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For some people, one moon just isn't good enough. The quest to find a second Moon has roped in Jules Verne, the man who discovered Pluto, and a pair of deluded astronomers. But here's the thing: there really is a second moon... sort of. More »
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Of course, much of the color in these images isn't natural, but instead the result of analysis by a polarizing microscope. But thanks to such analysis we know exactly where these space rocks came from: the solar system's weirdest asteroid. More »
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How the dinosaurs died is maybe the most well-known story in all paleontology, but the dinosaurs' origins are more obscure. Dinosaurs might well have gotten their chance to rule the planet from the very thing that later killed them off. More »
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The asteroid belt is full of remnants of the ancient solar system, giant clumps of rock that might have formed a planet under different circumstances. Now we've found the first asteroid that's exactly how it was billions of years ago. More »
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This may sound strange, but there's simply too much gold. That is, there shouldn't be gold here at the Earth's crust - it all should have been sucked deep into the core long ago. For that, we can thank asteroids. More »
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We've often found trace evidence of DNA on meteorites, but it wasn't clear whether these DNA pieces originated in space, or were accidental byproducts of contamination by scientists. Now we have our best evidence yet that they actually come from space. More »
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Right now NASA's Dawn spacecraft is 114 million miles from Earth, orbiting thousands of miles above the surface of the giant asteroid Vesta. And Dawn's been taking pictures. More »
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Trojan asteroids are objects that share a planet's orbit around the Sun but reside in what are basically gravitational dead zones. We've discovered Earth's first Trojan asteroid...but how did it get there, and why have we only just found it? More »
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Vesta is the asteroid belt's second largest object, but figuring out what it is has driven astronomers crazy. Is it an asteroid? A planet, perhaps a protoplanet? Whatever the answer, Vesta might just be the solar system's most important object. More »
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Most of the craters created by meteorite and asteroid impacts are round, nothing like this strangely elongated, oval-shaped crater recently discovered on Mars. This crater just might be the trendiest meteorite landing spot on all of Mars. More »
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A new telescope, equipped with a 1.8 billion pixel camera, has discovered its first potentially dangerous asteroid. The rock is a lot smaller than any other asteroid we've detected before, and that's great news for our still-developing asteroid defense system. More »
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The Dark Knight co-writer David S. Goyer just landed a movie deal for his still yet-to-be-published book trilogy about aliens careening towards the Earth, called Heaven's Shadow. More »
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Need a reason to be excited on another dull Tuesday morning? This 1,300-foot asteroid won't hit Earth for the next 100 years. That means our planet has at least 5,200 more Tuesday mornings to pursue exciting new hobbies! More »
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While NASA and other space agencies keep their telescopes trained on near-Earth objects that could smash into us, we don't know how to prevent an impact. Here are some of the best (and weirdest) ideas for protecting Earth from incoming asteroids. More »
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Are we on the path to a major asteroid collision? The Russian Federal Space Agency fears that the approaching asteroid Apophis could spell certain doom. And it has a plan to knock the asteroid off its current course. More »
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It's been almost a week since an Australian astronomer discovered a weird black spot on Jupiter, which is believed to be a comet impact. And now the Hubble Space Telescope has captured this crisp image of Jupiter's "scar." [Hubble Site] More »
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Dinosaurs may not have been Earth's only creatures to face extinction from above. A team of researchers has found evidence that suggests a comet once hit North America, taking the continent's mammals down with it. More »
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Yesterday, an amateur astronomer noticed that a large black spot had appeared near Jupiter's Southern pole. These first pictures of the phenomenon are prompting many to speculate that a passing comet or asteroid struck the gas giant. More »
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A series of four photos taken of the Australian sky show the asteroid that nearly smashed to Earth Monday, where it could have destroyed several major cities. More »
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Many astronomers regard Jupiter as Earth’s bodyguard, diligently attracting and smashing foreign bodies that could collide with Earth. But new simulations suggest that Jupiter’s role in the solar system may not be so beneficial. In fact, the gas giant may just have it in for the inner planets, including our own. More »
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With all the hullabaloo about giant asteroids that could destroy us, we tend to forget the little guy. Luckily, NASA's Catalina Sky Survey has it covered. Last Monday, CSS astronomers caught sight of an incoming object zooming toward the Earth, and by the time of the asteroid's impact on Tuesday, NASA engineers had mapped out its trajectory almost exactly. This is "the first time we were able to discover and predict an impact before the event," announced Donald Yeomans, the manager of NASA/JPL's Near-Earth Object program — and I'm guessing he did it with no small amount of glee. More »
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With so much focus on corporate bailouts, climate change, and the threat of terrorism, one source of potential disaster has gone sorely neglected: asteroids. It's been ten years since Deep Impact and Armageddon taught us the dire consequences of an asteroid colliding with Earth, but experts say it's time to start taking seriously the threat of objects from space. More »
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We usually think of asteroid impacts as harbingers of mass extinction, but they might be the reason life exists on our planet at all. It's possible for bacteria to hitch rides on rocks ejected by space impacts and move from planet to planet. We know that certain Earth bacteria are capable of surviving the hostile conditions of space, but could they survive the impacts themselves? A group of scientists put them to the test, and we've got the results for you. More »
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For a while there in 2004, the newly-discovered asteroid 99942 Apophis looked like it had Earth's number. Then scientists crunched some numbers, and the odds of a terrestrial bullseye dropped to 1 in 45,000, where they stand today. Sort of. It turns out that there are a few things we still don't know about the orbit of Apophis, which could change its projected course by millions of miles, according to an article yesterday in New Scientist. Are we going to get slammed by the 270-meter long hunk of rock? We probably won't know for sure until we get a closer look at its close-ish Earth flyby in 2013. More »
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One hundred years ago today, June 30th, 1908, a great explosion rained Hell over Siberia, flattening 830 square miles of forest. Easily big enough to destroy a city, the 30-meter diameter space rock missed Moscow by about 4 hours. And it will happen again. But even as we track the objects headed our way in the next century, the flood of media hype over the centennial this past week shows there are still some major mysteries about the Russian blast that need solving. More »
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For a small planet, Mars sure knows how to go big. It's about half as large as Earth, but it's got the hugest volcano in the solar system in the Arizona-sized Olympus Mons and the grandest of all canyons in the 7 kilometer-deep Vallis Marineris. Now it can add its coolest, most-braggable title: the Biggest Impact Crater in the Solar System. In a new study out in Nature, scientists have shown that Mars was probably hit by an asteroid the size of the Moon sometime in its early history, which left a crater the size of the planet's entire northern hemisphere. More »
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With all the space rocks zipping by Earth these days, we're pretty much cruising for an interplanetary bruising. But NASA's line on the situation is, to paraphrase administrator Mike Griffin: "Forget about that whole thing; we're going back to the Moon! Yay!" Fortunately, the B612 Foundation is slightly more serious about making sure our civilization isn't snuffed out by an asteroid or comet. Headed by former astronaut Rusty Schweickart, the non-profit is kicking $50,000 to a group of experts at Jet Propulsion Labs to study the "gravity tractor" method of deflecting doomsday objects that are inbound for momma Earth. More »
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When it comes to comet impacts, the denizens of Earth may be living on borrowed time. Of course, comets are only about half the problem — there are plenty of asteroids whizzing around the inner solar system too — so we decided to have a look and see just how close modern society has come to destruction since 1900, and how close we're going to come over the next 100 years. The answers, provided in our nifty infographic, aren't reassuring. More »
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Life on Earth might actually be Martian — or Europan, or Titanese. Or maybe our ancestors came from outside our solar system, flung up from a distant planet (perhaps Caprica?) billions of years ago and migrated to Earth. It all sounds far-fetched, but new research suggests microbes can survive an asteroid impact big enough so send them into space, making panspermia — the idea that we're all really aliens at heart — a real possibility. More »
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Well, it's about time. Asteroids hitting Earth has been a big problem for life this planet since forever, and at last governments around the world have been united in their inability to give a shit. And they did it without Gort the giant robot forcing them! Next year, the Canadian Space Agency will launch the Near Earth Object Surveillance Satellite (NEOSSat), the first space-borne asteroid hunting device ever made. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=388664&view=rss&microfeed=true Astronomers were warning an asteroid (a comet?) was due to swerve closer to Earth than any large object since the comet that wiped out the dinosaurs — in just a few days. They were all set to issue an "emergency email" and start going on television telling people not to panic too much. At the last minute, they realized it was just the Russian space probe Rosetta, on a scheduled swing past Earth to use our gravity to gain speed. Oops! More »
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