Small asteroid 2012 DA14 will make an extremely close approach on February 15, 2013. It will pass by Earth at distance of about 27,000 km (17,000 miles/no closer than 0.000181 AU) from the center of the Earth; within about 3.5 Earth radii of the Earth's surface. This near-Earth asteroid was discovered on February 22, 2012 by LaSagra Observatory in the mountains of Andalusia in southern Spain. Asteroid 2012 DA14 is thought to be about 45 meters in diameter and his estimated mass about 130,000 metric tons.
(Planetary Radio features Jaime Nomen discussing La Sagra's discovery of 2012 DA14. Listen here!)
Its orbit is almost circular but still enough elliptical to pass near Earth two times per year. The preliminary orbit shows that 2012 DA14 has a very Earth-Like orbit with a period of 366 days. On February 16, 2012 it was about 2.5 million km (1.5 million miles) away (about 6 times the distance to the Moon).
Science & Technology
CNN's Chad Myers has the details of an asteroid scientists say will narrowly miss hitting Earth in February.
© Credit: Flickr Creative Commons
A rapt crowd followed a trail of bubbles that zipped over the surface of a seaside pond in the ruins of a 19th century bath in San Francisco.
San Francisco's newest star - the first river otter seen in the city in decades - surfaced its whiskery head furtively, a mouth full of sea grass. The crowd oohed as large waves pounded rocks just offshore, a briny smell and chill in the air.
The otter ducked back under water and took the sea grass underneath a concrete remnant of the historic baths, where the animal was building a nest.
"We came here to see the baths and this was just a bonus," said Eliza Durkin, who brought her son Jonathan to the site for a school project on historic places.
Beyond tourists, the otter has mystified and delighted conservationists, who are piecing together clues to figure out how he got there. The whiskery creature was first spotted by birdwatchers in September and has since settled into the City by the Bay.
River otters once thrived in the San Francisco Bay area, but development, hunting and environmental pollution in the 19th and 20th centuries has taken its toll on the once thriving local population.
The creatures are a living barometer of water quality - if it's bad they cannot thrive. But new populations being seen north and east of San Francisco are giving hope to conservationists that years of environmental regulations and new technologies are making a difference.
© AP Photo/Matthew Brown, File
This July 2, 2011 file photo shows oil from a ruptured ExxonMobil pipeline on the Yellowstone River and along its banks near Laurel, Mont. A federal investigation says Exxon Mobil’s delayed response to a pipeline break beneath Montana’s Yellowstone River made the spill far worse than it otherwise would have been.
This July 2, 2011 file photo shows oil from a ruptured ExxonMobil pipeline on the Yellowstone River and along its banks near Laurel, Mont. A federal investigation says Exxon Mobil’s delayed response to a pipeline break beneath Montana’s Yellowstone River made the spill far worse than it otherwise would have been.
The Department of Transportation report to Congress was crafted in response to a 2011 spill into Montana's Yellowstone River. The spill highlighted gaps in federal pipeline rules that require lines to be buried just 4 feet below riverbeds - scant cover that can quickly be scoured away by floodwaters.
The Associated Press obtained the report this week before its public release.
Regulators found flood-related pipeline spills since 1993 in California, Texas, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota and Kentucky. Of the 2.4 million gallons of oil, gasoline, propane and other hazardous liquids released, less than 300,000 gallons were recovered.
There is a lot of excitement about Comet ISON, which might become a very bright comet, visible across the globe, by the end of 2013. But, before that happens, a second comet might become visible to the eye alone around the time it is closest to the sun in March of 2013. The Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii discovered this comet in June 2011. Since comets carry the names of their discoverers, it has been designated C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS). Only the largest telescopes on Earth could glimpse Comet PANSTARRS when it was first discovered, but amateurs telescopes began to pick it up by May 2012. By October 2012, its surrounding coma was seen to be large and fine at an estimated 75,000 miles (120,000 kilometers) wide. In March 2013, by some estimates, this comet should get as bright as Venus, but do remember that comets are notoriously difficult to predict. As comet-hunter David Levy once famously said:
Comets are like cats; they have tails, and they do precisely what they want.
© Dave Eagle
Comet PANSTARRS on the evening of April 6, 2013. This view is to the east that evening. The oval near the comet is the Andromeda galaxy. You’ll want a dark sky to see both the comet and the galaxy. Chart via Dave Eagle at www.eagleseye.me.uk.
Comet PANSTARRS on the evening of April 6, 2013. This view is to the east that evening. The oval near the comet is the Andromeda galaxy. You’ll want a dark sky to see both the comet and the galaxy. Chart via Dave Eagle at www.eagleseye.me.uk.
© – A. Mellinger, U.Central Michigan; radio image – E. Carretti, CSIRO; radio data – S-PASS team; composition – E. Bresser, CSIRO
This shows the “geysers” (in blue) shooting out of the Milky Way.
This shows the “geysers” (in blue) shooting out of the Milky Way.
The amount of magnetic energy contained in these geyser-like outflows "corresponds to the energy liberated by about a million supernova explosions - that is a lot!" study lead author Ettore Carretti, an astrophysicist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Australia, told SPACE.com.
These outflows could help solve mysteries concerning the magnetic field of the Milky Way galaxy, Carretti added.
© NSF/J. Yang
The research reveals another risk that manned deep-space missions to places such as Mars or the asteroids could pose, scientists added.
"This study shows for the first time that exposure to radiation levels equivalent to a mission to Mars could produce cognitive problems and speed up changes in the brain that are associated with Alzheimer's disease," study author Kerry O'Banion, a neuroscientist at the University of Rochester Medical Center, said in a statement.
© LMU / MPQ Munich
When an object is heated, its atoms can move with different levels of energy, from low to high. With positive temperatures (blue), atoms more likely occupy low-energy states than high-energy states, while the opposite is true for negative temperatures (red).
When an object is heated, its atoms can move with different levels of energy, from low to high. With positive temperatures (blue), atoms more likely occupy low-energy states than high-energy states, while the opposite is true for negative temperatures (red).
Oddly, another way to look at these negative temperatures is to consider them hotter than infinity, researchers added.
This unusual advance could lead to new engines that could technically be more than 100 percent efficient, and shed light on mysteries such as dark energy, the mysterious substance that is apparently pulling our universe apart.
An object's temperature is a measure of how much its atoms move - the colder an object is, the slower the atoms are. At the physically impossible-to-reach temperature of zero kelvin, or minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 273.15 degrees Celsius), atoms would stop moving. As such, nothing can be colder than absolute zero on the Kelvin scale.
© Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin tests its Human Universal Load Carrier exoskeleton.
Lockheed Martin tests its Human Universal Load Carrier exoskeleton.
But the risk, ethics and policy issues arising out of these so-called "military human enhancements" - including drugs, special nutrition, electroshock, gene therapy and robotic implants and prostheses - are poorly understood, Lin and his colleagues Maxwell Mehlman and Keith Abney posit in a new report for The Greenwall Foundation (.pdf), scheduled for wide release tomorrow. In other words, we better think long and hard before we unleash our army of super soldiers.
If we don't, we could find ourselves in big trouble down the road. Among the nightmare scenarios: Botched enhancements could harm the very soldiers they're meant to help and spawn pricey lawsuits. Tweaked troopers could run afoul of international law, potentially sparking a diplomatic crisis every time the U.S. deploys troops overseas. And poorly planned enhancements could provoke disproportionate responses by America's enemies, resulting in a potentially devastating arms race.
Comment: Caveat Lector: Wired Magazine and Wired.com is owned by a company which produces drones and is heavily invested in facilitating the widespread use of domestic drones for spying on, tracking, arresting and ultimately eliminating American citizens.
Attack of the Drones
Back at the beginning of December NASA and NOAA unveiled some of the marvelous new visible light imagery of Earth at night at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting in San Francisco. There was so much new and exciting in these images that I didn't manage to get around to highlighting one of my favorites: seeing Earth illuminated by moonlight.
© NASA
Comment: 'Once-in-a-lifetime comets'? What an anachronism! A quick search through our database clearly tells you that the inner solar system has been liberally sprinkled with comets in recent years!... And at the rate more and more are being discovered and being predicted to be "visible in daylight", like Comet ISON this November, it looks like there are plenty more comets to come...