Nature Hub

  From - Sky &Telescope By - David L. Chandler  Edited by - Amal Udawatta An artist's illustration of an asteroid N. Bartmann / ESA / Webb / ESO / M. Kornmesser and S. Brunier / N. Risinger    2024 YR4 is no longer a danger for Earth, and a (small) chance of a lunar impact could provide great science data. “We are all rooting for the Moon!” Richard Binzel (MIT) is referring to the asteroid 2024 YR 4 , which for a few weeks had remained at the second-highest-rated probability of potential Earth impact of any asteroid discovered. Now, although its impact probability has fallen to virtually zero for Earth, it still has a slight chance of impacting the Moon on December 22, 2032. An Earth impact by an object of this size — estimated at anywhere from 40 to 90 meters across — could have been serious for a local region, if populated, and astronomers around the world have scrambled for weeks to obtain observations in order to refine the object’s orbit, using the Canada Fr...

    From- BBC World News BY-  Miranda Lipton Edited by - Amal Udawatta   Chapul Farms (Credit: Chapul Farms) These tiny soldiers can eat four times their own weight in organic waste – and turn it into sustainable fertiliser. With a unique ability to consume nearly any form of organic matter it comes across, one small but mighty insect is becoming a tool to address the growing problem of organic waste and soil degradation. The bug, black soldier fly larvae (BSFL), transforms food waste into nutrient-rich biofertiliser: frass. Insects have been long been used in agricultural practices as a  food source  – but now farmers are exploring the potential of bug poo as a sustainable fertiliser. With over  33%  of the world's soil currently degraded, depleted of the nutrients necessary for healthy plant growth, frass can play a major role in restoring soil biodiversity and quality.  In May 2024, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA)  awarded gra...

      From - Space. Com     By -   Robert Lea    Edited by - Amal Udawatta (Left) An image of the sky in the direction of the cosmic web detection (Right) The image shows the diffuse gas (red) contained within the cosmic filament connecting two galaxies (yellow stars), extending across a vast distance of 3 million light-years.   (Image credit: Joseph DePasquale/Space Telescope Science Institute/Davide Tornotti/University of Milano-Bicocca)   For the first time, we could trace the boundary between the gas residing in galaxies and the material contained within the cosmic web through direct measurements. Astronomers have imaged a spectacular thread in the cosmic web, connecting two actively forming galaxies that existed when the universe was just 2 billion years old. Both galaxies at hand are home feeding  supermassive black holes. The  cosmic web  stretches for an incredible 3 million light-years, making it about 3...