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solar orbit from time to time. Now, a recent paper out of the University of Hawaii written in partnership with the SETI Institute and the Department of Physics at the University of Helsinki has looked at the possible prospects for the population of captured Near-Earth asteroids, and the feasibility of detecting these with existing and future systems about to come online. ... Turns out, our large Moon makes a pretty good goaltender, ejecting —and sometimes taking a beating from — any tiny second moon hopeful. Of course, you can’t blame those astronomers of yore entirely. Though none of these spurious...

"The previous data that we had ... actually said that they (the tektites and the ash) were different in age, that they differed by about 180,000 years and that the extinction happened before the impact, which would totally preclude there being a causal relationship," said Renne, who studies ties between mass extinctions and volcanism. He and colleagues were comparing a new technique to date geologic events when they realized there was a discrepancy in the timing -- the so-called 'K-T boundary' -- the geological span of time between the Cretaceous and Paleocene periods when the dinosaurs and most other life...

Earth's gravity may not have the gravitas of Jupiter, but the planet regularly plucks small asteroids passing by and pins them into orbit. The mini-moons don't stay for long. Within a year or so they resume their looping, twisting paths like crazy straws around the sun. But others arrive to take their place. Simulations show that two asteroids the size of dishwashers and a dozen half-meter (1.6 feet) in diameter are orbiting Earth at any given time. Every 50 years or so something the size of a dump truck arrives. So far, there's been just one confirmed sighting. ... A...

Last September, when a tiny asteroid drifted into Earth’s vicinity, our planet’s gravity captured it. The meter-size object, designated 6R10DB9, is now making its third wide swing around Earth. It was quite faint, magnitude 19.3, when discovered September 14th with the 0.68-meter (27-inch) Schmidt telescope of the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona, and it won’t get much brighter than that. “Certainly 6R10DB9, with a geocentric eccentricity less than 1, is currently orbiting the Earth ,” says Gareth V. Williams of the Minor Planet Center, “although it will leave the Earth-Moon system after next June’s perigee.” Williams’s calculations show that prior...

<p>An asteroid playing a cat-and-mouse game with Earth will pull to its closest point in almost a century on Monday before swinging away for another 95 years, NASA said in a statement.</p> <p>Asteroid 2002 AA29 is like a mouse teasing a cat, approaching Earth first on one side and then on another, without ever making contact or actually passing our planet as the two bodies circle the sun, the astronomers said on Thursday.</p>

New 'moon' found around Earth There could be another one By Dr David Whitehouse BBC News Online science editor An amateur astronomer may have found another moon of the Earth. Experts say it may have only just arrived. Much uncertainty surrounds the mysterious object, designated J002E2. It could be a passing chunk of rock captured by the Earth's gravity, or it could be a discarded rocket casing coming back to our region of space. It was discovered by Bill Yeung from his observatory in Arizona and reported as a passing Near-Earth Object. It was soon realised however that far from...

Astronomers have discovered a new “quasi” moon orbiting Earth. 2016 HO3, as the asteroid is called, is at least 40 meters across and could be larger, up to 100 meters, researchers say, but it’s too far from Earth to qualify as a true satellite or mini-moon. "Since 2016 HO3 loops around our planet, but never ventures very far away as we both go around the sun, we refer to it as a quasi-satellite of Earth," said Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object (NEO) Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "One other asteroid -- 2003...

A huge streak of light brightened the sky early Thursday morning, prompting worry and curiosity from many Valley residents. The first reports came in right around 4 a.m. from around the Valley and even in areas like Yuma, Flagstaff and Pine Top. Several callers also reported feeling the ground shake. After dawn, a strange trail of cloud-like patterns was left in the sky. NASA estimates a small asteroid, approximately 10 feet in diameter with a mass in the tens of tons, entered the atmosphere above Arizona just before 4 a.m. Reports place the object 57 miles above the Tonto National...

Speranza points out another difficulty with the impact-origins theory. Large blocks of limestone sit within the boundaries of the Sirente "crater." Such limestone would not have survived an impact. So if Ormö's theory is correct, one must surmise that somebody set these giant chunks of rock in place since the crater formed. To Speranza, that just didn't make sense. Speranza and colleagues further argue that Ormö's radiocarbon dating gave one age for the main feature (placing it in the 4th or 5th century a.d.) and a completely different age for a nearby "crater" called C9, a date in the 3rd...

AN ASTEROID set for a staggering close whistle past of Earth in just 10 days could return to strike the planet as early as next year, NASA has admitted. We are expected to be risk free when the space rock hurtles past us at as close as 11,000 miles away - 21 times closer to us than the moon - on March 8. But the US space agency cannot yet be 100 per cent certain about its orbital path. NASA gives near-Earth asteroid a condition code regarding the certainty of its travel from one to 10, with the latter meaning...

You may need Java on, also this link has been giving a few people issues. The link is here (For copy/pasters) http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=2013%20TX68&orb=1 Go to www.spaceweather.com and scroll down to the near-earth objects. 2013 TX68 Mar 5 0.044 LD 30 m

Asteroid TX68 is coming! OK, it's probably gonna miss... but maybe not! Asteroid TX68, from it's name 2013 TX68 was discovered in 2013. It is supposed to approach closer than anything else recently, at .044 times the Lunar distance, or about 11,000 miles. Not sure why they use LD as a measurement because LD changes all the time, but so it goes... Comments or thoughts are always appreciated!

On October 6th, 2013, the Catalina Sky Survey discovered a small asteroid which was later designated as 2013 TX68. As part Apollo group this 30 meter (100 ft) rock is one of many Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) that periodically crosses Earth's orbit and passes close to our planet. A few years ago, it did just that, flying by our planet at a safe distance of about 2 million km (1.3 million miles). And according to NASA's Center for NEO Studies (CNEOS) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, it will be passing us again in a few weeks time, specifically between March 2nd...

An asteroid as long as a basketball court will give Earth a close shave next month — though scientists aren’t sure just how close. The near-Earth asteroid 2013 TX68, which is thought to be about 100 feet (30 meters) in diameter, will zoom past our planet on March 5. The space rock could come as close as 11,000 miles (17,700 kilometers) — less than 5 percent of the distance from Earth to the moon — or stay up to 9 million miles (14.5 million km) away during the flyby, NASA officials said. “The variation in possible closest-approach distances is due...

The last full moon of the year also happens to be the first on Christmas in 38 years. Photos of the Christmas full moon offer a festive, bright look at the night sky from around the world. Given the time of year, this special lunar occurrence is also known as the full cold moon, though the temperature of the moon is neither affected by its phases nor the weather on earth. Nonetheless, NASA's John Keller, who works at the Goddard Space Flight Center describes it as a special event that showcases the moon's unique relationship to earth. Keller said: As...

Graphic of what a asteroid of this type would look like - Nasa/ESA/M A Garlick/University of Warwick/University of Cambridge =================================================================================================================== An asteroid will flyby Earth on Christmas Eve and should be visible with a telescope so long as skies are clear. The 2003 SD220 asteroid was discovered in 2003 and its 24 December appearance will be the first of five encounters with our planet over the next 12 years. Very little is currently known about the asteroid, other than it is travelling at around five miles per second and has an absolute magnitude of around 16.9. Initially scientists had thought...

A 1.5 mile-wide asteroid is expected to make its closest approach to Earth on Christmas Eve. Asteroid 2003 SD220, also known as asteroid 163899, will pass our planet from 6.7 million miles (11 million km) away - 28 times farther than the moon. Despite its huge distance, reports have circulated the asteroid could cause earthquakes and trigger volcanoes on Earth. But experts have dismissed these claims, saying that there is no scientific evidence to back up these theories. Nasa says the space rock will make a return to Earth in 2018, but it will pose no threat to our planet...

Here, for the first time (to our knowledge), we are able to demonstrate unambiguously that the impact at the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary (K–Pg, ∼66 Mya) was followed by a so-called “impact winter.” This impact winter was the result of the injection of large amounts of dust and aerosols into the stratosphere and significantly reduced incoming solar radiation for decades. Therefore, this phase will have been a key contributory element in the extinctions of many biological clades, including the dinosaurs. The K–Pg boundary impact presents a unique event in Earth history because it caused global change at an unparalleled rate. This detailed...

Concept of an asteroid redirect mission. Credit: NASA ==================================================================================================================================== The grizzled asteroid miner is a stock character in science fiction. Now, a couple of recent events - one legal and the other technological - have brought asteroid mining a step closer to reality. The legal step was taken when the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee passed a bill titled H.R. 2262—SPACE Act of 2015. The bill has a number of measures designed to facilitate commercial space development, including a provision that gives individuals or companies ownership of any material that they mine in outer space. According to one estimate,...

Hungarian photographer Péter Komka wanted to capture the Halloween asteroid that looked like a skull, as it made its closest approach to Earth. What he got instead was a striking image of a meteor streaking across the sky. Komka set up his camera gear on an equatorial mounted tripod near the medieval castle of Salgó, and took several long exposure shot of the night sky, hoping to get some good enough image of the 2015 TB145 asteroid. Sadly the spooky space rock was too faint and did not appear in his photos. But what he finally captured in one photo...