In the series “Visions,” science fiction about the very latest research will be paired with analysis looking into the facts behind the fiction. The goal is to marry ripped-from-the-headlines science fiction with analysis into the possibilities hinted at by new discoveries. Rare earth metals aren’t actually rare on Earth. They’re abundant on the surface, with [...]

A week’s warning could save an untold number of lives In ""Too Hard for Science?" I interview scientists about ideas they would love to explore that they don’t think could be investigated. For instance, they might involve machines beyond the realm of possibility, such as particle accelerators as big as the sun, or they might [...]

[Updated:] About 7,000 metric tons of meteor streaked across central Russia on Friday 15th February 2013, its fireball leaving great contrails in the sky and generating explosive shockwaves that smashed windows and damaged buildings. Reports indicate a number of craters a few meters across as the debris impacted the ground. The Earth is constantly encountering [...]

It’s an exciting time for solar system exploration. NASA’s Dawn mission has now entered into an orbit around the minor planet known as Vesta, a 500km diameter chunk of rock and who-knows-what-else that orbits the Sun beyond Mars and in the classical asteroid belt. After hanging out at Vesta for a year Dawn will pull [...]

Dissatisfied with the current state of the solar system, NASA is looking to do a little remodeling. The space agency is angling to capture a small asteroid and drag it closer to Earth for human exploration, the Associated Press reported April 6. The Obama administration’s proposed budget for 2014 will include $100 million to kick [...]

A meteor fireball lit up the morning sky over Chelyabinsk in central Russia, producing a shock wave that shattered windows and injured an estimated 500 1,000 people.** Although much of the parent object likely burned up in the atmosphere, Russian authorities say that several meteorite fragments have already been recovered, according to the Interfax news agency. A [...]

Just before 7:45 P.M. Pacific time yesterday, as baseball fans in the San Francisco Bay Area were tuning in to the playoff game between the hometown Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals, a different spectacle was playing out overhead. A huge fireball lit up the skies over Northern California, and witnesses also heard very loud [...]

In a widely anticipated announcement today, the new company Planetary Resources revealed their plans for near-Earth asteroid domination. The group has mapped out a multi-stage process to map, observe, capture, tow and eventually mine asteroids for valuables. “A single 500-meter platinum-rich asteroid contains the equivalent of all the platinum group metals mined in history,” reads [...]

  Recently, I received a press release from the American Museum of Natural History on their excellent exhibit about the future of space exploration. I did a quick word search: “Mars” got 14 hits; “asteroid” 12; “moon/lunar” 11; “Europa” and “Jupiter” a total of four. A check of “Venus” came up empty. Considering that all [...]

Asteroids and comets have long been suspected of helping nudge Earth toward life. The interplanetary interlopers have struck Earth since the beginning, delivering carbon, water, and sometimes organic compounds such as amino acids. By providing key chemicals or even pre-formed biological building blocks, as well as the heat and energy generated by a meteorite impact, [...]

A spacecraft that traveled to a near-Earth asteroid and attempted the unprecedented feat of sampling its surface directly for examination back on Earth looks to have succeeded in its task. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced November 16 that one of the particle collectors from its Hayabusa probe is indeed loaded with particulate matter [...]

A Japanese spacecraft that visited an asteroid and perhaps even sampled its surface is returning home. The Hayabusa probe, launched by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in 2003, will release a heat-shielded return capsule on June 13 that may contain the first ever samples captured directly from an asteroid. JAXA reported June 9 that [...]