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To avert a new apocalypse – this time set for February 2013 – scientists suggest confronting asteroid 2012 DA14 with either paint, or big guns. The tough part of either scheme is that time has long run out to build a spaceship for any operation. ­NASA confirms the 60-meter (197-feet) asteroid, spotted by Spanish stargazers in February, has a good chance of colliding with Earth in eleven months. The rock's closest approach to the planet is scheduled for February 15, 2013, when the distance between the planet and space wanderer will be under 27,000 km (16,700 miles). This is lower...

Next week, the Earth's residents can once again play the popular game of "What if?" What if a hunk of cosmic rock is out there on a collision course with Earth? At the moment, an asteroid labeled "(433) Eros" is rushing toward our planet on a course that will bring it relatively close, at least on a cosmic scale. On the one hand, the chunk of rock—measuring 30 by 13 by 13 kilometers (19 by 8 by 8 miles)—is approaching Earth closer than any asteroid of this size has for a long time. But on the other, it is currently...

On June 19, maritime treasure hunters -- who were looking for priceless submerged hooch in shipwrecks -- discovered a 60-meter-diameter circle 87 meters under the Baltic Sea. Are these the remains of an alien vessel or Cthulhu's personal pan pizza? Next to the circle is a 300 meter long slide track -- as if the circle has traveled across the seabed before it has settled [...] They rule out theories that there is a depth bomb or mine from the First World War -- or a symmetrical [algal] bloom [...] The most likely scenario is still that there is a...

The pre-dawn phenomenon, which looks like a huge bubble expanding and then popping, was recorded June 22 by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope and the Subaru Telescope. Since then, speculation has run rampant about the source of the early morning flash. Ichi Tanaka, a support astronomer at Subaru Telescope, describes it as "a huge halo of light above the eastern horizon," adding, "It was slowly expanding to over 45 degrees in five minutes or more."

An individual mandate has done little to stem the rate of medical bankruptcies in Massachusetts, boding poorly for the federal healthcare reform law enacted almost a year ago, according to a new liberal study. The number of medical bankruptcies in Massachusetts increased from 7,504 in 2007 to 10,093 in 2009, while the state’s rate of medical bankruptcies experienced a “non-significant” decrease from 59.3 percent to 52.9, said researchers Dr. David Himmelstein and Dr. Steffie Woolhandler in the American Journal of Medicine. The authors, both affiliated with single-payer advocate Physicians for a National Health Program, said medical bankruptcies continue to plague...

..Scientists have long known that there's a mysterious amount of siderophile ("iron-loving") metals in Earth's mantle. Such metals, including gold, tend to affiliate with iron in their liquid forms. The best explanation has been that some sort of space object brought the elements to the planet just after it formed its core, but the exact nature of the impactor has been a matter of debate. Based on computer simulations, the new study says that a small number of enormous, random impacts roughly 4.5 billion years ago are the sources of Earth's iron-loving materials. These impactors were rocky objects left over...

Want to know what would happen if a 10km-wide asteroid came out of the sky and slammed down on your city? Scientists at Purdue University and Imperial College London have updated their popular impact effects calculator first produced in 2004. Users dial in details about the hypothetical impactor, like its diameter and density. The web program then estimates the scale of the ensuing disaster, such as the size of the crater left behind. It will also tell you how far away you need to be to avoid being buried by all the material thrown out by the blast, or set...

The header link goes to the article on space.com. Basic story is that an Italian guy who sounds like a hobbyist (former curator of a science museum) found the feature while tooling around on GoogleEarth. Since it's in the remote desert, it's hardly changed since impact -- even has ejecta rays. There's a problem here; most models indicate that an object the likely size of this object should disintegrate in the atmosphere. This one obviously didn't. Abstract in Science magazine (you'd have to pay to read the whole thing) The Kamil Crater in Egypt Fresh crater in Egypt -- increases...

Low-skilled workers have some of the highest unemployment rates in America. Adults without high school diplomas face an unemployment rate of 14.5%, almost three times as high as rates for college graduates, and well above the national average of 9.7%. The unemployment rate for teens, another low-skill group, is 26%. Reasonable people likely presume that Congress and the administration are doing everything possible to help low-skilled workers get jobs. But, come 2014, the new health care bill will make it harder for employers to hire low-skill workers. And, as workplaces around the country prepare to implement the Patient Protection and...

It didn't take long for businesses — especially in Illinois — to start feeling ObamaCare's job-killing punch. While most of the punishing mandates and taxes don't start immediately, public accounting rules operate on a more timely basis. Some businesses have disclosed that their value will be negatively impacted by the new health reform law. In the last week, four major Illinois-based companies — Boeing, Caterpillar, Deere & Co. and Illinois Tool Works — have announced they will take charges of $150 million, $100 million, $150 million and $22 million, respectively, because of one provision in the new law. In order...

LAHORE: Dozen of media persons have been subjected to the horrible torture by doctors in the presence of police at Jinnah Hospital here on Wednesday. Tension began when media persons went to hospital to cover a demonstration staged by the relative of 60-year-old patient, who died due to alleged negligence of the doctor. The doctors became annoyed when journalists asked them the reason for the death of patient while instead of answering the question, they started beating the media persons. According to Geo correspondent Faisal Karim, media persons were invited for talks at the hospital’s conference room, where they were...

HELSINKI (AFP) – Finnish researchers called for a revision of climate change estimates Monday after their findings showed emissions from soil would contribute more to climate warming than previously thought. "A Finnish research group has proved that the present standard measurements underestimate the effect of climate warming on emissions from the soil," the Finnish Environment Institute said in a statement. "The error is serious enough to require revisions in climate change estimates," it said, adding that all climate models used soil emission estimates based on measurements received using an erroneous method. The institute said that while emissions from soil were...

Debate about the impact of the $787 billion stimulus continued this week. “Thanks largely to the Recovery Act,” Larry Summers argued, “we have walked a substantial distance back from the economic abyss and are on the path toward economic recovery.” Yet the latest data from the Department of Commerce continue to show that only an insubstantial part of this distance was due to the stimulus. The table shows the latest Department of Commerce estimates of the contributions of consumption, investment, net exports, and government spending to the improvement in GDP growth from the first to second quarter. Growth improved by...

William K. Hartmann painted this conception of an asteroid impact on Mars. Similar explosions formed many of craters that international space probes have observed on the red planet. Hartmann, co-founder of the Tucson-based Planetary Science Institute, is an internationally recognized expert on impact cratering and the evolution of planetary surfaces. Among his many contributions to the field, the Meteoritical Society is honoring his discovery of the Moon's giant Orientale impact basin, a discovery he made as a graduate student in 1962 under the direction of space sciences pioneer Gerard Kuiper. The society also is recognizing his development of a...

As you may have guessed, rising unemployment accounts for many home foreclosures. That's turning many people from homeowners to renters. Judy Heller and her husband spent 24 years in their Rochester home, raising their kids. But they're moving out soon. "It's too expensive, we can't afford to stay here and my husband had looked for a job around Rochester but most of them are minimum wage, and you can't survive on minimum wage now," Says Heller. They're moving to an apartment in the Twin Cities, where her husband's found a job. Down sizing means living in a smaller place, and...

This image shows a large impact shown on the bottom left on Jupiter's south polar region captured on July 20, 2009, by NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility in Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Credit: NASA/JPL/Infrared Telescope Facility As we reported yesterday, an amateur astronomer snapped evidence of an impact on Jupiter. Now, NASA has confirmed the black spot on the giant gas planet is in fact an impact and not just a weather-related disturbance. And Anthony Wesley has now made the biggest observation of his life. "It still feels very surreal right now," he told Universe Today. "I guess it will take...

2007 VK184Earth Impact Risk Summary Torino Scale (maximum) 1 Palermo Scale (maximum) -1.83 Palermo Scale (cumulative) -1.82 Impact Probability (cumulative) 3.4e-04 Number of Potential Impacts 4 Vimpact 19.19 km/s Vinfinity 15.63 km/s H 22.0 Diameter 0.130 km Mass 3.3e+09 kg Energy 1.5e+02 MT all above are mean values weighted by impact probability Analysis based on101 observations spanning 60.013 days(2007-Nov-12.13904 to 2008-Jan-11.15189) Orbit diagram and elements available here.

WASHINGTON, June 22, 2009 – Defense Department officials are working aggressively to reduce the impact of multiple deployments on the children of military families. “The department recognizes that these multiple, long-term deployments are really tough on families,” said Barbara Thompson, director of the Pentagon’s Office of Family Policy/Children and Youth. Deployments since fighting began in Iraq and Afghanistan have affected nearly 2 million military children, and about 234,000 of those children currently have at least one parent deployed, according to a 2007 Defense Manpower Data Center report. Surveys of active-duty and reserve-component spouses in 2008 included questions regarding military children....

Ever wish you got something really painful on camera, right at the moment of impact? Well these people managed. These have all got to hurt. More pics on site

When an asteroid was spotted heading towards our planet last October, researchers rushed to document a cosmic impact from start to finish for the first time. Roberta Kwok tells the tale.Around midnight on 6 October 2008, a white dot flitted across the screen of Richard Kowalski's computer at an observatory atop Mount Lemmon in Arizona. Kowalski had seen hundreds of such dots during three and a half years of scanning telescope images for asteroids that might hit Earth or come close. He followed the object through the night and submitted the coordinates, as usual, to the Minor Planet Center in...