Another sizable asteroid has made a close pass to Earth on May 15, making 2010 WC9 the 35th object to pass within one lunar distance in 2018 alone, and the 17th to have passed within one-half of the distance between the Earth and the Moon. Thankfully, this object wasn’t big enough–or traveling fast enough for that matter–to cause any major damage to the Earth if it had actually hit us. But what is up with the increased number of asteroids making close passes to our little blue home?
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The current search for life on planets outside our own solar system consists of analyzing the chemical signatures in their atmospheres, transmitted via the light from the planet’s host star as it either shines through, or is reflected off of, those atmospheres. Researchers look for gases that could be produced by biological processes, such as methane or oxygen, some sort of sign that something is metabolizing on a planet far, far away.read more

On April 15, 2018, asteroid 2018 GE3 set a record as the largest-known asteroid of its size to make a close pass to the Earth–and at less than half the distance between the Earth and the Moon, that’s a fairly close shave. The 48 to 110 meter (157 to 361-foot) object is between three to six times the size of the object that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia in 2013.

2018 GE3 was only spotted by the Catalina Sky Survey the day before its close, 193,000-kilometre (120,000-mile) pass, moving at 29.5 km/s, or 66,000 mph. As it whizzed away from us it passed even closer to the Moon, only one-third the distance between La Luna and Terra Firma.
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Researchers may have discovered direct evidence of a former sister planet that resided in our Solar System, but was obliterated during an unknown cataclysm that occurred billions of years ago. It is theorized that the Solar System may have had as many as ten such lost planets early in its history, but this new evidence takes such theories and brings them that much closer to reality.
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