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Asteroid 2001 YB5 was only discovered in December and it is now extremely close to the Earth. Although there is no danger of collision, astronomers say its proximity reminds us just how many objects there are in space that could strike our planet with devastating consequences. Astronomers and archaeologists suspect that our planet is struck by an object like 2001 YB5 about every 5,000 years, but this is a guess that?s not based on any definite evidence.

The asteroid passed less than twice the Moon?s distance from us – just 510,000 miles away – on Monday, January 7, which is extremely close in cosmic terms. YB5?s brightness suggests it?s a rocky body about 328 yards wide, which is large enough to wipe out an entire country if it struck the Earth.
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On January 4, the sun produced the most complex coronal mass ejection since the one seen by an international solar observatory six years ago. The eruption looked like a twisting assemblage of bright patches and unleashed billions of tons of particles at speeds of about 2.2 million mph.

The sun?s magnetic field lines were responsible for the intricate burst of energy, according to Paal Brekke, a scientist with the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a joint project of NASA and the European Space Agency. ?The complexity and structure … amazed even experienced solar physicists at the SOHO operations center,? he says. ?It shows lots of structures, lots of filaments. They get twisted up like rubber bands and sometimes they can just snap.?
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The Malaysian newspaper ?The Star? reports that there was an increase in UFO sightings in 2001. The Center for Malaysian UFO Studies (Cenmyufos), which looks into reports concerning unidentified flying objects says there was also a reported case of alien abduction in Malaysia early last year.
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James Greenleaf, Paul Ogburn and Mostafa Fatemi of the Mayo Foundation in Rochester, Minnesota have found that ultrasound examinations during pregnancy expose the fetus to a sound as loud as a subway train coming into a station. But they don?t think the experience causes the baby any lasting harm.

Ultrasound machines generate sound waves in pulses lasting less than one ten-thousandth of a second. Pulses are used because a continuous soundwave could generate too much heat in the tissue being examined.

Neither adults nor fetuses can hear the actual ultrasound waves because they vibrate at too high a frequency for our ears to detect them. But researchers found that ultrasound causes secondary vibrations in a woman?s uterus.
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