Free Republic

Astronomers have discovered a 2,300-foot-wide (700 meters) asteroid hidden in the sun's glare, and it’s whizzing through our solar system at a near record-breaking pace.The skyscraper-size asteroid, named 2025 SC79, loops around the sun once every 128 days, giving it the second-fastest asteroid orbit in the solar system. It is also only the second known space object that orbits entirely inside of Venus' orbit, occasionally even crossing the orbit of Mercury.Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Science research institute in Washington, D.C., first spotted 2025 SC79 on Sep. 27...To put its 2,300-foot diameter in context, the so-called "city-killer" asteroid...

SAN DIEGO -- If you're light, it's fairly easy to travel at your own speed -- that is to say 186,282 miles per second or 299,800 kilometers per second. But if you are matter, then it's another matter altogether.Nothing we know of zips along more quickly than light. Einstein, nearly 100 years ago, said it's not possible. For us, the speed limit makes strange sense: Go faster than light, and you could return before you've left, become your own grandpa, or perform other leaps of cosmic logic.Fast forward a century. Astronomers are now measuring stuff -- material, matter, things --...