An asteroid hurtled past the Earth on Friday in something of a cosmic near-miss, making its closest approach at about 1600 GMT. The asteroid, estimated to be about 11m (36ft) in diameter, was first detected on Wednesday. At its closest, the space rock – named 2012 BX34 – passed within about 60,000km of Earth – [...]
An asteroid the size of a large house will zip within 12,900 kilometres of the Earth at about midday London time on Monday. That’s at least double the size of the asteroids that have previously been observed so close to Earth. Called 2011 MD, the asteroid was discovered late on Wednesday by an automated asteroid-hunting [...]
From the maverick science files: A broadcast carried yesterday on BBC Radio 4 (and scheduled for a repeat April 21, 2011, at 9pm BST) featured the hair-raising possibility that microbial parasites, such as those that force ants and rats to do their bidding, may be working their “will” on humans, too. Frank Swain had the [...]
The potentially hazardous asteroid ‘(101955) 1999 RQ36′ has a one-in-a-thousand chance of impacting the Earth, and more than half of this probability indicates that this could happen in the year 2182, based on a global study in which Spanish researchers have been involved. Knowing this fact may help design in advance mechanisms aimed at deviating [...]
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