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The large space rock that will zip past Earth this Halloween is most likely a dead comet that, fittingly, bears an eerie resemblance to a skull.

In this artist's conception, a tiny rocky object vaporizes as it orbits a white dwarf star. Astronomers have detected the first planetary object transiting a white dwarf using data from the K2 mission. Slowly the object will disintegrate, leaving a dusting of metals on the surface of the star.

The worst forest fires in nearly two decades are burning out of control on Borneo, creating the thick blanket of smoke in this Oct. 14 image from NASA's MISR instrument.

Schematic of the work The tip of the scanning tunneling microscope (in yellow-orange) is moved over the graphene and the nanowrinkle.

This is a diagram of the dielectric capacitor research developed by a University of Delaware-led research team.

The European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission is currently exploring comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, returning incredible views of this tiny frozen world. The Rosetta mission is a hugely ambitious endeavour – the first spacecraft to orbit a comet and follow it on its journey towards the Sun, accompanied by its lander, Philae, which made the first ever landing on a comet in November 2014. Observatories across the planet are supporting this mission, and the ING is playing an important part in this – especially in providing unique observations this year as the comet passed its closest point to the Sun and highest level of activity.
One of the key goals of the ground-based observation campaign that supports Rosetta is to understand the comet on the largest scales (the coma fills a volume tens of thousands of km across) while the spacecraft explores the very inner region (normally within 300 km of the 4 km long nucleus). To do this, observations need to look at both the shape of the coma via wide field imaging and the chemical composition of the coma gases. The gases reflect sunlight at different wavelengths, allowing them to be identified and measured using spectrograph instruments.

While the flux capacitor still conjures sci-fi images, capacitors are now key components of portable electronics, computing systems, and electric vehicles.

Iranian researchers from Tarbiat Modarres University designed a biosensor that enables the early diagnosis of leukemia in the test sample by using naked eyes. The biosensors have been produced at low cost, and they enjoy high sensitivity, selectivity and speed.

NASA, through its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, has issued a call to American industry for innovative ideas on how the agency could obtain a core advanced solar electric propulsion-based spacecraft to support the Asteroid Redirect Robotic Mission (ARRM).

Quantum information can be sent optically, that is to say, using light, and the signal is comprised of photons, which is the smallest component (a quantum) of a light pulse. Quantum information is located in whichever path the photon is sent along -- it can, for example, be sent to the right or to the left on a semi-transparent mirror. It can be compared to the use of bits made up of 0s and 1s in the world of conventional computers. But a quantum bit is more than a classical bit, since it is both a 0 and a 1 at the same time and it cannot be read without it being detected, as it is only a single photon. In addition, quantum technology can be used to store far more information than conventional computer technology, so the technology has much greater potential for future information technology.