Best of Last Week—Earth gets temporary moon, Hyperloop tests vehicle, why some parents don't store guns well
It was a good week for space science as a pair of asteroid dynamics researchers from Universidad Complutense de Madrid Ciudad Universitaria found that a small asteroid will make one orbit around the Earth starting this month before departing back into other parts of the solar system. Also, a Kansas State University engineer published the results of an observational study he conducted in support of a century-old theory that directly challenges the validity of the Big Bang theory—his arguments were supported by imaging from three telescopes that included more than 30,000 galaxies and their redshifts relative to their distances from Earth. And an astrophysicist at the University of Western Ontario found that the odds of the asteroid 99942 Apophis striking Earth are slightly higher than previously thought due to the possibility that the asteroid's trajectory could be altered by a collision with another object.
In technology news, a team of bio-engineers at the Indian Institute of Science developed a neuromorphic platform that yields a significant leap forward in computing efficiency. And officials working on the Hyperloop project in the Netherlands announced that a test vehicle was levitated and zipped through a tube at a testing facility for the high-speed transit system, demonstrating a step forward in the project. Also, engineers at the University of Washington presented a stretchable, wearable device that powers an LED using only the warmth of a person's skin. And a team of software and information systems engineers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Israel, extracted useful data from an air-gapped computer.
In other news, a team of medical and psychiatric researchers at the Yale School of Medicine found new links between genes and how personalities are shaped. Also, a team of geoscientists from Kyushu University and the University of Tokyo conducted the most detailed study yet of seismic activity linking fault strength to the likelihood of large earthquakes. And finally, a team of sociologists at Rutgers University found via survey results that parents who actively teach their children how to handle or shoot firearms are more likely to store loaded guns in unsecured locations.
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