Moon Explosion Sparked By Meteorite Crash On Lunar Surface, NASA Says (VIDEO)

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The moon has a new hole on its surface thanks to a boulder that slammed into it in March, creating the biggest explosion scientists have seen on the moon since they started monitoring it.

The meteorite crashed on March 17, slamming into the lunar surface at a mind-boggling 56,000 mph (90,000 kph) and creating a new crater 65 feet wide (20 meters). The crash sparked a bright flash of light that would have been visible to anyone looking at the moon at the time with the naked eye, NASA scientists say.

“On March 17, 2013, an object about the size of a small boulder hit the lunar surface in Mare Imbrium,” Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office said in a statement. “It exploded in a flash nearly 10 times as bright as anything we’ve ever seen before.” [The Greatest Lunar Crashes Ever]

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This artist’s illustration shows a meteor crashing into the surface of the moon. Scientists say hundreds of space rocks impact the lunar surface every year.

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Asteroid 1998 QE2 To Give Earth A Close Shave On May 31 (VIDEO)

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A gigantic asteroid will fly by our planet at the end of this month, making its closest approach for at least the next two centuries on May 31. But, don’t worry, it won’t get closer than about 3.6 million miles, which is around 15 times the distance between Earth and the moon.

Astronomers plan to use radar telescopes to get a good look at the space rock, named Asteroid 1998 QE2, between May 30 and June 9.

“Asteroid 1998 QE2 will be an outstanding radar imaging target at Goldstone and Arecibo [observatories] and we expect to obtain a series of high-resolution images that could reveal a wealth of surface features,” radar astronomer Lance Benner, the principal investigator for the Goldstone radar observations from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a written statement.

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Spiral Esophagus: Swiss Woman’s Pain, Weight Loss Tied To Corkscrew-Shaped Gullet

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An 87-year-old Swiss woman who suffered painful spasms in her chest turned out to have an esophagus that twisted itself into a corkscrew shape whenever she swallowed, according to a report of her case.

The woman had lost 11 pounds in the past several months, and told doctors she had cramplike spasms shortly after eating.

Her doctors performed an endoscopy and found that, when she swallowed, her esophagus had the same helical shape as a playground twisty slide.

X-ray images revealed the startling, corkscrew shape taking form.

“The magnitude of this finding was extraordinary,” said Dr. Luc Biedermann, of the University Hospital Zurich, who treated the woman and reported the case in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine.

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Doctors say an 87-year-old woman had an esophagus that twisted itself into a corkscrew shape when she swallowed. Above, image of the esophagus.

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Warp Drive Feasible? Relativity Loophole Means ‘Star Trek’ Device Might Actually Work, Physicists Say

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In the “Star Trek” TV shows and films, the U.S.S. Enterprise’s warp engine allows the ship to move faster than light, an ability that is, as Spock would say, “highly illogical.”

However, there’s a loophole in Einstein’s general theory of relativity that could allow a ship to traverse vast distances in less time than it would take light. The trick? It’s not the starship that’s moving — it’s the space around it.

In fact, scientists at NASA are right now working on the first practical field test toward proving the possibility of warp drives and faster-than-light travel. Maybe the warp drive on “Star Trek” is possible after all. [See also: Warp Drive: Can It Be Done? (Video)]

According to Einstein’s theory, an object with mass cannot go as fast or faster than the speed of light. The original “Star Trek” series ignored this “universal speed limit” in favor of a ship that could zip around the galaxy in a matter of days instead of decades. They tried to explain the ship’s faster-than-light capabilities by powering the warp engine with a “matter-antimatter” engine. Antimatter was a popular field of study in the 1960s, when creator Gene Roddenberry was first writing the series. When matter and antimatter collide, their mass is converted to kinetic energy in keeping with Einstein’s mass-energy equivalence formula, E=mc².

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In the “Star Trek” TV shows and films, the U.S.S. Enterprise’s warp engine allows the ship to move faster than light, an ability that is, as Spock would say, “highly illogical.” However, there’s a loophole in Einstein’s general theory of relativity that could allow a ship to traverse vast distances in less time than it would take light.

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Antimatter-Gravity ‘Alpha’ Experiment At CERN Tests Force’s Effect, Yields Ambiguous Result

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When it comes to antimatter, what goes up doesn’t necessarily come down. In a new study, physicists weighed antimatter in an effort to determine how this strange cousin of matter interacts with gravity.

Ordinary matter atoms fall down due to the pull of gravity, but the same might not be true of antimatter, which has the same mass as matter, but opposite charge and spin. Scientists wondered whether antimatter atoms would instead fall up when pulled by gravity, and whether such a thing as antigravity exists.

“In the unlikely event that antimatter falls upward, we’d have to fundamentally revise our view of physics and rethink how the universe works,” Joel Fajans, a physicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, said in a statement.

Fajans and his colleagues at the Alpha experiment at Switzerland’s CERN physics lab made the first experimental measurements of the gravitational mass of antihydrogen — the antimatter equivalent of hydrogen, made of an antiproton and a positron (the antimatter counterpart to an electron). [Whoa! The Coolest Little Particles in Nature]

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This illustration of antimatter shows antiparticle beside its particle mirror-image.

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Gravity Waves, Predicted By Einstein’s General Relativity Theory, May Soon Be Detected

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In the next five years or so, scientists are poised to discover proof that space and time can wrinkle in the form of gravitational waves. These waves were predicted almost 100 years ago by Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, but have yet to be seen.

That could change soon when the latest, most sensitive experiments hunting gravitational waves come online. “There’s so much activity and excitement in the field right now,” said Mansi M. Kasliwal, an astronomer at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Pasadena, Calif. “The momentum is really building.”

Kasliwal is the author of a paper published online today (May 2) in the journal Science describing the burgeoning field of gravitational wave studies.

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3D visualization of gravitational waves produced by two orbiting black holes.

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Robot Fly Mimics Insect Flight, Hovers With Ultrathin Wings (VIDEO)

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A robot as small as a housefly has managed the delicate task of flying and hovering the way the actual insects do.

“This is a major engineering breakthrough, 15 years in the making,” says electrical engineer Ronald Fearing, who works on robotic flies at the University of California, Berkeley. The device uses layers of ultrathin materials that can make its wings flap 120 times a second, which is on a par with a housefly’s flapping rate. This “required tremendous innovation in design and fabrication techniques”, he adds.

The robot’s wings are composed of thin polyester films reinforced with carbon fibre ribs and its ‘muscles’ are made from piezoelectric crystals, which shrink or stretch depending on the voltage applied to them.

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Robot Uncovers Ancient Burial Chambers Beneath Teotihuacan Temple

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A small robot has uncovered three 2,000-year-old chambers under an ancient temple in Mexico, archaeologists from the National Anthropology and History Institute announced this week.

The robot, named Tlaloc II-TC after Mexico’s ancient god of rain, found the chambers under the Temple of the Feathered Serpent (also called the Temple of Quetzalcoatl) in the Mesoamerican ruins of Teotihuacan, which is just 30 miles from Mexico City. The ancient city, thought to have been established around 100 BC, had more than 100,000 inhabitants at its peak, but had long been abandoned before the Aztecs arrived in the 1300s.

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Cave Fossils In Spain Suggest Ancient Carnivores Were Lured To Their Deaths

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A cavern in Spain may have lured ancient carnivores to their deaths by offering the promise of food and water, new research suggests.

The new study, published May 1 in the journal PLOS ONE, may explain how the carcasses of several carnivore species, including saber-toothed cats and “bear dogs,” wound up in an underground cavern millions of years ago.

“Only the carnivores were daring enough to enter,” said study co-author M. Soledad Domingo, a paleontologist at the University of Michigan. “But they were unable to make their way out.”

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Hyena skeleton found in Spanish cave. Researchers carefully analyzed the type, age, and orientation of fossils like this one to figure out what happened to ancient carnivores.

The researchers reconstructed the history of the cave. Sediments from the surface fell through fissures in the Earth and formed the cave. Young predators were lured in by the promise of food or water, but became trapped. The smell of their rotting carcasses would then attract other predators. Over time, the cave was filled in by flooding, until it became hidden from view.

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Alexander Graham Bell Voice Recording Recovered From Old Wax Disc (AUDIO)

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Researchers have identified the voice of Alexander Graham Bell for the first time in some of the earliest audio recordings held at the Smithsonian Institution.

The National Museum of American History announced Wednesday that Bell’s voice was identified with help from technicians at the Library of Congress and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. The museum holds some of the earliest audio recordings ever made.

Researchers found a transcript of one recording signed by Bell. It was matched to a wax disc recording from April 15, 1885.

“Hear my voice, Alexander Graham Bell,” the inventor said.

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