor is consistent with the clay found on Earth from dried up lakes, formed from sediment on the lake floor, creating optimum conditions for the preservation of organic. Matter. All right, guys, that's the last episode of 2014. I appreciate you all watching the show this year. As always, you can find all these news stories and CNet's Crave blog at crave.cnet.com. Be sure you follow Crave on Twitter, @CRAVE, and check out this week's Crave giveaway. This week's Crave giveaway is 12 Cree LED lightbulbs with incandescent style. Are you in the dark? Win this week's prize: 12 of the latest consumer LED lightbulbs from Cree. Go to the blog enter to win. [MUSIC] [NOISE] [MUSIC]