Aliens! The recent discovery of molecular compounds integral to life on Earth in dusty clouds located deep in interstellar space is an encouraging sign that aliens could exist out in the universe.

All amino acids, the molecules that make up proteins in human cells, muscles, and other tissues, contain a type of organic compound called iso-propyl cyanide, which consists of carbon, nitrogen, and hydrogen atoms. I-propyl is an essential building block of these essential molecules. Without i-propyl cyanide, there would be no amino acids and no life on Earth as we know it.

Since amino acids were first discovered in meteorites in the early '70s, it's been clear that life on Earth got a little help from space. Just how much, however, remains unclear.

Now, scientists have taken one step further and discovered where i-propyl cyanide likely originates in our very own galaxy — the Milky Way.

Located 27,000 light years from Earth toward the center of our galaxy is one of the largest molecular clouds in the Milky Way, called Sagittarius B2. Molecular clouds are compact regions of dust that create the right environments for star formation, and therefore are also called stellar nurseries. And it's in Sagittarius B2, that a team of scientists recently discovered large amounts of i-propyl cyanide molecules.

Isopropyl cyanide is the most complex organic compound yet to be discovered in deep, interstellar space and the results are compelling for the possibility of life like ours in other neighboring solar systems within the Milky Way.

"Understanding the production of organic material at the early stages of star formation is critical to piecing together the gradual progression from simple molecules to potentially life-bearing chemistry," said Arnaud Belloche in a Cornell University press release.

Belloche is the lead author of the paper documenting the scientists' results. The paper was published in the journal Science on September 26.

To deconstruct the molecular make-up of Sagittarius B2, the scientists used the powerful array of radio telescopes in Chile called the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). With a price tag of $1.4 billion, ALMA is the most expensive ground-based telescope currently under construction.

Using the sensitive antennas of ALMA's radio telescopes, the scientists searched for the unique finger print of different molecules at certain radio wavelengths, which are longer than light waves in the visible regime and therefore cannot be seen with the naked eye. The scientists used 20 of ALMA's 66 antennae for their study.

Signs of potentially abundant life in other parts of the galaxy sounds like a good thing, but for one futurist it's not. Abundant microbial life is a bad sign that we will never become an interstellar civilization— since these aliens would have had plenty of time to developed advanced space travel technologies, but we haven't heard one peep from them.

SEE ALSO: Here's Why A Leading Futurist Hopes We Don't Find Life On Mars

READ MORE: ASTRONOMER: We Think We're Close To Finding Life On Another Planet

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On October 31 2005, trick-or-treaters across the central U.S. eastern seaboard were treated to a brilliant fireball, a celestial spectacle that frequently graces October skies.

Mid- to late October is fireball season, a time when several key meteor showers experience a broad peak. We’re already seeing an uptick in fireball activity as monitored by numerous all-sky cameras this month, including NASA’s system positioned across the United States. Three lesser known but fascinating showers are the chief culprits.

The main meteor shower on tap for the month of October is the Orionids. This shower radiates from the Club of the constellation Orion, and is the product of that most famous comet of them all, 1P Halley. Halley’s Comet is actually the source of two annual meteor showers, the October Orionids and the May Eta Aquarids.

We’re seeing the inward stream of Halley debris in October, and Orionid velocities average a swift 66 kilometres a second. The radiant rides highest for northern hemisphere observers at 4 AM local, and 2014 sees an estimated zenithal hourly rate (ZHR) of 20 predicted to arrive on the mornings of October 21 through Oct 22.

The Orionids experience a broad peak spanning October 21 through November 7, and 2014 sees the peak arrive just two days prior to the Moon reaching New phase. The Orionids have exhibited an uptick in activity as high as 50-75 per hour from 2005-2007, and it’s been suggested that a 12 year peak cycle may govern the Orionids, as the path of meteoroid debris stream is modified by the gravitational influence of the giant planet Jupiter.

Two other nearby radiants in the sky also produce an exceptionally large number of fireballs in late October: the Southern Taurids and Northern Taurids. These are complex streams laid down by the periodic comet 2P Encke, which possesses the shortest orbital period of any comet known at 3.3 years.

Though the ZHR for both is only slightly above the background sporadic rate for northern hemisphere Fall at about five per hour, the Taurids also produce a high ratio of fireballs. The southern Taurids peak in early October and are already active, and the Northern Taurids peak in late October through early November, earning them the nickname the "Fireballs of Halloween."

Unlike many meteor showers, the Northern Taurids are approaching the Earth from behind in our orbit and have a slow relative atmospheric entry velocity of 28 kilometres per second. This makes for long, stately meteor trains often visible in the evening hours before local midnight.

The Taurids also seem to exhibit a seven year periodicity that begs for further study. 2008 was a fine year for Taurid fireballs… could 2015 be next?

Of course, the exact definition of a "fireball" meteor varies by source, though we prefer the definition of a fireball as a meteor brighter than magnitude -3. A fireball reaching -14 (a Full Moon equals magnitude -13, about 2.5 times fainter) is often termed a bolide.

Observing meteor showers such as the Orionids is as simple as sitting back and patiently watching the skies. Our own personal rule while starting a meteor vigil is to scan the skies for 10 minutes; one or more meteor sightings is a good sign to keep on watching, while no meteors means it's time to pack it in and instead maybe write about astronomy. Dark, moonless skies are key, and you can report how many meteors you see to the International Meteor Organization. Be sure to keep a pair of binoculars handy to examine any lingering smoke trails post-fireball passage.

Of course, seeing a Taurid fireball is largely a matter of luck and looking at the right place in the sky at the right time. All-sky cameras work great in this regard, and many amateurs now use tripod mounted DLSRs set to take wide-field exposures of the sky automatically throughout the night. Just watch out for dew! Nearly every meteor we've caught on camera turned up only in post review, a testament to how much of the sky a lone pair of eyes still misses.

Spot a fireball? The American Meteor Society maintains a great online database of recent sightings and reports. Keep in mind, lots of "meteor-wrongs" inevitably crop up on Facebook and Twitter during any event, posted by folks eager for likes and retweets.

Faves of such spoofers are: the Peekskill meteor train, the reentry of Hyabusa, Mir, and scenes (!) from the movie Armageddon. We've seen 'em all passed off as legit, though you're more than welcome to try and be original… a majority of initial meteor images almost always come from dash cams (remember Chelyabinsk?) and security cameras.

Finally, in addition to fireballs, there's another astronomical tie-in for Halloween, as it's one of four cross-quarter tie-in days approximately mid-way between a solstice and an equinox. The other three are: Lammas Day (August 1), Groundhog's Day (February 2) and May Day (May 1). We just think that it's great — if a bit paradoxical — to see modern day suburbanites dress up as ghouls and goblins as they reenact archaic rites and holidays…

Don't forget to keep an eye out for the fireballs of October this Halloween!

SEE ALSO: Mysterious 'Ball Lightning' Recreated In The Lab [GIFS]

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The night skies for this year's Orionid Meteor Shower are expected to be especially dark this year, providing ideal viewing conditions. But if you're trying to learn the best time to watch you might be confused. Some articles are saying it begins tonight while others say that you should tune in tomorrow.

So what's the best time to watch? Between one and two hours before sunrise on Tuesday, Oct. 21.

The peak hour when you can expect the most meteors streaking across the night sky will be before sunrise on Tuesday morning across the US, according to NASA.

So if you're looking skyward at that time, you should be able to see between 20 and 30 meteors an hour, or one every couple of minutes.

The Orionid Meteor Shower is the result of Earth passing through the debris trail of the famous Halley's Comet. As Earth passes into the debris path, dust and rock are pulled into our atmosphere by Earth's gravity and fall toward the surface at speeds up to 45 miles per second.

This creates a tremendous amount of friction between the meteor and gasses in the atmosphere, which heats up the debris and makes it shine. What we see as a result is a series of shooting stars.

This year's meteor shower will be particularly spectacular because the Moon is currently a tiny sliver, so the night sky will be especially dark for us to enjoy the show. Some of the US will have to content will cloudy skies, though indicated by the map below.

We will be passing through the debris from Oct. 20 and last through the morning of Oct. 22. We'll hit the densest part of the debris on the morning of Oct 21, which is peak observing time. Set your alarm for a couple of hours before sunrise tomorrow so you don't miss it. Below is a map of the best spots for viewers in the US.

For those of you who might not get a chance to catch the shower due to inclement weather, NASA will begin streaming the event live on Oct 20 at 10 pm EDT (7 pm PDT). And the live online observatory, Slooh, will be streaming the event live (feed below) starting tomorrow at 8 pm EDT (5 pm PDT) on Oct 21.

The reason for some of the confusion about the best time to view the shower is natural, Bill Cooke at the Meteoroid Environments Office for the Marshall Space Flight Center told Business Insider in an email: "The uncertainty is due to a couple of factors: a) the Orionid stream, produced by Comet Halley, is broad, and can be 'clumpy', which can result in multiple maxima, and b) it is hard to visually discern the exact time of the peak when the shower rates are not expected to be high (like this year)."

"Sometimes meteor science is not very exact <sigh>," Cooke wrote.

Watch the NASA livestream on Oct 20, at 10 PM EDT:
Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream

And watch the livestream from Slooh here, starting Oct 21 at 8PM EDT:

SEE ALSO: Cool Pictures Of The Orionid Meteor Shower

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At about 6:20 p.m. ET on Monday, reports started trickling in that a brilliantly bright, green fireball was tracing its way across the night sky.

Over the course of the night, the American Meteor Society (AMS) received more than 250 reports of meteor sightings.

Some of the first tweets that came in about the meteor indicated it was certainly a sight worth seeing:

"Folks in Virginia say it was huge — it looked like a bottle rocket,"Drew Curtis tweeted.

Another twitter user going by @BIONIC_OLE said: "I just saw the biggest "shooting star" meteor ever. It was insane!!"

And NASA's Bill Cooke confirmed with ABC's Good Morning America that the object did indeed appear to be a meteor.

The sightings occurred all over the eastern US — from South Carolina up to Ohio.

Here's a video caught on a Benwood, Virginia, police department dash camera:The reports came from as far west as Indiana, reaching as far east as the Virginia coast.

Below is a heat map from the AMS showing the expanse of the reports across the Midwest and east coast. Red indicates the highest volume of reports.

Although the event occured this month when the Taurid meteor shower is ongoing, NASA's Bill Cooke said the meteor was not part of the Taurids and was more likely a chunk of an asteroid. 

The meteor most likely entered Earth's atmosphere above western West Virginia and then traveled eastward across the sky, eventually impacting between Webster County and Randolph County in West Virginia.

The AMS predicted this path and impact site from the reports it received. The projection is shown below.

According to Sean Sublette, chief meteorologist at a Virginia ABC affiliate, the green coloring is an indication of magnesium molecules in the meteor.

Blue-green color of a meteor suggests the presence of magnesium. http://t.co/0ej227xs5m

— Sean Sublette (@SeanSublette13) November 3, 2014

There were other reports Monday night of a bright meteor-like light in the skies over Chicago. At first, AMS and NASA said the object was moving too slow to be a metoer and was likely a piece of space junk.

However, Cooke recently told Business Insider that neither NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office or the Department of Defense's Space Command reported debris entering earth's atmosphere over Chicago at the time of the sighting. 

Therefore, Cooke said that it could be a slow-moving meteor.

Check out both events in the video below:

Did you see a meteor last night? Send us a picture or video.

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The evening of Nov. 3 had a big surprise for people in Japan: A big, bright meteor streaked across the sky, giving locals an absolutely stunning light show.

You can see the green and orange light of the meteor as it falls toward Earth. These colors are likely due to the presence of magnesium and sodium in the meteor itself that produce green and orange light, respectively, when subjected to extreme heat.

The celestial event took place over western Japan and was reported within a couple of hours of a series of US meteor sightings across the East coast.

In Japan, cameras at the Fukuoka airport caught this amazing footage:

And here's an incredible shot taken from some people driving along the road.

And another great look at the meteor came from an automated camera installed at the Hakata port. You can see the meteor streak by the Hakata Port Tower.

These light shows are likely rogue meteors from this month's ongoing Taurid Meteor Shower.

Interesting fact about meteors falling to Earth is that Earth actually gains weight from meteor dust.

@SpagDoodle Yes. Earth gets heavier by several hundred tons (of meteor dust) per day.

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) November 1, 2014

SEE ALSO: Half Of The East Coast Saw A Bright, Green Meteor Monday Night

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While digging around an ancient meteorite impact crater in Wisconsin, researchers discovered an extremely rare mineral that's only previously been found in three other places. The mineral, called reidite, is a dense form (polymorph) of the fairly tough gemstone zircon, which is produced when the latter is subjected to very high pressures. While researchers can form this mineral in the laboratory, naturally occurring reidite is scarce.

The discovery was made in Rock Elm, a 6.5 km diameter impact structure located in western Wisconsin, USA. The crater has been dated to the Middle Ordovician period, which extends from 450 to 470 million years ago, making it the oldest known reidite. It's been proposed that during this period, a huge meteor shower occurred that was the result of two colossal asteroids, measuring at least 100 km across, slamming into one another between Mars and Jupiter. The event released a huge cloud of smaller rock fragments that took a few million years to reach Earth, and some are still hitting our planet now.

Although reidite has been found in three other impact craters-- Chesapeake Bay Crater in Virginia, Reis Crater in Germany and Xiuyan Crater in China-- Rock Elm is the last place that scientists expected to find the mineral. "No one in their right mind would have looked for reidite in sandstone," geochemist and study author Aaron Cavosie told Live Science.

Zircon transforms into reidite when meteorites slam into the ground because shock waves from the impact cause a dramatic increase in temperature and pressure at the site. The high pressures cause the building blocks of the mineral to rearrange, becoming tightly repacked. The resulting mineral is similar in composition to zircon, but around 10% more dense. Reidite can also be formed under high-pressure or shock recovery laboratory experiments. In fact, reidite was only known from lab-made samples for around 30 years before it was first discovered in nature in 2001.

The new samples of reidite were found amongst "shocked," or shock-metamorphosed, zircons. Shock metamorphisms, or simply shock effects, are the modifications in rocks and minerals caused by the passage of shock waves. After first examining the samples by microscopy, Cavosie and his colleagues confirmed the presence of reidite by bombarding them with electrons. Since different minerals scatter, or diffract, electrons in a unique way, the researchers were able to identify reidite in the samples.

Since it takes pressures between 30 to 53 gigapascals to morph zircon into reidite, its presence at Rock Elm means that the meteorite impact resulted in much higher pressures than previously believed. Earlier estimates based on the presence of shocked quartz suggested that the resulting pressure likely didn't exceed 10 gigapascals. Furthermore, because zircon will be present in any crater carved from sandstone, there is likely much more reidite to be found on Earth than anticipated.

[Via Live Science]

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November is the time of year to watch one of the most brilliant meteor showers of the year: the Leonid meteor shower, also known as the Leonids.

The Leonids became famous during the 17th century for their impressive show of shooting stars. In 1833, for example, the most stunning part of the meteor shower displayed up to 100 thousand meteor per hour.

This year's Leonid meteor shower will not be as spectacular as the one in 1833, but reports suggest that it will still be a sight worth seeing. Also, the Leonids are one of the last meteor showers of the year. The Geminids meteor shower will follow in December.

The best time to see the Leonids this year will be Nov. 17 and 18 between the hours of midnight and dawn. During those hours, observers can expect to see about 15 meteors per hour, or about one every 4 minutes. The best way to see a meteor shower is to get far away from city lights where you can clearly see the stars.

To view the Leonids, astronomers suggest that viewers look at the part of the sky between the East horizon and the point right above to view the Leonids.

Below is a map from AccuWeather indicating where in the US that the weather is expected to provide clear skies for the best viewing.

When Earth passes through the tail of comet Tempel-Tuttle, the dust and debris the comet leaves behind is swept up by Earth's gravity. As a result, the debris strikes the Earth's atmosphere at incredible speeds — for the Leonids it's about 44 miles per second.

At these speeds, the debris of the comet and the molecules in Earth's atmosphere rub against each other creating tremendous friction. It's this friction that generates heat and light that we then see as a "shooting star".

Each meteor shower is named for the constellation from which the falling meteors appear to emerge. The Leonids are named for the constellation Leo, which is Latin for lion.

If you're not in a good place to view the Leonids, you can still watch the show because the live online observatory, Slooh, will be streaming the event live (feed below) starting tomorrow, Monday, at 8 pm EST (5 pm PST).

SEE ALSO: Humans Have Drilled A Comet For the First Time Ever

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How hazardous are the thousands and millions of asteroids that surround the third rock from the Sun – Earth?

Since an asteroid impact represents a real risk to life and property, this is a question that has been begging for answers for decades.

But now, scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have received data from a variety of US Department of Defense assets and plotted a startling set of data spanning 20 years.

This latest compilation of data underscores how frequent some of these larger fireballs are, with the largest being the Chelyabinsk event on February 15, 2013 which injured thousands in Russia.

The new data will improve our understanding of the frequency and presence of small and large asteroids that are hazards to populated areas anywhere on Earth.

The data from "government sensors"— meaning "early warning" satellites to monitor missile launches (from potential enemies) as well as infrasound ground monitors – shows the distribution of bolide (fireball) events. The data first shows how uniformly distributed the events are around the world. This data is now released to the public and researchers for more detailed analysis.

The newest data released by the US government shows both how frequent bolides are and also how effectively the Earth's atmosphere protects the surface. A subset of this data had been analyzed and reported by Dr. Peter Brown from the University of Western Ontario, Canada and his team in 2013 but included only 58 events. This new data set holds 556 events.

The newly released data also shows how the Earth's atmosphere is a superior barrier that prevents small asteroids' penetration and impact onto the Earth's surface. Even the 20 meter (65 ft) Chelyabinsk asteroid exploded mid-air, dissipating the power of a nuclear blast 29.7 km (18.4 miles, 97,400 feet) above the surface. Otherwise, this asteroid could have obliterated much of a modern city; Chelyabinsk was also saved due to sheer luck – the asteroid entered at a shallow angle leading to its demise; more steeply, and it would have exploded much closer to the surface. While many do explode in the upper atmosphere, a broad strewn field of small fragments often occurs. In historical times, towns and villages have reported being pelted by such sprays of stones from the sky.

NASA and JPL emphasized that investment in early detection of asteroids has increased 10 fold in the last 5 years. Researchers such as Dr. Jenniskens at the SETI Institute has developed a network of all-sky cameras that have determined the orbits of over 175,000 meteors that burned up in the atmosphere. And the B612 Foundation has been the strongest advocate of discovering of all hazardous asteroids. B612, led by former astronauts Ed Lu and Rusty Schweikert has designed a space telescope called Sentinel which would find hazardous asteroids and help safeguard Earth for centuries into the future.

Speed is everything. While Chelyabinsk had just 1/10th the mass of Nimitz-class super carrier, it traveled 1000 times faster. Its kinetic energy on account of its speed was 20 to 30 times that released by the nuclear weapons used to end the war against Japan – about 320 to 480 kilotons of TNT. Briefly, asteroids are considered to be any space rock larger than 1 meter and those smaller are called meteoroids.

Two earlier surveys can be compared to this new data. One by Eugene Shoemaker in the 1960s and another by Dr. Brown. The initial work by Shoemaker using lunar crater counts and the more recent work of Dr. Brown's group, utilizing sensors of the Department of Defense, determined estimates of the frequency of asteroid impacts (bolide) rates versus the size of the small bodies. Those two surveys differ by a factor of ten, that is, where Shoemaker's shows frequencies on the order of 10s or 100s years, Brown's is on the order of 100s and 1000s of years. The most recent data, which has adjusted Brown's earlier work is now raising the frequency of hazardous events to that of the work of Shoemaker.

The work of Dr. Brown and co-investigators led to the following graph showing the frequency of collisions with the Earth of asteroids of various sizes. This plot from a Letter to Nature by P. Brown et al. used 58 bolides from data accumulated from 1994 to 2014 from government sensors. Brown and others will improve their analysis with this more detailed dataset. The plot shows that a Chelyabinsk type event can be expected approximately every 30 years though the uncertainty is high. The new data may reduce this uncertainty. Tungunska events which could destroy a metropolitan area the size of Washington DC occur less frequently – about once a century.

Asteroids come in all sizes. Smaller asteroids are much more common, larger ones less so. A common distribution seen in nature is represented by a bell curve or "normal" distribution. Fortunately the bigger asteroids number in the hundreds while the small "city busters" count in the 100s of thousands, if not millions. And fortunately, the Earth is small in proportion to the volume of space even just the space occupied by our Solar System. Additionally, 69% of the Earth's surface is covered by Oceans. Humans huddle on only about 10% of the surface area of the Earth. This reduces the chances of any asteroid impact effecting a populated area by a factor of ten.

Altogether the risk from asteroids is very real as the Chelyabinsk event underscored. Since the time of Tugunska impact in Siberia in 1908, the human population has quadrupled. The number of cities of over 1 million has increased from 12 to 400. Realizing how many and how frequent these asteroid impacts occur plus the growth of the human population in the last one hundred years raises the urgency for a near-Earth asteroid discovery telescope such as B612's Sentinel which could find all hazardous objects in less than 10 years whereas ground-based observations will take 100 years or more.

Reference: New Map Shows Frequency of Small Asteroid Impacts, Provides Clues on Larger Asteroid Population

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SEE ALSO: There's An Incredible Meteor Shower Happening This Week

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This weekend is your chance to see an amazing, and equally mysterious, meteor shower called the Geminids meteor shower.

"The Geminids are my favorite," said NASA Astronomer Bill Cooke in a release, "because they defy explanation."

So, what makes this meteor shower so special?

To start, astronomers only recently discovered what caused this shower despite having the opportunity to observe and study it annually since it was first seen in 1862.

It was not until 1983 when NASA's IRAS satellite helped identify the mysterious source — a small, rocky object called 3200 Phaethon. Most meteor showers take place when debris left behind from a comet falls toward Earth, burning up in the atmosphere on the way down. The result is what we call a shooting star.

A meteor shower is when we see many shooting stars in a short amount of time. This year's Geminids meteor shower will have between 60 and 80 meteors an hour.

But, unlike normal meteor showers, the source of the Geminids, 3200 Phaethon, is not a comet, but an asteroid. Of the 12 meteor showers that took place this year, only one other came from asteroids, according to American Meteor Society. 

The three important differences between asteroids and comets are:

1. Asteroids are located in the asteroid belt between the planets of Mars and Jupiter. Most comets are farther from Earth, beyond the orbit of Pluto.
2. Asteroids are made of metals and rocky material. Comets are made of ice, dust, rocky materials and organic compounds.
3. When asteroids move close to the sun, they retain most of their material whereas the ice in comets tends to melt and vaporize leaving behind a dusty trail that then leads to meteor showers like Orionids, which come from the tail of the famous Halley's comet.

Despite asteroids keeping most of their material to themselves, the Geminids is one of the most spectacular meteor showers of the year because there is so much debris falling to Earth, Cooke explains.

"Of all the debris streams Earth passes through every year, the Geminids' is by far the most massive," Cooke said. "When we add up the amount of dust in the Geminid stream, it outweighs other streams by factors of 5 to 500."

The reason for this is a complete mystery.

In 2009, a pair of planetary scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles tried to solve it, but ultimately found more questions than answers.

When the asteroid was extremely close to the sun, about half between the sun and Mercury, the two scientists noticed 3200 Phaethon temporarily shone twice as bright as usual. The explanation the two scientists, David Jewitt and Jing Li, came up with was that the asteroid must have ejected lots of dust.

A large cloud of dust would scatter sunlight, making the overall object appear much brighter. The dust must have been the result of rocks breaking apart from the asteroid due to the sun's intense heat at such a close distance, a phenomenon that Jewiit and Li called a "rock comet."

There was one problem with their rock comet theory, however: The amount of dust this incident added to the asteroid's debris stream was completely insignificant — about 0.01% of the total stream's mass, which was not nearly enough to explain the spectacular light show we see each year.

One reason Jewiit and Li proposed was that rock comets might have been more catastrophic in the past, spewing the tremendous amounts of rock that today make up the 3200 Phaethon debris stream.

"We just don't know," Cooke said. "Every new thing we learn about the Geminids seems to deepen the mystery."

For more information on rock comets and 3200 Phaethon, check out the NASA ScienceCast below.

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This weekend is the last major meteor shower of the year — the Geminids meteor shower — and experts suspect it will be quite a show. 

"The Geminids are usually one of the two best meteor showers of the year," said Alan MacRobert, who is the senior editor at Sky & Telescope magazine, in a release. The other shower is the Perseids that take place in August.

The Geminids began earlier this month, on Dec. 4, but the best time to watch will be coming up this weekend when the sky will come alive with hundreds of shooting stars on Saturday, Dec. 13, and Sunday, Dec. 14 at around 9 pm EST.

There will be a fairly bright, third-quarter moon this weekend where half of the moon appears lit in the sky as shown to the right. Therefore, you'll want to try and get outside before the moon's light makes it difficult to see the meteor shower. 

You can determine when the moon will rise for your area with this nifty moonrise/moonset calculator. For New York City, Saturday's moonrise will begin at 11:30 pm EST.

The last day of the meteor shower will be Dec. 17. So, don't miss it! The final meteor shower of the year will be the Ursids that will take place from Dec. 17 through 23, but they are considerably less brilliant with only a dozen or so meteors dotting the sky per hour at peak activity.

In the past, the best Geminids meteor showers have had well over 100 meteors per hour, but amateur astronomer Bob King reports on Universe Today that we can likely expect to see between 60 to 80 meteors per hour this year. That's at least one meteor per minute — not too shabby!

Geminids Origins

Meteor showers generally come from dusty, rocky debris from comets. When Earth passes through a comet's tail, the debris fall under Earth's gravitational pull, entering the atmosphere in a fiery, brilliant blaze of light.

When the rocky debris enters Earth's atmosphere, it's speeding along at 79,000 miles-per-hour. As it falls toward the surface, the debris rubbs against the molecules in the air. The resulting friction generates heat and the light we see.

Here's a time lapse video of what that looked like during the 2012 Geminids meteor shower:

Although observers will see streaks of light shooting across the sky this weekend, the show is a rare glimpse of left-over asteroid guts, not a comet tail. The asteroid source is called 3200 Phaethon and it is one of the more mysterious objects in our solar system.

A neat exercise you can do while watching is to backwardly trace the path of the meteors. Each meteor shower is named for the constellation in which the meteors first appear. In this case, it's the Gemini constellation. Here's where Gemini will be in the night sky at 9 pm across the US. 

If you want to take pictures during the event, King recommends putting your camera on autopilot using what's called a intervalometer, which allows you to schedule how many pictures your camera takes per minutes (or another rate you specify.)

The best place to see the meteor shower, and any celestial event, is in a dark spot with a clear sky, far away from city lights. Below is a map of projected cloud cover across the US for Saturday night:

And for Sunday night:

If your skies will be too cloudy or you can't get out of the city, there's still a way for you to watch the show. Italian astronomer, Gianluca Masi, will broadcast the event live starting at 9 pm EST on Saturday, Dec. 13 on his site, the Virtual Telescope Project.

The live online observatory, Slooh, will also broadcast the meteor shower starting at 11 pm EST on Saturday, Dec. 13. Here's the live feed below. 

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In the nighttime hours of Dec. 13, the streaking glow of falling stars will ignite across darkened skies, giving stargazers a glimpse of one of the most active meteor showers of the year: the Geminid Meteor Shower.

It is set to peak on Saturday night into the predawn hours of Sunday morning, and is considered to be one of the most consistently active meteor showers, according to a Slooh.com press release.

Who Will See the Geminid Meteor Shower?

Some of the best viewing conditions will be across the East as a sprawling high pressure system sits across the region, leading to clear skies for many areas, according to AccuWeather.com Meteorologist Andy Mussoline.

The interior West and southern Southwest will observe mainly clear skies as well, he added.

Fair to poor conditions will be found across much of the Rockies and Plains as a storm develops over Colorado and the southern Plains Saturday night into Sunday.

Clouds will limit the view across parts of the West Coast as a storm approaches, Mussoline said.

More Details About the Geminid Meteor Shower

"You will be able to see 60-80 per hour with the naked eye with a wide expanse of sky in a rural area," Slooh Astronomer Bob Berman said. "Cities will only be able to see one or two per hour."

Those who do not have suitable viewing conditions for the Geminid Meteor Shower's peak can view Slooh's live broadcast of the event below, which is set to air on Saturday, Dec. 13 at 8:00 p.m. EST.

The event will broadcast from two locations beginning with Slooh's flagship observatory at the Institute of Astrophysics, Canary Islands, and later from Prescott, Arizona, at Prescott Observatory.

"The Geminids are very strange because they hit Earth sideways," Berman said. "These meteors hit us gently. While Summer's Perseids strike Earth at 37 miles per second, that's amazingly fast, and the Leonids are even a little bit faster, hitting us at just over 40 miles a second, these Geminids hit us at only 22 miles a second."

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The Ursid meteor shower peaks tonight, and it should be a great show.

When skywatchers think of meteor showers during the month of December, the Geminid shower (which peaked earlier this month) usually comes to mind. But the Ursid meteor shower — peaking tonight and into the wee hours of Tuesday (Dec. 23) morning — should also offer skywatchers a good view this year.

Even if you can't see tonight's meteor shower due to light pollution or bad weather, you can still catch the Ursids online thanks to the Slooh Community Observatory. Tune in for Slooh's Ursid meteor shower webcast tonight starting at 8 p.m. EST (0100 Dec. 23 GMT) live on Space.com. You can also watch the webcast directly through Slooh (http://live.slooh.com/).

The Ursids are so named because they appear to fan out from the vicinity of the bright orange star Kochab, in the constellation of Ursa Minor, the Little Bear. Kochab is the brighter of the two outer stars in the bowl of the Little Dipper (the other being Pherkad), that seem to march in a circle like sentries around the North Star, Polaris.

These meteors are sometimes called the Umids, in a rather unsuccessful attempt to make clear that their radiant is in Ursa Minor, not Ursa Major. [Take Space.com's meteor shower quiz]

The fact that Kochab is positioned so near to the north pole of the sky means that this star almost never sets for most viewers in the Northern Hemisphere. And since the Ursids seem to fan out from this particular region of the sky, you have a reference point to look for these faint, medium-speed meteors all through the night if you care to.

The fact that the shower peaks tonight is good news for observers braving the cold to see the display. The moon is just one day past its new phase, meaning that light reflected from Earth's natural satellite won't wash out the shower.

"These meteors are best seen during the last dark hour before dawn, when the radiant lies highest above the horizon in a dark sky," Robert Lunsford of the American Meteor Society said. "On the morning of maximum, hourly rates of between five to 10 Ursids may be seen.

Plunging through the Earth's atmosphere 19 miles [30 kilometers] per second, the Ursids produce mostly medium-slow meteors. Very little activity will be seen away from the night of maximum activity."

December's new moon then gives skywatchers the perfect pre-Christmas cosmic treat: A clear view of the Ursid meteors in a dark sky. And this is also fortunate because the Ursids "badly need observing," the British Astronomical Association states.

It's not necessarily surprising that observers have neglected the Ursids. Everything about them is wintry. They usually coincide with the winter solstice, and are best seen by polar bears since they come from near the celestial North Pole. They are actually the dusty debris shed by the periodic comet 8P/Tuttle, which circles the sun in a 13.6-year orbit and was last seen in early 2008.

On occasion, the Earth has interacted with a dense, narrow stream of particles shed by this comet, and this intersection has caused brief outbursts of Ursid meteors numbering in the dozens per hour. This happened in 1945 and 1986, for example, though other outbursts may have been missed. No such interaction is expected this year, but still, you never know!

Editor's Note: If you snap an amazing photo of the Ursids or any other skywatching sight and would like to share it with Space.com for a possible story or gallery, please send the photo and comments to managing editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com.

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, the Farmer's Almanac and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, N.Y.Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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Stargazers can start the New Year off with a bang this weekend as the first meteor shower of 2015 reaches its peak on Saturday night (Jan. 3).

The first meteor display of the year will be the Quadrantid meteor shower. Meteor showers are usually named after the constellation in the sky where their radiant is located: the point in the sky from which they appear to radiate. Thus, the Perseids are named for Perseus and the Geminids are named for Gemini.

But there is no constellation named Quadrans, so where did the Quadrantids get their name? It turns out that there once was a constellation named Quadrans Muralis, the Wall Quadrant, which was incorporated into the constellation Boötes in 1922. [10 Must-See Stargazing Events of 2015]

A wall quadrant was a large instrument mounted on a wall used to measure angles in the sky before the invention of the telescope. Most famously, the 16th century astronomer Tycho Brahe used a large wall quadrant at his Danish observatory Uraniborg to measure accurate planetary positions, which Johannes Kepler later used to develop his three laws of planetary motion.

In 1795, Lalande created a dim constellation between Boötes and Draco which he named Quadrans Muralis. But when the International Astronomical Union defined the present 88 constellations in 1922, the Quadrans Muralis didn't make the cut. Today the name survives only in this meteor shower.

While the Quadrantid meteor shower can produce as many bright meteors during its peak as the more famous Perseids, the shower's actual peak time is much narrower, making the chances of seeing a Quadrantid much less than those of seeing a Perseid. So timing is everything.

Past observations allow us to predict that the 2015 Quadrantid meteor shower will peak on the night of Jan. 3 at 9 p.m. EST (0200 GMT). During this time, the radiant will be close to the northern horizon and there is a good chance of seeing "Earth-grazers"— meteors coming in close to the horizon to the east and west.

As the night progresses, the radiant will rise higher in the northeastern sky, so that more meteors should be visible over a larger swath of sky, mostly in the east. By the beginning of dawn, around 6 a.m., the radiant will be high in the eastern sky. However, by then the shower will be 9 hours past its peak, and the bulk of the meteors will be past.

The best time to look for Quadrantids will be between midnight and 2 a.m. your local time. Remember to dress warmly, and watch the sky in the east, about half way up to the zenith.

Besides timing, the other factor observers will contend with is the bright gibbous moon. The moon will be only one day shy of its full phase, and will be above the horizon all night long. Try to locate your observing position so that the moon is blocked by a building or tree, and avoid looking in its direction.

You can try capturing Quadrantid meteors using any camera that allows time exposures. Again the moon will cause problems, fogging your images with its light. The trick will be to make long enough exposures to catch a meteor or two, while avoiding fogging with moonlight. As always, we welcome your images.

Editor's note: If you snap a great picture of the 2015 Quadrantid meteor shower and would like to send it in to Space.com, let us know. We just might feature it in a photo gallery or story. Photos and comments can be sent in to managing editor Tariq Malik at: spacephotos@space.com.

This article was provided to Space.com bySimulation Curriculum, the leader in space science curriculum solutions and the makers of Starry Nightand SkySafari. Follow Starry Night on Twitter @StarryNightEdu. Follow us @Spacedotcom,Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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When it comes to meteorites, the bigger they are, the more havoc they generally wreak.

In 1997, University of Colorado geoscientist Brian Toon and colleagues predicted the aftermath of meteorite impacts of various sizes. They found that a space rock half a mile wide would produce an explosion that releases the energy equivalent of up to 100,000 million tons (Mt) of TNT. That's enough to cause widespread blast damage and earthquakes, but nothing too out of line with many natural disasters in the modern age.

Once a collision exceeds the 100,000 Mt threshold, you're looking at a catastrophe larger than any in human history. A meteorite a mile in diameter might send enough pulverized rock into the stratosphere to block out sunlight and cause global cooling.

The object that killed off the dinosaurs was probably seven or eight miles wide, says Jay Melosh, a planetary physicist at Purdue University. Its impact would have ejected a dust plume that spread clear around the planet and rained blazing-hot on to forests, igniting them. "The dinosaurs probably broiled to death," he says.

Such a collision today would kill billions of people. Those who didn't perish in the initial blast or the fires that followed would face long odds of finding sustenance. "People are going to starve to death," Toon says. Still, a few would likely weather the apocalyptic storm. "Probably some fishermen in Costa Rica," he offers. "People near the oceans who managed to hide out and fish when the fires started."

For a collision to obliterate the human race altogether, Toon estimates it would take a 60-mile-wide meteorite. He says, "That would incinerate everybody."

This article was originally published in the February 2015 issue of Popular Science.

Have a question? Tweet your science questions and quandaries to @PopSci with the hashtag #AskAnything, or email us at AskAnything@popsci.com.

This article originally appeared on Popular Science.

This article was written by Lydia Ramsey from Popular Science and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

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Last year a German scientist surveying Antarctica's King Baudouin Ice Shelf noticed a huge ring in an otherwise flat plain. Despite skeptics, he and his colleagues think they may have uncovered the site of a meteorite impact.

This video originally appeared on Slate Video. Watch More: slate.com/video

Jim Festante is an actor/writer in Los Angeles and regular video contributor to Slate. He's the author of the Image Comics miniseries The End Times of Bram and Ben.

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Two years after an asteroid exploded over Russia and injured more than 1,200 people, the origin of the space rock still puzzles scientists.

The 66-foot-wide (20 meters) asteroid broke up over the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia, on Feb. 15, 2013, shattering windows across the area and sending many people to the hospital with lacerations from the flying glass.

Originally, astronomers thought that the Chelyabinsk meteor came from a 1.24-mile-wide (2 kilometers) near-Earth asteroid called 1999 NC43.

But a closer look at the asteroid's orbit and likely mineral composition, gained from spectroscopy, suggests few similarities between it and the Russian meteor.

"These two bodies shared similar orbits around the sun, and initial studies suggested even similar compositions," lead study author Vishnu Reddy, a scientist with the nonprofit Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, said in a statement.

However, "the composition of [the] Chelyabinsk meteorite that was recovered after the event is similar to a common type of meteorite called LL chondrites," he added. "The near-Earth asteroid has a composition that is distinctly different from this."

More generally, Reddy and his colleagues' work showed that it is difficult to make predictions about what particular asteroid could have shed pieces that slammed into Earth. Because most asteroids are so small and their orbits are "chaotic," it's hard to make a firm link, the authors said.

A paper based on the research appears in the journal Icarus.

The Russian meteor explosion has generated a great deal of interest in the search for potentially hazardous asteroids, sparking the creation of a new asteroid warning center at the European Space Agency, among other initiatives.

In a statement this week, the B612 Foundation, a nonprofit organization that seeks to reduce the threat from asteroids, urged agencies worldwide to step up their search for dangerous space rocks. The group plans to add to that effort with the asteroid-hunting Sentinel Space Telescope, which B612 hopes to launch in 2018.

"The fact of the matter is that asteroid impacts can be prevented using technology we can employ right now," B612 co-founder Ed Lu, a former space shuttle astronaut, said in a statement.

"And unlike other potentially global-scale catastrophic events, the solution is nearly purely a technical one, and with a relatively small and known cost," Lu added. "So as my friend, former Apollo 9 astronaut and co-founder of the B612 Foundation Rusty Schweickart says, 'Let’s get on with it.'"

Follow Elizabeth Howell @howellspace, or Space.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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The earth is a dirty place, and we aren't getting much help from space. Every day, dust from meteorites, comets, and other 4.6 billion-year-old pieces of our solar system fall into the earth's atmosphere. This meteoric dust is incredibly small, kind of like particles of smoke. But there is plenty of it.

Until now, scientists didn't know how much of this cosmic dust was gathering on Earth (though they know rather a lot about how much is up in space). Researchers guessed that anywhere between 0.4 and 110 tons of the star stuff entered our atmosphere every day--that's a pretty wide range. But a recent paper took a closer look at the levels of sodium and iron in the atmosphere using Doppler Lidar, an instrument that can measure changes in the composition of the atmosphere. Because the amount of sodium in the atmosphere is proportional to the amount of cosmic dust in the atmosphere, the researchers figured out that the actual amount of dust falling to the earth is along the lines of 60 tons per day.

Guess it's time for some spring cleaning! But don't get out the dust rag just yet. The dust that falls to earth can be surprisingly helpful to the environment, not only helping to build up clouds in the atmosphere, but also helping to fertilize plankton in Antarctica.

EOS

This article originally appeared on Popular Science

This article was written by Mary Beth Griggs from Popular Science and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

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There's a meteor shower this week that coincides with a crescent moon, which means good news for viewers.

"This year the moon will be a waxing crescent only 1/15th the brightness of a full moon, and it will set early, allowing excellent dark sky conditions for this shower," said astronomers Bob Berman in a statement issued by the online observatory Slooh.

The Lyrid meteor shower happens from April 16 to 25. But the most spectacular time to see the shower — when the most meteors are streaking across the sky — will be a few hours before dawn on Wednesday, April 22 and Thursday, April 23, according to EarthSky.

If you get out to a clear sky you should be able to see up to 10 to 20 meteors each hour. And you don't need any special equipment to observe these iconic falling stars. Just keep your eyes peeled!

To know exactly when the sun will rise in your part of the world, use this handy sunrise/sunset calculator.

If the skies near you are too cloudy or too bright to see them, don't worry: you can still watch the meteor shower online. Slooh will will offer a live broadcast starting at 8 pm ET (5 pm PT). Here's the live feed:

Origins of the Lyrids

Meteor showers typically come from the dusty, rocky guts of comets. When Earth passes through a comet's tail, its gravitational pull attracts their debris, which then enters the atmosphere. The comet that produces the Lyrids is called Comet C/1861 G1. It orbits the sun every 415 years.

When this happens, the debris is speeding along at tens of thousands of miles per hour. As it falls toward the surface, the pieces of the comet rub against the molecules in the Earth's atmosphere. That friction generates heat and the bright streaks of light we see.

Here's a time lapse video of what that process looked like during the 2013 Lyrid meteor shower:

Each meteor shower is named for the constellation of stars from which the streaks of light seem to appear. The constellation that the Lyrid meteors seem to come from is Lyra, which is also commonly known as the "Harp" constellation.

So, when you're watching the Lyrids, a neat exercise is to trace the path of the meteors back to the Lyra constellation. You can easily find this constellation in the night sky because it contains one of the brightest stars, Vega, shown in the image below.

There are a number of apps you can use, like SkyView, to help you determine where Lyra will be in the night sky at the time you're watching.

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Halley's Comet is visible from Earth only once every 75 years, but the meteor shower created from the tail of the comet comes around every year.

This year, the best time to see the shower will be from the evening of Tuesday, May 5, through the morning of Wednesday, May 6, according to Accuweather.

Meteor showers typically come from the dusty, rocky guts that comets leave behind as they fly through the solar system. When Earth passes through a comet's tail, its gravitational pull attracts their debris, which then enters the atmosphere, burns up, and is seen as a falling star or meteor.

This week's Eta Aquarid meteor shower is produced from the guts of the famous Halley's Comet, which has been spotted by observers since 240 BC.

The shower takes place from April 21 through May 20, but the best time to catch a glimpse — when the most meteors are streaking across the sky — will be the night of Tuesday, May 5, through to the next morning.

"In practice, these very fast annual meteors normally produce about one every four minutes," said Slooh Astronomer Bob Berman in a statement. Slooh is an online observatory that will be offering a live broadcast of the meteor shower starting on Tuesday, May 5, at 8 p.m. ET.

During the broadcast, professional astronomers will discuss the meteor shower and take questions from the public. Just send them a tweet with #MeteordeMayo followed by your question. See the broadcast stream below.

Best way to watch

This year's meteor shower will be particularly hard to catch, since it coincides with a bright moon whose light will drown out some of the sky. So unless you're in a very remote part of the world far away from city lights, your best bet to catch the action will be the online broadcast.

But if you're determined to catch a glimpse of Halley's comet guts yourself, Accuweather has a map showing where in the US and Canada the viewing conditions are best for the morning of May 6:

Origins of the Eta Aquarids

When a comet travels through the solar system, parts of it are blown off by wind from the sun and left behind as the comet's tail.

When Earth passes through the tail, small particles of rock and dust get swept up by our planet's gravity. When they penetrate our atmosphere, they're speeding along at tens-of-thousands of miles per hour and rubbing against other molecules. That high-speed friction generates heat, which is the bright streak of light we call a falling star.

The debris particles we see in the Eta Aquarids were separated from Halley's Comet hundreds of years ago.

Each meteor shower is named for the constellation of stars from which the streaks of light seem to appear. The constellation that the Eta Aquarids seem to come from is Aquarius.

So when you're watching this week's meteor shower, a neat exercise is to trace the path of the meteors back to the Aquarius constellation. There are a number of mobile apps you can use, like SkyView, to help you determine where Lyra will be in the night sky at the time you're watching.

Check out the livestream from Slooh beginning on Tuesday, May 5, at 8 p.m. ET below:

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The Perseid meteor shower is one of the most spectacular celestial shows we can see from Earth, but the event is a little more violent for the moon.

The Perseids happen every year starting at the end of July and last through most of August — but there's always a peak viewing time where you can see up to 100 meteors per hour (about one or two every minute).

This year the Perseid meteor shower peaks at about 4 a.m. ET on Thursday, Aug. 13, 2015, according to Universe Today.

'Moon flashes'

Like most meteor showers, the Perseids are caused by pieces of debris left by a passing comet. Each year the Earth passes into the debris cloud, and its small chunks of comet dust and ice burn up as they hit the atmosphere, lighting up the night sky.

No pieces should actually make it to Earth's surface as meteorites. The moon, however, is a different story.

The moon doesn't have an atmosphere, so it routinely gets pummeled by meteorites.

Sometimes it's possible to spot flashes of light when the meteorites hit the surface of the moon, according to research published May 13 in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. The researchers recorded at least 12 of these flashes from the 2013 Perseid meteor shower.

Here's what one of the flashes looks like:

The brightness of the flash depends on how big the meteor is and how fast it's going when it hits the moon — it seems the harder the impact, the brighter the flash.

It's difficult for astronomers to spot a meteor hitting the moon — it takes a good telescope and a lot of luck. But the odds are considerably higher during a heavy meteor shower like the Perseids. We don't know very much about these flashes yet because they're so difficult to spot, no matter how good viewing conditions are.

This year's peak viewing of the Perseid meteor shower will coincide with a new moon. This is good news for amateur astronomers: It means there will be no moonlight for the meteors to compete with, so this year's shower should be especially brilliant.

The best time to spot meteors will happen early in the morning on Thursday, around 4 a.m. ET, but you should be able to see them all week if you're somewhere far away from city lights.

If you can't get yourself somewhere with a dark night sky, NASA is streaming the meteor shower starting Wednesday, Aug. 12 at 10 p.m. ET. You can watch the live feed below:

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