... Infalling gas may first collide not only with itself but with an accretion disk of swirling material surrounding the black hole. ... In fact, the roughly 11-year solar activity cycle is still in a surprisingly deep minimum and the years 2008 and 2009 have had the lowest sunspot counts since the 1950s. VB 10: A Large Planet Orbiting a Small Star . ... The robotic Spirit rover currently rolling across Mars ran into unexpectedly soft ground last month while exploring the red planet. ...