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PASADENA, California — A large comet or asteroid has slammed into Jupiter, creating an impact site the size of Earth, pictures by an Australian amateur astronomer show. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirmed the discovery using its large infrared telescope at the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii, said computer programer Anthony Wesley, 44, who discovered the impact zone while stargazing at home. News of Wesley's find on a backyard 14.5-inch reflecting telescope has stunned the astronomy world, with scientists saying the impact will last only days more. Wesley said it took him 30 minutes to realize a dark spot rotating...

Without Jupiter acting as a "cosmic vacuum cleaner" sucking up these dangerous objects, there would be so many catastrophic impacts that life probably wouldn't have evolved on the Earth and we wouldn't be here today... "This vacuum cleaner idea goes back to when the long-period comets coming in from the Oort Cloud were viewed as being the only significant impact risk," says Horner. "In the 1950s there were only one or two near-Earth asteroids known, so they were viewed as oddities." ...Since the 1950s, scientists have discovered more objects in the solar system, and they say many of them could...

Jupiter increases risk of comet strike on Earth 11:53 24 August 2007 NewScientist.com news service David Shiga Earth experienced an especially heavy bombardment of asteroids and comets early in the solar system's history (Illustration: Julian Baum) Contrary to prevailing wisdom, Jupiter does not protect Earth from comet strikes. In fact, Earth would suffer fewer impacts without the influence of Jupiter's gravity, a new study says. It could have implications for determining which solar systems are most hospitable to life. A 1994 study showed that replacing Jupiter with a much smaller planet like Uranus or Neptune would lead to 1000 times...

Elizabeth Palermo September 15, 2015An artist's depiction of the dual meteor strike. (Don Dixon/Erik Sturkell/University of Gothenburg) It's not altogether uncommon to hear about double rainbows, but what about a double meteor strike? It's a rare event, but researchers in Sweden recently found evidence that two meteors smacked into Earth at the same time, about 458 million years ago. Researchers from the University of Gothenburg uncovered two craters in the county of Jämtland in central Sweden. The meteors that formed the craters landed just a few miles from each other at the same moment, according to Erik Sturkell, a professor...

Stars Passing Close to the Sunby Paul Gilster on January 2, 2015 Every time I mention stellar distances I’m forced to remind myself that the cosmos is anything but static. Barnard’s Star, for instance, is roughly six light years away, a red dwarf that was the target of the original Daedalus starship designers back in the 1970s. But that distance is changing. If we were a species with a longer lifetime, we could wait about eight thousand years, at which time Barnard’s Star would close to less than four light years. No star shows a larger proper motion relative to...

Scientists Have Underestimated The Likelihood Of City-Killing Asteroids Hitting Earth Reuters Irene Klotz, Reuters Apr. 28, 2014, 2:59 PM The chance of a city-killing asteroid striking Earth is higher than scientists previously believed, a non-profit group building an asteroid-hunting telescope said on Tuesday. A global network that listens for nuclear weapons detonations detected 26 asteroids that exploded in Earth's atmosphere from 2000 to 2013, data collected by the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization shows. The explosions include the Feb. 15, 2013, impact over Chelyabinsk, Russia, which left more than 1,000 people injured by flying glass and debris. "There is...

For those of you that have not seen it this is a great video of various types of bullets in super slow motion. The techno music is a bit much just turn off the sound and enjoy!

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger defended the state's greenhouse gas reduction law today, dismissing a Legislative Analyst's conclusion that determined the measure would cost the state jobs in the near term. "I travel up and down the state, unlike others that only have theoretical opinions," the governor said during a brief sidewalk news conference after giving a speech at a downtown Sacramento hotel. "I see first hand ... that all kinds of (green industry) places want to expand, all we have to do is give them the incentives, the tax incentives and the job creation packages. I know that AB 32 will...

Stephen Hawking believes that one of the major factors in the possible scarcity of intelligent life in our galaxy is the high probability of an asteroid or comet colliding with inhabited planets. We have observed, Hawking points out in Life in the Universe, the collision of a comet, Schumacher-Levi, with Jupiter (below), which produced a series of enormous fireballs, plumes many thousands of kilometers high, hot "bubbles" of gas in the atmosphere, and large dark "scars" on the atmosphere which had lifetimes on the order of weeks. It is thought the collision of a rather smaller body with the Earth,...

The latest storm to hit California with heavy rain and mountain snow this weekend will have far-reaching effects across the country next week. This storm has the potential to spark another round of severe storms in the southern Plains and Deep South and spread a swath of heavy snow from the Midwest to the Northeast.

COPENHAGEN (AFP) – The earth's climate has been significantly affected by the planet's magnetic field, according to a Danish study published Monday that could challenge the notion that human emissions are responsible for global warming. "Our results show a strong correlation between the strength of the earth's magnetic field and the amount of precipitation in the tropics," one of the two Danish geophysicists behind the study, Mads Faurschou Knudsen of the geology department at Aarhus University in western Denmark, told the Videnskab journal. He and his colleague Peter Riisager, of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), compared a...

The accuracy of computer models that predict climate change over the coming decades has been the subject of debate among politicians, environmentalists and even scientists. A new study by meteorologists at the University of Utah shows that current climate models are quite accurate and can be valuable tools for those seeking solutions on reversing global warming trends. Most of these models project a global warming trend that amounts to about 7 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 100 years. The study titled "How Well do Coupled Models Simulate Today's Climate?" is due to be published this Friday in the Bulletin of...

WASHINGTON, April 15, 2007 – President Bush yesterday once again called for Congress to send him a clean emergency war-spending bill that does not include tacked on funding measures and a timeline for U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq. Without the supplemental funds requested by the White House in early February, military officials will be compelled to shift money around to fill expenditure disparities, Bush said during his weekly radio address to the nation. “In the next few days, our military leaders will notify Congress that they will be forced to transfer $1.6 billion from other military accounts to make...

Arizona's highest court has ruled to throw out charges against a man alleged to have arranged a sexual encounter with a 13-year old girl. That girl was really an investigative reporter. But, let's get to the facts first. Today's ruling reads... "the luring statute requires that an actual minor or peace officer posing as a minor be lured." The News 4 Investigators conducted a different type of child sex sting late last year. Two men were arrested and are awaiting trial. How will this ruling affect their pending cases? News 4 Investigators worked with Perverted Justice, an internet watch group...

Cynthia and Richard Humphries from Elfrida voice their opinion as they participate in Saturday's Mother's Against Illegal Aliens rally along Highway 92 in Hereford. (By Mark Levy-Herald/Review) Mothers Against Illegal Aliens protest focused on immigration impactsBY GENTRY BRASWELLHERALD/REVIEW SIERRA VISTA — The founder of Mothers Against Illegal Aliens says the ungoverned flood of illegal immigration is ruining opportunities for “the legal families of America.” Phoenix resident Michelle Dallacroce said she founded the organization officially in January. A dozen or so demonstrators gathered Saturday morning along Highway 92 near milepost 331 in the Hunter Canyon area protesting poor immigration policy...

Source: Oregon State University Date: 2003-11-20 Lewis And Clark Notes Reveal History Of Human Impacts CORVALLIS – Native Americans had a major impact on the wildlife of the American West for hundreds of years prior to European settlement, a report from Oregon State University indicates, based on data from one of the most accurate surveys of its time – the journals of Lewis and Clark. It is a myth that vast areas of the West existed in some sort of pristine state, largely unaffected by humans until the 1800s, the research concludes. In fact, the larger wildlife such as deer,...

Evidence Of Tunguska-type Impacts Over The Pacific Basin Around The Year 1178 A.D. Emilio Spedicato University of Bergamo, Piazza Rosate 2, 24129 Bergamo, Italy, email: emilio@ibguniv.unibg.it In year 1178 A.D., as related by Clube and Napier in their book The Cosmic Serpent, a strange event was observed to affect the Moon, which may be explained by a large impact on the hidden face, originating the Giordano Bruno crater. A number of observations suggest that catastrophic cometary or meteoritic impacts around the same time also affected the Pacific basin: Maori legends of great fires destroying forests and the moa bird, to...

Earth's volcanism linked to meteorite impacts 14:31 13 December 02 Exclusive from New Scientist Print EditionSpace rocks are blamed for violent eruptions (Image: GETTY) Large meteorite impacts may not just throw up huge dust clouds but also punch right through the Earth's crust, triggering gigantic volcanic eruptions. The idea is controversial, but evidence is mounting that the Earth's geology has largely been driven by such events. This would also explain why our planet has so few impact crater remnants. Counting the number of asteroids we see in the sky suggests that over the past 250 million years, Earth should have...

The Climax of a Turbulent Millennium: Evidence for Major Impact Events in the late Third Millennium BC Timo Niroma, Helsinki, Finland The First Intermediate PeriodThe Curse of AkkadTroy IIgThird Millennium BC Climate Change and Old World CollapseNatural Catastrophes during Bronze Age Civilisations Two separate cataclysmsSodom and GomorrahWhere did the impacts occur? The First Intermediate Period Selections from "The Egyptians" by C. Aldred (London 1987). "At this distance of time, the overthrow of the Old Kingdom at the end of the Sixth Dynasty has all the appearance of being sudden and complete. "Recent research has attributed the abrupt nature of...