Tag: Asteroid

  • Nation & World

    Spreading seeds of life

    Scientists at the Institute for Theory and Computation have made a comprehensive calculation suggesting that panspermia could happen, and have found that as many as 10 trillion asteroid-sized objects might exist that carry life.

    4 minutes
    Idan Ginsburg at Harvard College Observatory.
  • Nation & World

    Something weird this way comes

    A paper by Harvard researchers wonders whether the interstellar object known as “‘Oumuamua” is a visitor from an alien civilization.

    5 minutes
    Artist's rendering of 'Oumuamua.
  • Nation & World

    Fish teeth mark periods of evolution

    Based on close examination of thousands of fossilized fish teeth, a Harvard researcher found that, while the asteroid impact that killed off the dinosaurs did lead to the extinction of some fish species, it also set the stage for two periods of rapid evolution among marine life.

    6 minutes
    Fish teeth
  • Nation & World

    Asteroid mission will carry student X-ray experiment

    At 7:05 p.m. (EDT) today, NASA plans to launch a spacecraft to a near-Earth asteroid named Bennu. Among that spacecraft’s five instruments is a student experiment that will use X-rays to help determine Bennu’s surface composition.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Eyes on Orion

    Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics scientist Jonathan McDowell answers questions on the Orion test run and prospects for getting to Mars.

    9 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Magnetism on the moon

    A team of researchers from Harvard, MIT, and the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris have proposed a surprisingly simple explanation for magnetic anomalies that have baffled scientists since the mid-1960s, suggesting they are remnants of a massive asteroid. As described in a paper published in Science, the researchers believe an asteroid slammed into…

    4 minutes