For more information about asteroid check the Wikipedia article here
The current leading theory that explains the mass extinction of the dinosaurs – once the dominant group of animals on Earth for millions of years – states that an asteroid impact some 65 million years ago brought their demise, wiping them out along with 70% of all life on the planet. A new study, however, [...]
Wed, Mar 20, 2013
There are millions of asteroids in our solar system. Be them the size of France or a small bus, these space rocks can be found through out the solar system, and have recently become the subject of entrepreneurial discussions, since even a single medium-sized asteroid is thought to carry trillions of dollars worth of rare [...]
Wed, Feb 27, 2013
The European Space Agency just announced the asteroid they chose for an upcoming controlled crash landing of one of their spacecraft. The objective? Well, more or less, they just want to see what happens. The Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA) mission will intercept the asteroid, called Didymos, in 2022, when the asteroid gets within [...]
Thu, Feb 21, 2013
I realize we’re maybe bugging some of you with these constant asteroid/meteor pieces here on ZME Science, but for what’s it worth we found this recently released NASA video comprised of radar images during 2012 DA14′s recent flyby very interesting. The movie, which combines 73 radar-images captured over the course of eight hours on the [...]
Mon, Feb 18, 2013
The weekend that has just passed was a tight one for asteroid news. At the center was of course the much raved about “2012 DA14″ - the closest asteroid of this significant size to flyby Earth since recorded history – which actually speared passed Earth at an altitude of 27,700km, a few thousand kilometers below the [...]
Fri, Feb 15, 2013
Tonight a historical event is about to occur after an asteroid half the size of a football field, called “2012 DA14″, is set to make the closest flyby to Earth any asteroid of its kind has ever made, since we know of. NASA along with all the other space programs in the world positively dismiss [...]
Tue, Feb 5, 2013
The (still debated) asteroid that slammed into the Earth 65 million years ago and played a crucial role in wiping dinosaurs out, may have actually been a binary system- 2 asteroids engaged in an orbit around each other. Double trouble The surprising claim comes from analyzing the proportion of asteroid craters on Earth that were [...]
Mon, Feb 4, 2013
That’s what NASA officials have been telling the press recently, at least. If you haven’t heard yet, a football field-sized asteroid called 2012 DA14 is expected to come buzzing past Earth later this month, making it, in NASA’s own words, a ‘record-setter’ in terms of asteroid proximity. The asteroid will pass so closely by Earth [...]
Wed, Jan 30, 2013
Close, but not too close – an asteroid like that can crash on our planet every 1200 years, but there’s no reason to worry, even though it will make a flyby on February 15, passing at a distance of only 26.780 km. For comparison, the distance to the Moon varies from around 356,400 km to [...]
Tue, Jan 22, 2013
Deep Space Industries (DSI), a private space ventures company, has recently announced plans of launching a fleet of asteroid-prospecting spacecraft set to touch base with near-Earth space rocks. The small sized, light weight spacecraft would analyze and sample asteroids for those rich enough in resources like fuel, water and rare minerals. The first launch is scheduled [...]
Mon, Jan 21, 2013
The cold, lifeless Vesta asteroid might be a lot more like our planet than astronomers believed – having a very active life in the early stages of the solar system evolution, a study of a Saharan meteorite shows. The planet that wasn’t Vesta might host a magmatic layer under its rocky exterior, allowing minerals to [...]
Thu, Jan 10, 2013
Due to a “closer” approach of asteroid Apophis this month of just 40 Earth-Moon distances, astronomers were able to get a better glimpse of the much talked about asteroid in order to better understand it. Thomas Müller of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, who is leading the analysis of the [...]
Tue, Jan 8, 2013
An ambitious project is currently being considered by NASA consisting of capturing and dragging a small-scale asteroid into the moon’s orbit. This would allow for a valuable footing where asteroid research might become a lot more accessible, one of NASA’s main objectives for the upcoming decades. The proposition has been made by the Keck Institute for [...]
Thu, Dec 20, 2012
You’ve seen it on the news, so you know it’s true. Your 8 o’clock special news report showcases in a Mayan Apocalypse special a computer simulation of a massive meteor or asteroid impacting Earth causing world doom. There’s no mention anywhere in any Mayan records or myths that the end of the Mayan calendar is [...]
Wed, Nov 7, 2012
Between Oct. 28 and Oct. 30, NASA‘s Deep Space Network antenna in California was directed on “2007 PA8“, a one mile wide asteroid. In these few days the asteroid came the closest it will ever get to Earth in 200 years, which was still a few million miles away. Nevertheless, NASA released composite images of [...]
Wed, Oct 31, 2012
Vesta is “peppered” with carbon materials which researchers believe were left behind by asteroids gently striking its surface. Vesta is an asteroid itself – but one so large that some astronauts were actually thinking about declaring it a planet, or at least a protoplanet. It is the second largest asteroid in our solar system, second [...]
Mon, Oct 29, 2012
No, this isn’t one of those misleading headlines. A MIT graduate student has recently proposed that bombarding an asteroid’s surface with paintballs could throw it off course from a possible collision orbit with our planet, by harnessing solar pressure. The paintball cloud would hit the targeted asteroid and cover it in paint – white paint to [...]
Mon, Oct 1, 2012
According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, climate change models suggest that average global temperatures will likely rise by 2 to 11.5 degrees F (1.1 to 6.4 degrees C) by the end of this century. The consequences of an increase of just a few degrees are dire. Apparently, taking clear and effective steps [...]
Thu, Sep 6, 2012
It’s one asteroid down and one to go, for NASA’s Dawn spacecraft. After spending a year studying the Vesta asteroid and retrieving valuable information to Earth, Dawn is now ready to head for its next destination: Ceres. A different world Scientists expect Ceres to be very different from Vesta. Ceres is considered to be the [...]
Wed, Sep 5, 2012
While NASA gives all sort of fun names to missions, projects, telescopes – asteroids is not their slickest field. Names like (101955) 1999 RQ36 don’t exactly roll off the tip of your tongue. This is why the people at NASA decided to hold a contest for students, which will decide how an asteroid will be [...]
Fri, Jun 29, 2012
There are millions of asteroids currently residing in our Solar System, of which some 500 thousand orbit in the inner solar system, where our planet also lies. Space agencies in the world have only mapped so far a mere 1% of these. Clearly, an asteroid impact with Earth poses a serious and realistic threat to [...]
Wed, Mar 14, 2012
The plot of the Hollywood blockbuster flick Armageddon is fairly simple – a giant asteroid is hurling towards Earth, threatening to obliterate all life on the planet as we know it. A team of brave oil-drillers is sent on the space rock to diffuse the threat by detonating a nuclear warhead placed inside the asteroid itself. Apparently, a group [...]
Wed, Mar 7, 2012
A recently published study suggests that the Earth might have been visited by a giant space rock 13,000 years ago, an event which might have sparked an unusual cold period in the planet’s climate history. The Younger Dryas, also known as the Big Freeze, was a brief period of cold climatic conditions and drought which occurred [...]
Mon, Nov 7, 2011
According to NASA, a large asteroid called 2005 YU55 is expected to pass at some 201,700 miles of Earth on Tuesday – closer than the Moon, and definitely closer than the Elenin comet. Now, before people start going all 2012 armageddon on me, let it be said that asteroids often pass at this distance from [...]
Mon, Oct 31, 2011
Black holes are perhaps the most fascinating and staggering objects in the known Universe, and we are just now beginning to uncover their secrets. Dr. Sergei Nayakshin of the University of Leicester and his team found that doughnut-shaped dust shrouds that cover about half of supermassive black holes may very well be the result of [...]
Tue, Oct 11, 2011
A giant mountain, three times taller than Earth’s highest peak marks the southern polar regions of Vesta, a relatively well studied asteroid spotted by NASA’s Dawn Science Probe. The mountain is depicted in the picture below. Dawn orbited around Vesta, which is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter in July, and since [...]
Mon, Oct 10, 2011
Most of us tend to believe the Earth is a safe heaven, with little regard to outerwordly consequences. The truth is our planet, although without a doubt a true gem within our galaxy, is susceptible to a slew of events triggered from within or well beyond our solar system. A lot of them are very [...]
Fri, Sep 30, 2011
Armageddon can wait, NASA‘s in charge for a little while longer. The space agency recently released to the general public a report which censuses more than 93% of the total number of asteroids in the vicinity of Earth’s orbit, meaning they’re all tagged and tracked – risk of undetected collision to a minimum. That’s not all either, [...]
Thu, Jul 28, 2011
It wasn’t just a devastating asteroid that killed off all the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Scientists from Boston University now claim that a massive eruption of lava fronts around the world, coinciding with the asteroid impact, sealed their fate forever. The controversial theory is betting on two unusually hot blobs of mantle 1,700 miles [...]
Tue, Jul 19, 2011
This weekend, NASA‘s DAWN spacecraft finally put a lot of tension and nerves to rest after it successfully entered Vesta’s orbit, the second largest object in the Asteroid Belt. The whole event took place at 1 a.m. EDT Saturday (0500 GMT), marking the first time a man made spacecraft entered the orbit of an object [...]
Fri, Jul 15, 2011
After a four year journey, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft will finally reach the orbit of Vesta, the second largest asteroid in our solar system. The object, located 117 million miles from Earth and spanning across a circumference of 329 miles, will be visited in premiere by Dawn this weekend when the latter will hover over on [...]
Mon, Jun 27, 2011
This Monday (June 27), an asteroid the size of a bus just buzzed our planet after a flyby which brought it closer to Earth than most satellites. Dubbed asteroid 2011 MD, it was first spotted by MIT’s Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) program just last week on June 22, but there never was any [...]
Thu, May 26, 2011
NASA announced that it will launch an unmaned ship to a nearby asteroid, in an attempt to figure out more about both the asteroid itself, and how life started on our planet. The mission, named Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer – or, as always, with an easier more manageable name, Osiris-Rex was chosen to take place [...]
Tue, May 10, 2011
Astronomers from the the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland declared that a recently discovered asteroid has been following our planet in the past 250.000 years, and it may be in fact closely related to Earth. Two months after it was discovered with the WISE survey satellite, the asteroid caught the attention of two scientists: Apostolos [...]
Fri, Apr 8, 2011
Researchers and astronomy amateurs alike should leave a few days open in their November calendar and prepare for something awesome; one of the major and potentially perilous (in time) asteroids will be making a flyby this year. The asteroid, 2005 YU55 is a round small world with a diameter of 400 meters. The asteroid will [...]
Tue, Feb 8, 2011
In 2004, NASA researchers identified the Apophis asteroid and after some quick calculations they states there is a chance the asteroid will hit our homey planet in 2029. A few observations and some other calculations later, they explained that that chance is extremely small for 2029, as well as other years to come. However, reports [...]
Tue, Nov 16, 2010
JAXA, the Japanese space agency is becoming more and more active these days, as Japanese researchers are getting involved in more and more ambitious projects. Recently, a probe they sent out returned home with grains of dust gathered from an asteroid, a feat without precedent in history. The finding could provide valuable insight into the [...]
Fri, Oct 15, 2010
An asteroid threat to Earth seems like something we are going to have to face, sooner or later – and people are starting to aknowledge this fact; take Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart for example. He is among a group of people that are championing the need to be prepared in case of such an [...]
Fri, Oct 9, 2009
We’ve all seen at least one movie in which our planet is destroyed, but most of them were quite repetitive and kind of uninteresting. Our planet deserves so much more! Black holes Well, it seems the more we understand things about black holes, the more we find out things we don’t know, and the more [...]
Tue, Oct 6, 2009
In 1980, Luis Alvarez and his team shocked the whole world when they announced their theory that an asteroid impact that took place 65 millions years ago was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs and much of that time’s living organisms. Despite the fact that they delivered substantial evidence, there are still some minor [...]
Sat, Nov 1, 2008
Many people refer to these structures as “Meteorite Craters”, but that’s at least partially incorrect. Meteor is the term used to describe an object that goes through our planet’s atmosphere, and meteorite is used after the object hit the planet. These are just some of the most amazing ones, and easy to see for an [...]
Thu, Oct 9, 2008
A very small asteroid exploded over the continent of Africa this week, confirming the prediction of astronomers. Despite the fact that nobody has seen and photographed the asteroid due to the fact that it entered in a very remote area, it was detected with an infrasound array in Kenya; it exploded without striking the Earth. [...]
Some photos of the amazing sun halo hovering over NYC
Record level atmospheric CO2. Reaches 400 ppm for the first time in 3 million years
Your brain detects grammar errors even when you’re not aware of them
First mathematical proof that prime numbers come in infinite pairs
CT scan images caterpillar to butterfly metamorphosis in 3-D
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Mon, Mar 25, 2013
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