hitting

Asteroid spotted just before hitting Earth’s atmosphere wows astronomers

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This weekend, an astronomer spotted a small asteroid just hours before the space rock crashed into Earth’s atmosphere and met its fiery demise. On Friday (March 11), astronomer Krisztián Sárneczky was observing the sky at the Piszkésteto Mountain Station, which is part of the Konkoly Observatory near Budapest in Hungary. During his observations, he spotted … Read more

Officials Confirm Several Geomagnetic Storms Are Hitting Earth This Week

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The Sun is continuing its rowdy behavior, with flares and coronal mass ejections almost every day since mid-January. That means the inevitable has happened: some of those eruptions have blasted in the general direction of Earth, which means we’re in for some solar storms.   The Space Weather Prediction Center of the US National Oceanic … Read more

Two New Studies Just Outlined The Basics of Building an Interstellar Light Sail

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For centuries, people have dreamed of being driven at speed across the vast oceans of space by winds of light. As whimsical as the idea sounds, nudging reflective sails slowly towards the speed of light using nothing more than the punch of photons might be our only plausible shot at reaching another star inside of … Read more