The US government has proposed an increased global effort to locate 300,000 or so Earth-impact risks and prepare for potential future meteor collisions that could destroy cities.

Near Earth Objects (NEOs) are defined as asteroids or comets that come near our planet's orbit. A recently released White House document entitled 'National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy' details how low-probability, high consequence impacts pose a "significant and complex challenge".

The report says that while a "civilization-ending"smash with space rocks over the next 200 years is unlikely, the risk of "smaller but still catastrophic NEO impacts is real."

India is planning to launch 103 satellites in February in a single mission, breaking the record currently held by Russia. Most of them are CubeSat nanosatellites measuring 10x10x11cm.

The record payload will be carried by India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) from the Sriharikota spaceport, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) said.

"We are making a century by launching over 100 satellites at one go," ISRO director S. Somnath told a science convention in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, according to the Press Trust of India.

One of the world's largest ocean circulation systems may not be as stable as today's weather models predict, according to a new study.

In fact, changes in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) — the same deep-water ocean current featured in the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" — could occur quite abruptly, in geologic terms, the study says. The research appears in the Jan. 4 online edition of the journal Science Advances.

"We show that the possibility of a collapsed AMOC under global warming is hugely underestimated," said Wei Liu, a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Yale University and lead author of the study. Liu began the research when he was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and continued it at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, prior to coming to Yale.

A mysterious signal coming from deep in the universe has finally been traced to its source.

Fast Radio Bursts, or FRBs, have only been heard 18 times and have been a puzzle to scientists since they were detected in 2007. Nobody knows where they could be coming from or how they might be triggered, with speculation ranging from a huge star, jets of material shooting out of a black hole - or even aliens.

FRBs are powerful but very short radio waves, which last no more than a millisecond. The first was found by Australia's Parkes telescope in 2007. Since then, 17 have been heard, but only one of them has been heard repeatedly. That repeated burst was studied for six months, letting scientists find its exact position in the sky. It seems to be coming from a faint dwarf galaxy more than three billion light years away, scientists said.

FRB 121102, as it is referred to, was found using the Very Large Array. That is a multi-antenna radio telescope operated by the US National Science Foundation.

A new double-ringed galaxy unlike "anything astronomers have observed before" has been spotted approximately 359 million light-years from Earth.

Named 'PGC 1000714' or 'Burcin's Galaxy', the object has a "well-defined elliptical-like core surrounded by two circular rings," according to astronomers.

It seems to belong to an extremely rare 'hoag-type' class of galaxy. Such galaxies are known for their round core surrounded by a ring, with nothing visibly connecting them. Much like galaxies in our own solar system, these are usually disc-shaped.

After the deadly Oso landslide enveloped a neighborhood in 2014, scientists and emergency managers launched a review of how they detect massive mudflows on one of the world's most dangerous volcanos: Mount Rainier.

"That event (Oso) moved about 8 million cubic meters of mass," said Scott Heinze, deputy director of Pierce County's emergency-management department. "The projection for a Mount Rainier lahar is between 250 to 500 million cubic meters of mass — exponentially greater."

Pierce County Executive Pat McCarthy pushed for the review, which examined the functionality of the current warning system and also compared it to others around the globe, he said. The sensors, which were installed in the 1990s, monitor fast-moving gushes of mud and debris, or lahars.

Volcanic mudflows — formed by large landslides or suddenly melting snow and ice during eruptions — are considered the mountain's greatest hazard.

The zombie virus would spread through the human population at a rate faster than the black death, according to a study from UK scientists.

Once introduced on Earth, the zombie virus would condemn the human population to extinction in less than six months, scientists at Leicester University (UK) have calculated.

The growing list of corrections science textbook writers will have to make could make our third grade curriculum practically unrecognizable. In addition to nixing Pluto from the classic lineup of planets in our solar system, teachers may have to add a second liquid state to the traditional phases of water—aka solid ice, liquid, and gas. Researchers presented this fourth state recently in a paper for the International Journal of Nanotechnology. The writers found that, when heated between 122 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit (or 50 and 60 degrees Celsius), water's physical properties undergo a change that cannot be so easily classified.

But to understand why this is relevant, let's take a step back. States of matter, as you probably learned in grade school, have to do with the way atoms and molecules arrange themselves depending on the amount of energy present, or lack thereof.

Put simply, the higher the temperature, the higher the energy and the more disorganized the atoms become. Less energy is present at cooler temperatures, which is why water molecules are more orderly in a solid ice stage than in vapor. You've probably seen some version of this explaining it visually (image left).

As detailed in this recent paper, researchers found a surprising glitch in water's physical properties once it reached 122 degrees Fahrenheit, a structural change that appeared to be an extra, less atomically organized liquid phase. Independent researchers will need to conduct follow-up experiments to prove this second liquid state, and should they succeed, the implications could be wide-ranging. Water plays a crucial role in the development of most organisms, which means understanding how it operates could help us better understand our own biological systems on a fundamental level. What this finding proves more than anything, though, is how quickly and easily basic concepts can change. Water's fourth state may not feel as groundbreaking as discovering the world revolves around the sun, but time will tell how much it may change our understanding of the world in big and small ways.

The use of facial recognition software for commercial purposes is becoming more common, but, as Amazon scans faces in its physical shop and Facebook searches photos of users to add tags to, those concerned about their privacy are fighting back.

Berlin-based artist and technologist Adam Harvey aims to overwhelm and confuse these systems by presenting them with thousands of false hits so they can't tell which faces are real.

The Hyperface project involves printing patterns on to clothing or textiles, which then appear to have eyes, mouths and other features that a computer can interpret as a face.

This is not the first time Harvey has tried to confuse facial recognition software. During a previous project, CV Dazzle, he attempted to create an aesthetic of makeup and hairstyling that would cause machines to be unable to detect a face.

Getting inaccurate information about an event usually makes it harder for people to remember the original details. But new research suggests that there may be times when misinformation actually boosts memory.

The study shows that people who actually notice that the misinformation is inconsistent with the original event have better memory for the event compared with people who never saw the misinformation in the first place.

Psychological scientist Adam Putnam of Carleton College, lead author, says:

"Our experiments show that misinformation can sometimes enhance memory rather than harm it. These findings are important because they help explain why misinformation effects occur sometimes but not at other times - if people notice that the misinformation isn't accurate then they won't have a false memory."