compiled by Arlene & David Kaplan

Meteorite Crashes Through Ceiling and Lands on Woman’s Bed
After a fireball streaked through the Canadian sky, Ruth Hamilton, of British Columbia, found a 2.8-pound rock the size of a large man’s fist near her pillow. She was fast asleep in her home in British Columbia when she awoke to the sound of her dog barking, followed by “an explosion.”…more

Astronomers Found a Planet That Survived Its Star’s Death The Jupiter-size planet orbits a type of star called a white dwarf, and hints at what our solar system could be like when the sun burns out. When our sun enters its death throes in about five billion years, it will incinerate our planet and then dramatically collapse into a dead ember known as a white dwarf. But the fate of more distant planets, …more

Why NASA Launched a Robotic Archaeologist Named Lucy NASA launched a probe toward clusters of asteroids along Jupiter’s orbital path. They’re known as the Trojan swarms, and they represent the final unexplored regions of asteroids in the solar system. The spacecraft, a deep-space robotic archaeologist named Lucy. In a vast odyssey across the solar system, the mission will study asteroids known as Trojans that may contain secrets of how the planets ended up in their current orbits….more

$10bn James Webb Space Telescope unpacked in Kourou The $10bn successor to the Hubble observatory arrived at Europe’s Kourou spaceport five days ago after being shipped from the US. Engineers have unboxed the James Webb Space Telescope in French Guiana and will now prepare it for launch. It’s now been relieved of its transport container and…more

Orion: Nasa’s Moon-ship is attached to SLS megarocket Nasa’s next-generation spaceship has been lifted onto the rocket that will launch it to the Moon this year or in early 2022. The Orion spacecraft was attached to the powerful Space Launch System (SLS) rocket at Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. For its upcoming flight, Orion will fly around the Moon without astronauts…more

Neutrino result heralds new chapter in physics A new chapter in physics has opened, according to scientists who have been searching for a vital building block of the Universe. A major experiment has been used to search for an elusive sub-atomic particle: a key component of the matter that makes up our everyday lives…more

 Nebra Sky Disc: British Museum to display world’s ‘oldest map of stars’ An ancient object thought to be the world’s oldest map of the stars is to go on display at the British Museum. The Nebra Sky Disc is widely believed to be 3,600 years old, dating from the Bronze Age. The bronze disc was unearthed in Germany in…more

Signs of first planet found outside our galaxy Astronomers have found hints of what could be the first planet ever to be discovered outside our galaxy. Nearly 5,000 “exoplanets” – worlds orbiting stars beyond our Sun – have been found so far, but all of these have been located within the Milky Way galaxy…more