Scientists have long thought that the Earth wasn't formed with a lot of organic matter, due to the planet's proximity to the sun, but were unsure where we got the necessary chemical compounds for life to thrive on the planet. Now scientists believe that the answers may lie on meteors and comets passing through Earth's atmosphere.

New Scientist reports on experiments carried out by Peter Schultz of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island and Seiji Sugita of the University of Tokyo, Japan, which suggest that, although organic compounds on the objects would get burned up on atmospheric entry, that's not the end of the story. Schultz:

The idea in the past has been, 'Any of this stuff coming through the atmosphere would be heated to the point where it would get wasted... What this new work did was to show that we might actually revive these compounds.

What Schultz and Sugita believe is that the flashes resulting from objects burning up on entry produces cyanide, which they believe could have reacted with the Earth's already existant compounds to form more complex, carbon-containing molecules that would ultimately prove essential to Earth-based life. It's not as dramatic as cylons and humans landing on our planet, but it's a possible answer to a long-standing question... and an appropriately cosmic origin for life on the planet.

Was life founded on cyanide from space crashes? [New Scientist]

Currently, NASA has been able to detect roughly 83 percent of the estimated 940 Near-Earth asteroids that are at least one kilometer in diameter. If such an asteroid were to enter our atmosphere, it could bring with it sun-blocking dust and radical climate change even before it makes an impact. But astronomers are growing more concerned with the more numerous smaller asteroids, whose impact could flatten trees — as happened in Siberia where many astronomers believe a comet or asteroid exploded in 1908 — shatter cities, and cause unpredictable waves of coastal flooding. Because of their size, these asteroids are difficult to detect, and astronomers fear one could strike the Earth with little or no warning.

In 2005, the United States Congress charged NASA to detect at least 90 percent of these smaller asteroids by 2020, but a report from the US National Research Council reveals that achieving that goal will require far more equipment than is currently allotted to asteroid detection. The report indicates that new facilities need to be built, with equipment capable of detecting fainter asteroids and covering a wider range of the cosmos. A better system will need to be developed for detecting asteroids that are particularly close to Earth, rather than simply creating a catalog of near-Earth asteroids, and a telescope would need to be placed at another vantage point in space to detect asteroids coming from the sun.

The NRC is unsure what the cost of these systems would be, but panel leader Irwin Shapiro of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics believes it is essential to our continued safety:

"There is no free lunch," Shapiro agrees. But he adds, "We're talking about investing in an insurance policy."

Earth could be blindsided by asteroids, panel warns [New Scientist]

Gamer:

Here's a sneak peek from this deadly video game movie, showcasing the rapport (or lack thereof) between Kable and his young "player":

G.I. Joe:

New TV spots cover the basics. Legs, boobs, nanomites, disaster, explosions, super-power-armor, grim faces — it is on.

Green Hornet:

The Green Hornet's car will be the original 1966 model, but with huge massive weapons that weren't around in 1966, like Gatling guns and stuff. And Seth Rogen talks how campy the film will be. [Cinematical]

Jennifer's Body:

Here's another new image of the sexy-but-deadly-but-sexy Megan Fox. [Cinemablend]

The Time Traveler's Wife:

Here are a few new TV spots that show off this movie's tormented love story:

Asteroids:

Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura says he was attracted to this film because "it tells you that there's going to be this big thing in space." And he explains more about the film's storyline:

We've crafted a really strong, deep mythology for the thing. Without divulging too much about it, it's two lead characters – two brothers – who have to go through a seminal experience to figure out their relationship, against this huge backdrop.

[Sci Fi Scoop]

2012:

Some new stills, plus a new poster. [Sci Fi Scoop]

G-Force:

They're guinea pigs. And they fight evil. Behold:

Harry Potter:

And finally, a Harry TV spot:

The Prisoner:

Wired had a one-on-one interview with Sir Ian McKellen, who plays Number Two — although, really, he's actually Number One. And this version of Number Two has a wife and son, and his family is crucial to the reason for the Village's existence. McKellen described his character:

Number Two is very ironic. At times, he's very loving and bewlidered, because he's confused. He's not convinced that he's doing the right thing, because it causes him a lot of pain. And that's the sign of a mature script. Jim was saying in an interview that it is easy to see Number Six is right and that Number Two is a dreadful man. But then, in the next scene, one can see it from a different point of view.

[Wired]

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown.

Brad Caleb Kane, a writer and producer on Fringe, announced the project on Twitter earlier this week:

Almost official — after the alien movie I'll be writing a movie for [Dreamworks] based on a famous toy we all played w/ as kids. Any guesses?

Within an hour, Kane said that someone had guessed correctly, and that the toy was Viewmaster, the "stereoscopic sightseeing" from 1939 that achieved mainstream popularity in the 1960s. He continued,

Writin it for the Kurtzman/Orci boys! It'll be like the old 80's Amblin movies: Goonies, Young Sherlock... In that vein.

On the one hand, we're unconvinced that this isn't a particularly obscure joke based on the success of Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen, but on the other, they're making a movie out of Asteroids, for fuck's sake; all bets are off as to the visionary powers and/or sanity of movie executives. If it's true, however, we feel as if a new bar has been set for unlikely toy-based movies - and look forward to seeing who can take it further.

Anyone who is a fan of classic video games knows the familiar story behind Asteroids . . . which is that you are a triangle, and you are shooting a series of geometric shapes. Released in 1979, the game is a perfect example of extremely early and crude computer graphics. And seriously, there was no effort made whatsoever to have a story. Why were you shooting the asteroids? Were they controlled by aliens? Were you trying to break them up so you could mine them for nickel in their cores? It was all an 8-bit mystery.

That's why the story that four studios had a bidding war for the rights to Asteroid seems like it should run in The Onion rather than The Hollywood Reporter. But is is all true.

The movie will be produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura, the mastermind behind GI Joe. It is to be written by Matthew Lopez, whose main claim to fame is that he worked on the script for Race to Witch Mountain. He's also done work on the forthcoming flick The Sorcerer's Apprentice. So will this be a kid-friendly film about triangles and blobs, or more violent adult fare? Hard to say.

Obviously, Lopez will be developing this story from scratch. Hollywood Reporter notes:

Universal . . . is used to that development process, as it's in the middle of doing just that for several of the Hasbro board game properties it is translating to the big screen, such as "Battleship" and "Candyland."

Couldn't they just combine Battleship with Asteroids so we could have a plotless tale of shooting that spanned skies and sea? Doesn't that sound awesome?

via Hollywood Reporter

Norwegian scientist Galen Gisler, from the University of Oslo, has been running simulations of what would happen if a 200-metre asteroid hit the ocean, and the results may be better than you'd think:

The impact initially sends waves hundreds of metres high spreading from the impact site. However, the very height of the waves makes them prone to collapse even in very deep water: they start breaking immediately, like ordinary waves on a beach.

By the time they are 30 kilometres from the impact site, they have shrunk to a height of less than 60 metres. The team did not simulate the waves' propagation much further, but extrapolating the shrinkage suggests heights of less than 10 metres by the time they have travelled 1000 kilometres.

That said, that doesn't mean that an asteroid splash would be harmless, says Gisler:

You don't want to be close to one of these things... Local effects will include hurricane-force winds and enormous amounts of water falling directly from the sky.

We suggest that the right decision would be to live far away from any nearby coast... and just hope that the asteroid doesn't fall directly on you, instead.

Asteroids won't raise killer waves - but mind the splash [New Scientist]

The unusual suggestion comes from David Dearborn, from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. He modelled a virtual asteroid as part of an investigation into how best to dodge a gigantic meteor-like bullet... and then added a nuclear blast, just to see what would happen, according to New Scientist:

Thirty years before the asteroid was set to collide with Earth, a nuclear blast, equivalent to 100 kilotonnes of TNT, was set off 250 metres behind it. The nudge from the explosion increased its velocity by 6.5 millimetres per second, a slight change but enough for it to miss us.

The technique also reduced the risk of a break-up - just 1 per cent of the asteroid's material was dislodged by the blast, and of that only about 1 part in a million remained on a collision course with Earth. Dearborn adds that the technology for this method is already established, unlike for the use of a heavy object to shove the asteroid onto a different path - the "kinetic impactor" strategy. "Should an emergency arise, we should know that [the technology] is available, and we should have some idea of how to properly use it," he says.

Dearborn's research also suggested that just blowing the whole asteroid up was also an option, although Derek Richardson of the University of Maryland in College Park disagrees for the best reason - You can't be sure that you're definitely going to be able to destroy the asteroid:

It may be that you just blow out a big hole on the surface.

After all, the last thing you want is to piss off the thing that's about to destroy you.

How to save the world from an asteroid impact [New Scientist]

A group of scientists from California using the Spitzer Space Telescope have examined the debris rings around six different white dwarfs, one of which is depicted above in this artist's rendering. What they found was that a lot of these shattered rocks were low in carbon but high in other minerals common to rocky planets in our solar system. Planets in our system are also low in carbon.

The researchers announced their findings at this week's meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, CA. According to Centauri Dreams:

When a star like our Sun reaches the end of its life and becomes a red giant, it consumes any inner planets and perturbs the orbits of the surviving planets and asteroids. A white dwarf is the end result of this stellar expansion and subsequent collapse. Objects wrenched out of their former orbits should, like the asteroids in question, occasionally drift close enough to the star to be pulled apart by its gravity. Such a star, showing the excess infrared signature of a circumstellar disk that is likely caused by the tidal disruption of asteroids, is called a ‘polluted’ white dwarf.

And that's what we're seeing here.

SOURCE: Astronomical Journal.
Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech.

More info at these links: [ESA and ESAand ESA ]

Scientists have determined that the Martian magnetic field might have been maintained by an asteroid in orbit around the planet — an asteroid that eventually orbited a bit too close to Mars and crashed into the planet. According to New Scientist:

Now Jafar Arkani-Hamed of the University of Toronto, Canada, and colleagues say the gravitational tug of an orbiting asteroid may have powered a dynamo by pulling on the fluid in Mars's core. The team's lab and model simulations showed that an asteroid orbiting 75,000 kilometres above Mars could have maintained a dynamo for 400 million years, before the rock crashed into the planet and switched it off.

Other researchers in the field are skeptical, saying that an asteroid in orbit wouldn't have had enough energy to start up that dynamo in the first place.

Asteroid Switched of Martian Magnetic Field [New Scientist]

"The system is there to try to accurately assess an object," says Mark Bailey, director of the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland... "If it's going to hit, you need to work out when and where as quickly as possible. You don't want them sitting on the data wondering whether it's an asteroid or not," Bailey told New Scientist.