Astronomers Catch Video of 'Near-Miss' Asteroid. From Nature magazine A small asteroid called 2012 KT42 came within three Earth radii of striking the planet on 29 May, but slipped past. The event was the sixth-closest encounter of any recorded asteroid. In a video posted online on 19 June by researchers using NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) in Hawaii, the bright asteroid appears fixed, while background stars zip past (in fact, the asteroid is speeding along at 17 kilometres per second). “You get the view of riding along with it,” says Richard Binzel, a planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, who led the observations. At its closest, the asteroid was around 19,000 kilometres from Earth — a distance between the orbit of the International Space Station (about 1 Earth radius) and that of a geosynchronous satellite (about 6 Earth radii).
Hours after the object was discovered by a small telescope on Mount Lemmon near Tucson, Arizona, Binzel was able to obtain a few hours of time on the IRTF. Moon tourism: Fly me to the moon. Teaching creativity to children from a galaxy away. Playing make-believe is more than a childhood pasttime. According to psychologists, it’s also crucial to building creativity, giving a child the ability to consider alternative realities and perspectives. And this type of thinking is essential to future development, aiding interpersonal and problem-solving skills and the ability to invent new theories and concepts. That has been shown to be a component of future professional success in fields from the arts to the sciences and business. But can creativity be taught? Thinking “outwards” rather than “inwards” allows children to consider different points of view and think beyond their “here and now” reality, says Prof. For their study, the researchers worked with 55 children ages six to nine.
After viewing the series of photographs, the children completed creativity tests, including the Tel Aviv Creativity Test (TACT), in which the participant is given an object and asked to name the different uses they can think of for it. The Voyager May Soon Become the First Spacecraft to Reach Interstellar Space. In a major milestone, NASA has reported that the Voyager I spacecraft may be close to becoming the first human creation ever to cross the invisible boundary separating our solar system from interstellar space. A surge of new data shows that the probe has been encountering a huge uptick in galactic cosmic rays — a key factor that would signify that the Voyager has, indeed, left the building. (VIDEO: The Voyager Probes Boldly Go Where None Have Gone Before) To be absolutely sure, scientists are relying on a couple of other key criteria. In addition to the uptick of certain particles, the presence of another particle would have to decrease completely. And while that number is not at zero, there has been a slow decline, which physicists expect to change dramatically when the spacecraft crosses the barrier.
The magnetic field surrounding the spacecraft would also completely change, from east-west to north-south. (MORE: After 34 Years in Space, the Voyager Spacecraft Fly On — and On and On) NASA Scientists Insert a 500-million-year-old Gene in Modern Bacteria. It’s a project 500 million years in the making: Using a process called paleo-experimental evolution, Georgia Tech researchers have resurrected a 500-million-year-old gene from bacteria and inserted it into modern-day Escherichia coli(E. coli) bacteria. This bacterium has now been growing for more than 1,000 generations, giving the scientists a front row seat to observe evolution in action.
“This is as close as we can get to rewinding and replaying the molecular tape of life,” said scientist Betül Kaçar, a NASA astrobiology postdoctoral fellow in Georgia Tech’s NASA Center for Ribosomal Origins and Evolution. “The ability to observe an ancient gene in a modern organism as it evolves within a modern cell allows us to see whether the evolutionary trajectory once taken will repeat itself or whether a life will adapt following a different path.” When the researchers looked closer, they noticed that every EF-Tu gene did not accumulate mutations. The Daily Galaxy. A Ring of Fire: The 2012 Annular Eclipse - In Focus. Yesterday, the Moon passed between the Sun and Earth, casting its shadow from China to North America. This was an annular eclipse, where the Moon's apparent diameter is slightly smaller than the Sun's, blocking all but a ring of sunlight. Skywatchers brought out special glasses, welder's masks, and telescopes to safely view this relatively rare event.
Some were lucky enough to look down and see overlapping pinhole projections of the eclipse as the sunlight streamed through the leaves of nearby trees. Gathered here, for those who weren't able to see it in person, is a group of images of yesterday's annular eclipse. [26 photos] Use j/k keys or ←/→ to navigate Choose: The Moon partially eclipses the Sun, as seen from Venice, California, on May 20, 2012. The annular solar eclipse, observed through light clouds above Tokyo, Japan, on May 21, 2012. A businessman watches the annular solar eclipse at a waterfront park in Yokohama, near Tokyo, on May 21, 2012. 'Supermoon,' Eta Aquarid Meteor Shower To Attract Skywatchers On May 5, 2012. Mars Ancient Volcanic Eruptions Point to an Early Atmosphere Dense With Water. The atmosphere of Mars is less than 1 percent the density of Earth’s. It’s one of the reasons liquid water covers much of our planet but cannot exist on the Red Planet. As more research points toward the possibility of water on early Mars, scientists have increased their studies on the density of its atmosphere billions of years ago.
It’s not an easy task. In fact, it’s very difficult to even determine Earth’s atmospheric pressure from the same time frame. Georgia Tech Assistant Professor Josef Dufek is attempting to learn more about the past atmospheric conditions by analyzing two unlikely sources: ancient volcanic eruptions and surface observations by the Mars rover Spirit. His new findings provide more evidence that early Mars was saturated with water and that its atmosphere was considerably thicker, at least 20 times more dense, than it is today.
In 2007, Spirit landed at that site, known as Home Plate, and took a closer look at the imbedded fragment. "Milky Way Home to Billions of Free-Floating Life-Bearing Planets" --Originated in Early Universe. A few hundred thousand billion free-floating life-bearing Earth-sized planets may exist in the space between stars in the Milky Way. So argues an international team of scientists led by Chandra Wickramasinghe, Director of the Buckingham Center for Astrobiology at the University of Buckingham, UK. The scientists have proposed that these life-bearing planets originated in the early Universe within a few million years of the Big Bang, and that they make up most of the so-called “missing mass” of galaxies. The team calculated that such a planetary body would cross the inner solar system every 25 million years on the average and during each transit, zodiacal dust, including a component of the solar system’s living cells, becomes implanted at its surface.
The free-floating planets would then have the added property of mixing the products of local biological evolution on a galaxy-wide scale. Are we the lone sentient life in the universe? Spurce: Wickramasinghe NC et al (2012).