ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Closest Approach Ever By a Large Asteroid Won’t End Life on Earth, But Probably Should

Oh Florence, we really needed you this month. There’s a petulant species of brainy monkeys apes that just can’t seem to get along that probably deserves to be completely wiped out in a fiery collision. But there you go, flying right on by. At three miles wide (4.8 km), Asteroid Florence is a biggie. In … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Scientists Just Discovered the Oldest Asteroid Family Ever

For billions of years, the Solar System’s asteroids have been involved in an endless game of bumper cars, smashing into each other and splintering into smaller bits. But get this—astronomers have just detected a clump of asteroids that has managed, quite miraculously, to stay intact since they first formed some four billion years ago. The … Continued

Tech News

Scientists Say Tardigrades Will Be the Last Animals On Earth

Microscopic tardigrades, also known as “water bears,” are the toughest animals on the planet, capable of withstanding intense radiation, extreme temperatures, and even the vacuum of space. In a fascinating new study, researchers have shown that tardigrades are poised to survive literally anything that nature throws at them—and that of the animals alive today, they’ll … Continued

Tech News

How a Massive Asteroid Strike Helped Frogs Inherit the Earth

Frogs have been around for nearly 200 million years, but it wasn’t until a 10-mile-wide asteroid struck our planet, wiping out three-quarters of all life on Earth—including the dinosaurs—that these crafty amphibians were able to make their big evolutionary move, according to new research. A study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this … Continued

Tech News

NASA Is Moving Ahead With an Ambitious Plan to Deflect an Asteroid

A mission to demonstrate an asteroid deflection technique just got a NASA promotion to the design phase. Called DART, the plan would see a refrigerator-sized spacecraft smash into a non-threatening asteroid, causing it to move ever so slightly from its original orbital path. The project is seen as an important first step in developing a … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Bummer: Giant Asteroids Not An Immediate Threat

Every few months, a journalist asks a scientist about the looming threat of Armageddon. That scientist’s quotes are then predictably blown out of proportion and turned into some iteration of “The End Is Nigh.” In light of Asteroid Day, which is today, we’d like to clarify some of the apocalyptic misinformation that’s spreading. As badly … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Watch a Simulated Asteroid Hit the Atmosphere at 45,000 Miles Per Hour

Four years ago, an asteroid the size of a city bus screamed across the skies of Chelyabinsk, Russia, shattering glass around a 60 mile perimeter and sending 1,200 people to hospitals with related injuries. In an effort to learn more about these rare but dangerous encounters with objects from space, NASA has used a supercomputer … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

This Backwards-Orbiting Asteroid Has Been Flirting With Death For a Million Years

Most asteroids orbit the Sun in a counterclockwise fashion, but a newly-discovered object nicknamed Bee-Zed goes against the grain, spinning around the Solar System the opposite way. Not only that, it frequently ventures within Jupiter’s orbital space—putting it on a potential collision course with the gas giant and its 6,000 co-orbiting asteroids. Of the millions … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

An Asteroid Hunter on What We Need to Do to Prevent Armageddon

Humans are rightly terrified by the threat of nuclear war, but there’s also a non-zero chance that a giant rock will come hurling through our atmosphere to ruin every Earthling’s day. When that happened 66 million years ago, it triggered a mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs. But we have something the dinosaurs didn’t: … Continued

Tech News

We Were Wrong About How the Asteroid Apocalypse Will Go Down

Here’s a cheery thought to send you into the weekend: New research suggests that the greatest danger posed by an incoming asteroid is not from the cataclysmic impact of it striking the Earth—but from the enormous shockwave it produces when it enters the atmosphere. A study accepted for publication in Meteoritics and Planetary Science (preprint … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

NASA’s Asteroid-Hunting Spacecraft Just Got an Amazing Side-Quest

Right now, OSIRIS-REx is one of the busiest spacecrafts in the solar system. OSIRIS-REx, which blasted off in September 2016, has been getting ready to rendezvous with the object of its mission—an asteroid called Bennu—in order to bring back samples to Earth. But before the spacecraft links up with Bennu in 2018, it’s been assigned … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

How Failed Planets May Have Shaped the Earth

Earth has some battle scars from back in the day. When the solar system was still young and wild, roughly 4 billion years ago, Earth, its Moon, and Mars were attacked by a series of asteroid assailants. It’s long been assumed that the space rocks involved in the assault—called the Late Heavy Bombardment—are now floating … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

NASA Is Sending a Probe to Explore Jupiter’s Mysterious Trojan Asteroids

In addition to its 67 moons, Jupiter is accompanied by two giant clusters of asteroids that orbit the sun along the same path, and is packed with as many large objects as the Asteroid Belt. Yesterday, NASA announced a new mission to investigate these “trojan” asteroids. Here’s what you need to know about this exciting … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

The White House Is Officially Worried About a Deadly Asteroid Impact

Concern over an apocalyptic asteroid strike has risen all the way to the top: The White House released a document this week detailing a strategy for National Near Earth Object (NEO) preparedness. Morgan Freeman would no doubt be proud, although honestly, the nation might have more pressing apocalypse concerns closer to home. Last year brought … Continued

Tech NewsSocial Media

The Year in Encouraging News

This year sucked, didn’t it? I don’t need to remind you of all the ways in which this year was bad. (But here are a few anyway: Trump, mass death and destruction, the blatant, mainstream adoption of weaponized hatred, the deaths of several beloved public figures, Trump.) But sometimes, all you want is for a … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Here’s What Would Happen If a Giant Asteroid Struck the Ocean

Seventy percent of Earth’s surface is covered by water, meaning if we were unfortunate enough to be struck by an enormous asteroid, it’d probably make a big splash. A team of data scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory recently decided to model what would happen if an asteroid struck the sea. Despite the apocalyptic subject … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Scientists Have a Crazy Plan to Nuke Deadly Asteroids Out of the Sky

If an enormous asteroid struck the Earth, humanity would be, in a word, screwed. To prevent that from happening, and hopefully inspire a sweet Armageddon reboot in the process, a team of scientists is exploring the possibility of nuking asteroids out of the sky. Yes, you heard that correctly. Nuking asteroids to prevent the apocalypse … Continued

io9Movies

Some Really Cool-Sounding Scifi Films Will Premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival

The Sundance Film Festival is well-known for debuting some of the best films of any given year. In fact, it’s likely many of your favorite movies of all time have premiered at Sundance—and next year, that may happen again. Though the festival is always dominated by dramatic films, next year there are more than the … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

An Asteroid Zipped Through Earth’s Shadow Last Night

A newly discovered asteroid gave our planet a close brush last night—and in what may be an astronomical first, observers managed to film the space rock passing in and out of Earth’s shadow. 2016 VA, an object roughly the length of a commercial bus, was discovered yesterday by the Mount Lemmon Sky Survey in Arizona, … Continued

io9Television

New TV Drama About the Imminent Arrival of a Killer Asteroid Feels Very Timely

Unfortunately, the CBS show—from executive producer Alex Kurtzman, whose TV credits include Fringe, Limitless, Sleepy Hollow, and Alias; he also directed the Tom Cruise Mummy reboot that’s out next year—is titled Salvation, suggesting it might not end with the asteroid smashing Earth into a billion pieces, as we all might currently be hoping TV Line … Continued