A new asteroid was discovered by the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission in November of 2016, designated 2016 WF9. While the mission finally decided to designate the object as an asteroid a few days later, 2016 WF9 presented an interesting puzzle: while it appears to be a comet in structure, it also lacks the dust and gas cloud that is characteristic of what we expect from comets.
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Despite the insistence of some physicists that quantum effects only affect things on an extremely small scale, new theories continue to be put forward that the smallest known processes may be responsible for some very, very big phenomena, ranging from things such as the navigational sense of migratory birds, to the potential that they may also be responsible for the very existence of life as we know it on Earth.
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The first American astronaut to orbit the planet Earth, John Glenn, died on December 8, 2016, at the age of 95. Although Glenn was being treated at the Ohio State Cancer Center, the exact cause of his death hasn’t been released by his family.
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As a follow-up to a story we reported on last month, the leaked research paper on the controversial EM Drive that NASA was reportedly set to present for peer review has been published, in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ (AIAA) Journal of Propulsion and Power. The submission of this document is an important development: NASA’s Eagleworks Laboratories would not publish data such as this if they were not confident that this propellantless engine actually works.
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