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The most distant object humanity has ever visited looks something like a spinning snowman or hourglass that’s lost in space.Researchers who work on NASA’s nuclear-powered New Horizons mission released a movie on Tuesday showing the rotation of the mountain-size rock, which is known formally as (486958) 2014 MU69.(It’s more commonly referred to as “Ultima Thule”.)Mu69 is about 4 billion miles (6 billion kilometres) from Earth and 1 billion miles (2 billion kilometres) beyond Pluto.New Horizons flew by the object on New Year’s Day at a speed of 32,200 miles per hour (52,000 kilometres per hour), and came within about 2,200 miles...

Strange Space Object Stumps Astronomers; Appears to be Asteroid but Has Six Comet-Like Tails Posted by Russell Westerholm Astronomers have spotted a curious comet-like spatial object with the Hubble Telescope that has six trails, causing it to look like a badminton shuttlecock, BBC News reported. The observers were lead to believe the object is an asteroid because it was spotted in an asteroid belt, but its tails are more characteristic of a comet. Asteroids also typically only appear as tiny dots of light. "We were literally dumbfounded when we saw it," Dave Jewitt, a professor from the University of California...

Closest approach to be 3:28 PST Tuesday afternoon.

Cosmic Impact Site That Created Earth’s Axial Tilt and Fault Lines © Mihai Radu Draghici Abstract: Using Google Earth and browsing the geographic appearance of the Earth’s crust starting from the South Pacific Ocean right above Antarctica and traveling over to Drake’s Passage and into the South Atlantic Ocean there seems to be a visual trace that some sort of cosmic collision occurred in that area. (See Figure 1) The impact of the object surfed across the ocean and collided with the bottom of South America where it once connected to Antarctica creating Drake’s Passage opening. This impact also may...

Canada to launch first space mission to hunt asteroids 23:31 05 May 2008 NewScientist.com news service David Shiga NEOSSat is similar in design to the diminutive Microvariability and Oscillations of Stars (MOST) satellite (shown), which launched in 2003 (Illustration: University of British Columbia)Tools Canada will launch a suitcase-sized satellite in 2009 to spot potentially dangerous asteroids near Earth's orbit. It will be the first space mission devoted to hunting asteroids and may help find ones that are difficult to spot from the ground. Asteroids and comets occasionally hit Earth, with devastating consequences – a 10-kilometre-wide asteroid is thought to have...

Observations by astronomers tracking near-Earth asteroids have raised a new object to the top of the Earth-threat list. The asteroid could strike the Earth in 2102. However, Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near Earth Object Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, US, told New Scientist: "The most likely situation, by far, is that additional observations will bring it back down to a zero." He adds: "We're more likely to be hit between now and then by an object that we don't know about." On 23 February, new observations allowed researchers to more accurately calculate the orbit of...

Dino impact gave Earth the chill A cloud of sulphate particles may have blocked out the sun's warmth Evidence has been found for a global winter following the asteroid impact that is thought to have killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Rocks in Tunisia reveal microscopic cold-water creatures invaded a warm sea just after the space rock struck Earth. The global winter was probably caused by a pollutant cloud of sulphate particles released when the asteroid vapourised rocks at Chicxulub, Mexico. The results are reported in the latest issue of the journal Geology. Italian, US and Dutch...

Massive tsunami sweeps Atlantic Coast in asteroid impact scenario for March 16, 2880 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE SANTA CRUZ, CA--If an asteroid crashes into the Earth, it is likely to splash down somewhere in the oceans that cover 70 percent of the planet's surface. Huge tsunami waves, spreading out from the impact site like the ripples from a rock tossed into a pond, would inundate heavily populated coastal areas. A computer simulation of an asteroid impact tsunami developed by scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, shows waves as high as 400 feet sweeping onto the Atlantic Coast of the...