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earth

SPACE: Spacecraft Could Nuke Dangerous Asteroid to Defend Earth

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Asteroid - pixabay

The next time a hazardous asteroid lines Earth up in its crosshairs, we may be ready for the threat. Scientists and engineers with the U.S. government have drawn up plans for a spacecraft that could knock big, incoming space rocks off course via blunt-force impact or blow them to bits with a nuclear warhead, BuzzFeed News reported. The researchers announced the concept vehicle, known as the Hypervelocity Asteroid Mitigation Mission for Emergency Response (HAMMER), in a study in the February issue of the journal Acta Astronautica. And the team will discuss HAMMER at an asteroid-research conference in May, according to … Read more

SPACE: How Small We Are

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Earth and Moon from NASA's OSIRIS-REx

Here’s a new perspective on your home planet, helpfully provided by a NASA asteroid-sampling probe. Earth and the moon are two bright dots floating in an immense black void in the new view, which was captured by the space agency’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on Jan. 17 from a distance of 39.5 million miles (63.6 million kilometers). By Mike Wall – Full Story at Live Science

SCIENCE: The Paradox of Earth’s Inner Core

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Earth's core - NASA

Earth’s Inner Core Shouldn’t Technically Exist Earth’s solid inner core formed about one billion years ago. Researchers are getting closer to figuring out how it happened. One day, about a billion years ago, Earth’s inner core had a growth spurt. The molten ball of liquid metal at the center of our planet rapidly crystallized due to lowering temperatures, growing steadily outward until it reached the roughly 760-mile (1,220 kilometers) diameter to which it’s thought to extend today. That’s the conventional story of the inner core’s creation, anyway. But according to a new paper published online this week in the journal … Read more

SPACE: Nasa to Test Earth Defense System

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NASA scientists are excited about the upcoming close flyby of a small asteroid and plan to use its upcoming October close approach to Earth as an opportunity not only for science, but to test NASA’s network of observatories and scientists who work with planetary defense. The target of all this attention is asteroid 2012 TC4 — a small asteroid estimated to be between 30 and 100 feet (10 and 30 meters) in size. On Oct. 12, TC4 will safely fly past Earth. Even though scientists cannot yet predict exactly how close it will approach, they are certain it will come … Read more

SCIENCE: A Ball the Size of Texas

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wooden ball - pixabay

What would happen if a ball the size of Texas fell into the ocean? originally appeared on Quora – the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights. Answer by Dave Consiglio, Chemistry and Physics High School Teacher and Community College Professor, on Quora: What would happen if a ball the size of Texas fell into the ocean? There are lots of variables to consider here. First: Wood. So there’s lots of kinds of wood. Hardwood, softwood, etc. Let’s go with a density of around .7 g/cm^3 (which seems to be about average). Second: Speed. … Read more

Sci Fi Landscapes On Earth

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Dallol, Ethiopia

Mother Nature is not afraid to go technicolor for the right effect. These eye-catching landscapes are among the world’s most vivid. Some are completely natural, while others have been helped along by humans. Get inspired! Full Story at CNN LOCATION Gay Travel Resources Other Gay Travel Events

News: Are We Overdue for An Extinction Level Event?

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Earth

Humans are woefully unprepared for a surprise asteroid or comet, a Nasa scientist warned on Monday, at a presentation with nuclear scientists into how humans might deflect cosmic dangers hurtling toward Earth. “The biggest problem, basically, is there’s not a hell of a lot we can do about it at the moment,” said Dr Joseph Nuth, a researcher with Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Speaking at the annual meeting of American Geophysical Union, Nuth noted that large and potentially dangerous asteroids and comets are extremely rare, compared to the small objects that occasionally explode in Earth’s sky or strike its … Read more

Where No Gay Has Gone Before: Men on Mars!

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  For the past fifty years, we’ve been sending spacecraft tour next-door neighbor, Mars.  Starting with Mariner 4 in 1965, which did the first flyby.  The Soviets achieved the first soft landing with the Mars 3 probe in 1971.  Long before those milestones, sci-fi authors have looked to the Red Planet with their own speculative fiction such as Mars being inhabited by aliens (Percival Lowell’s 1895 Mars) and Earthlings on Mars (Ray Bradbury’s 1950 The Martian Chronicles). Now such fiction could become reality in the next twenty years.  Although the minimum distance between Earth and Mars is roughly 35 million … Read more