Giant asteroid set to buzz Earth, poses no threat

	Giant asteroid set to buzz Earth, poses no threat By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (Reuters) - An asteroid measuring about a third of a mile (half a kilometer) in diameter will make a relatively close, but harmless pass by Earth Monday night, NASA said. The asteroid will pass about 745,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) from Earth, roughly three times farther away than the moon. "While it poses no threat to Earth for the foreseeable future, it's a relatively close approach by a relatively large asteroid, so it provides us a unique opportunity to observe and learn more," astronomer Don Yeomans, with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, said in a statement. The asteroid, which orbits the sun every 1.84 years, was discovered 11 years ago by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research, or LINEAR, telescope in New Mexico. Read More » Melting, Not Meteorite, Caused East Antarctica Crater A mysterious crater that was discovered in East Antarctica last month likely formed beneath a leaky meltwater lake, rather than because of a meteorite impact, researchers now think. The ring of sunken ice, nearly 2 miles (3 kilometers) wide, was spotted a few days before Christmas on the Roi Baudoin Ice Shelf in East Antarctica, north of Belgium's Princess Elisabeth research station. At first, German researchers suspected a meteorite blasted out the crater, because a space rock exploded over East Antarctica in 2004. "It was like a virtual coffee table conversation," Olaf Eisen, a glaciologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, said of the online discussion. Read More » Float Down Colorado's Wild Yampa River with Google Street View The virtual river trip, organized by nonprofit conservation organization American Rivers, travels through Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado and Utah, showcasing dramatic canyon walls with sedimentary rocks layered like a birthday cake and twisted by tectonic forces. The American Rivers team even strapped Google's cameras to their backs to capture side hikes up the canyons, ending at breathtaking overlooks. The river runs 250 miles (402 kilometers) from the mountains of Colorado through Dinosaur National Monument, where it flows into the Green River. "The wild Yampa is important because it shows that we can sustain vibrant agriculture while conserving endangered fish and supporting recreation," American Rivers' Matt Rice, director of the Colorado River Basin Programs, said in a statement. Read More » Sappho's New Poems: The Tangled Tale of Their Discovery Scholars of ancient literature find themselves in such a predicament with the Greek lyric poet Sappho, born in the late seventh century B.C. Her fame lives, but few of her poems survive. Last year, however, classicists welcomed exciting news: Dirk Obbink, a leading papyrologist at the University of Oxford, announced that he had recovered substantial sections of two never-before seen poems by Sappho: one about her brothers, the second about unrequited love. Widely admired and studied in antiquity, Sappho was known as "the Tenth Muse," and her poetry was collected into nine books at the Library of Alexandria. Sappho's long-lost verses had been translated from an ancient papyrus that was in the hands of an anonymous collector in London. Read More » Mountain-Size Asteroid Flies By Earth Today: Watch It Online A huge asteroid will become the largest space rock of its kind to pass closest to Earth until 2027 today (Jan. 26) when it zooms safely by Earth beyond the orbit of the moon, and you can see the space rock's flyby live online. The mountain-size asteroid 2004 BL86 will star in a live webcast at 11 a.m. EST (1600 GMT) by the online Slooh observatory and may even be visible to observers with binoculars or a small telescope because of its significant size – about a third of a mile wide. At its closest approach, the asteroid will be about 745,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) from Earth and poses no danger of hitting our planet, according to NASA scientists. The Slooh webcast will be available free on Slooh.com at and feature live commentary from NASA near-Earth object expert Paul Chodas and NASA research scientist Lance Benner, and be hosted by Will Gater and Slooh astronomer Bob Berman. Read More » Here's What to Eat to Lower Inflammation Ginger, nuts, fatty fish and whole grains are just some of the many foods that have been touted to have anti-inflammatory properties. It turns out that experts agree that eating a diet rich in such foods may in fact help lower the levels of inflammation in the body. In a new, small study, published this month in the Nutrition Journal, researchers found that men who consumed flaxseed for 42 days experienced a significant decrease in inflammatory markers compared with men who didn't consume flaxseed. In another study, published in October 2011 in the journal Cancer Prevention Research, the authors found that taking ginger root extract appeared to reduce markers of colon inflammation. Read More » Surprise, It's SpongeBob! X-Ray Shows What Toddler Swallowed SpongeBob SquarePants was recently spotted in an unusual place. In a recent medical case, doctors saw the image of SpongeBob, the sea-dwelling character of children's cartoons, while looking at an X-ray of a 16-month-old boy. The toddler in Saudi Arabia had been brought to a hospital because he appeared to have swallowed an object. It turned out that the hapless SpongeBob was a pendant that belonged to the toddler's sister, said Dr. Ghofran Ageely, a radiology resident at King Abdulaziz University Hospital, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Read More » Pediatricians Oppose Medical Marijuana, with Some Exceptions Although a number of states have legalized marijuana for medical or recreational reasons in recent years, a leading group of U.S. pediatricians says it opposes such legalization, over concerns that these laws could be harmful to children. However, the group says that in some cases, some of the chemical compounds contained in marijuana could be used to treat children with debilitating diseases. Although none of these places allows the drug to be sold to children or teens, making marijuana available to adults could increase the access that teens have to the drug, according to a policy statement released today (Jan. 26) by the American Academy of Pediatrics. "Just the campaigns to legalize marijuana can have the effect of persuading adolescents that marijuana is not dangerous," Dr. Seth D. Ammerman, a member of the AAP Committee on Substance Abuse, said in a statement. Read More » Spectacular Time-Lapse Video Shows Wonders of the Night Sky An amazing new time-lapse video shows the Milky Way, dancing auroras and skies full of stars above stunning locations in areas free of light pollution. The video is actually the trailer for a film called "Illusion of Lights: A Journey into the Unseen," an independent movie from Goldpaint Photography. Brad Goldpaint — the movie's director, photographer and editor — has been gathering footage for more than three years, with more shooting still planned. "'Illusion of Lights: A Journey into the Unseen' explores the beauty of the night sky from locations deep within high altitude mountains in the Sierra Nevada and low desert floors of the Southwest [United States]," according to a film synopsis. Read More » Commercial space rides for U.S. astronauts to save million: NASA By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (Reuters) - The U.S. space program should save more than $12 million a seat flying astronauts to and from the International Space Station on commercial space taxis rather than aboard Russian capsules, the NASA program manager said on Monday. In September, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration awarded contracts worth up to a combined $6.8 billion to Boeing and privately owned Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, to fly crew to the station, a $100 billion research laboratory about 260 miles above Earth. Since retiring the space shuttles in 2011, the United States has depended on Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, to ferry astronauts to the orbital outpost. NASA expects to pay an average of $58 million a seat when its astronauts begin flying on Boeing's CST-100 and SpaceX's Dragon capsules in 2017, Kathy Lueders, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew program, told reporters during a news conference in Houston and via conference call. Read More »