Three tiny fragments were collected by a Japanese spacecraft in 2005 from a 4.2-billion-year-old asteroid known as Itokawa. Smaller than the diameter of a hair, these components contain information that could help prevent an asteroid colliding with Earth. Itokawa, a rubble-pile asteroid (created when “solid asteroids collide and the resulting fragments assemble into new structures”), is almost as old as the solar system itself. Held …
A Battery Powered by Bacteria and Sweat Researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst have engineered a bacteria-based battery that can produce power from human sweat. The key to their innovation is bacterium Geobacter sulfurreducens, a bacteria that can produce electricity and has been used to explore microbial batteries. However, its need to be fed a constant diet has limited its functionality. To get around …
In a new study, scientists have found the remaining two of the five informational units—known as nucleobases (adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine and uracil)—of DNA and RNA that were still to be detected in meteorite samples, adding evidence to the theory that life began in space. The study, led by associate professor Yasuhiro Oba of Japan’s Hokkaido University, has revealed the elusive cytosine and thymine within …
