A huge asteroid's close approach to Earth tomorrow (Nov. 8) reinforces that we live in a cosmic shooting gallery, and we can't just sit around waiting to get hit again, experts say.

Asteroid 2005 YU55, which is the size of an aircraft carrier, will zip within the moon's orbit tomorrow, but it poses no danger of hitting us for the foreseeable future. Eventually, however, one of its big space rock cousins will barrel straight toward Earth, as asteroids have done millions of times throughout our planet's history.

If we want to avoid going the way of the dinosaurs, which were wiped out by an asteroid strike 65 million years ago, we're going to have to deflect a killer space rock someday, researchers say. Fortunately, we know how to do it.

"We have the capability - physically, technically - to protect the Earth from asteroid impacts," said former astronaut Rusty Schweickart, chairman of the B612 Foundation, a group dedicated to predicting and preventing catastrophic asteroid strikes. "We are now able to very slightly and subtly reshape the solar system in order to enhance human survival."

In fact, we have several different techniques at our disposal to nudge killer asteroids away from Earth. Here's a brief rundown of the possible arrows in our planetary defense quiver.

Boeing Co and All Nippon Airways are investigating a landing gear problem on the 787 Dreamliner, the first technical glitch reported since the new jetliner entered service less than two weeks ago, the airline said on Monday.

Pilots on the first of two aircraft delivered so far to ANA were forced on Sunday to deploy the landing gear using a manual backup system, after an indicator lamp suggested the wheels were not properly down.

They landed at Okayama on the second attempt following the incident, the airline said.

"We are not yet sure what the problem was, but we are investigating," an airline spokesman said, adding that Boeing was also involved in the investigation.

Today we are going to look at the Summary of Conclusions about Fireballs and Meteorites that Victor Clube attached to his cover letter to the Chief, Physics and BMD Coordinator of the European Office of Aerospace Research and Development back in 1996, 5 years before September 11, 2001; that, and a few other things.

I often get accused of "fear mongering" because I keep bringing this subject up again and again. I even think that it is fascinating that the big breakthrough in my experiment in Superluminal Communication came on the day that the fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy began striking Jupiter - even at the very moment of the first impact - and that this communication with "myself in the future" has focused so much attention on the subject of swarms of comets and comet fragments that repeatedly barrel through the solar system, wreaking havoc and bringing death and destruction to earth. As a result of the research prompted by this communication, I wrote an entire 800 page book that is woven around the issue of cometary explosion type catastrophes that obviously have occurred repeatedly throughout history: The Secret History of The World.

In the early days of publishing the results of this experiment, I was nonplussed by the many attacks I came under from all quarters. I was accused of "channeling aliens" (not true); of wanting to "start a cult" (what is cultic about doing research into scientific subjects and exposing religion for the fraud it is?) and so on. That sort of thing really hurt and puzzled me at first, but I have now seen it for the blessing it was: it has helped me to learn about the kinds of people who are in charge of our world, the kind of people who want to keep secrets so that they can hang onto power: the kind of people who create such things as "The War on Terror" to conceal from the masses of humanity the future that may very well bring our civilization to an end; the kind of people who know that survival of cometary bombardment is possible and who want to be the only ones who do survive, and to hell with everyone else.

Star study suggests life-friendly conditions could be regional

Could yet another universal constant, the value assigned to the electromagnetic force, be less constant than we thought? And could variability of the constant help explain life in the universe?

That's the tantalizing hypothesis offered by Australian astronomers, who believe that the value alpha, referring to the strength of the electromagnetic force (and measured at 1/137.03599976), may not be constant everywhere.

A team of scientists has used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to observe a quasar accretion disc - a brightly glowing disc of matter that is slowly being sucked into its galaxy's central black hole. Their study makes use of a novel technique that uses gravitational lensing to give an immense boost to the power of the telescope. The incredible precision of the method has allowed astronomers to directly measure the disc's size and plot the temperature across different parts of the disc.

Brandon Keim conveys the physics behind starling formations, which were featured a recent Mental Health Break:

Mathematical analysis of flock dynamics show how each starling's movement is influenced by every other starling, and vice versa. It doesn't matter how large a flock is, or if two birds are on opposite sides. It's as if every individual is connected to the same network. That phenomenon is known as scale-free correlation, and transcends biology. The closest fit to equations describing starling flock patterns come from the literature of "criticality," of crystal formation and avalanches - systems poised on the brink, capable of near-instantaneous transformation.

At 2 a.m. on Sunday (Nov. 6), most of the United States will enjoy the upside to the annual daylight saving time shift - setting our clocks back by an hour.

But be careful how you enjoy it, cautions Dr. Anita Valanju Shelgikar, director of the sleep medicine fellowship program at the University of Michigan.

"It's truly easier to go this way than in the other direction," Shelgikar said, referring to the spring-time shift forward an hour. "It does give you an extra hour in the morning to sleep, but it can throw people off, primarily because people say I can stay up a lot later because I have an extra hour in the morning to sleep and ultimately, they sleep deprive themselves."

The arrival of winter presents a more difficult transition than the shift back, since, as the days shorten, a gap widens between our internal body clocks and the natural day, she said. This becomes more of an issue farther north, since days become even shorter.

An asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier will fly near Earth on Nov. 8. While there is no danger of it hitting the planet, a Purdue asteroid impact expert says a similar-sized object hitting Earth would result in a 4,000-megaton blast, magnitude 7.0 earthquake and, should it strike in the deep ocean, 70-foot-high tsunami waves 60 miles from the splashdown site.

NASA scientists reported this week that the asteroid 2005 YU55 will pass between the Earth and the moon and come within 201,000 miles of Earth on its closest approach.

Jay Melosh, an expert in impact cratering and a distinguished professor of earth and atmospheric sciences, physics, and aerospace engineering at Purdue, said the asteroid's orbit and trajectory mean there is no chance of an impact.

"What is unique about this asteroid flyby is that we were aware of it well in advance," Melosh said. "Before about 1980 we wouldn't know about an asteroid of this size until it was already making a close pass, but now it is unlikely that such an asteroid will approach the Earth without our knowledge."

"I really thought he would never make it," said Nick Marx, stroking Chhouk's trunk with a sense of pride and affection.

"He was seriously injured. He was extremely young, emaciated and very, very sick."

Chhouk, a bull elephant now 5 years old, was found in the Cambodian jungle in 2007, alone and close to death, his left front foot mangled by a poacher's trap.

Do you know what a murmuration is, and have you ever witnessed such a dazzling display of avian behavior? The accompanying video shows an enormous flock of European starlings -- a murmuration -- swirling through the sky in a magnificent ballet that almost seems choreographed. The short-lived seasonal phenomenon, signaling the onset of winter, was captured by Sophie Windsor Clive and Liberty Smith on a canoe trip atop Ireland's River Shannon. The 2-minute clip was posted to Vimeo last week and titled, "A chance encounter and shared moment with one of nature's greatest and most fleeting phenomena." This week it began circulating on the Internet, to popular acclaim (stick with it; the show begins after about 20 seconds and improves as the clip progresses).


As for murmurations, they typically occur in late autumn, as the starlings return to roosts after long-distance foraging expeditions. The dusk flights can involve tens of thousands of birds and what's mystifying is how they can swirl about so swiftly and in such unison without colliding into one another. (Possessing a reaction time of under 100 milliseconds helps.)

Some experts believe the starlings flock together and fly in this manner as a means of defense against predators, such as peregrine falcons. Whatever the reason, a murmuration is a sight to behold. Check out the video and see for yourself.