China wants to launch asteroid-deflecting rockets to save Earth from Armageddon

Chinese scientists are planning to fire more than 20 rockets into space to divert an asteroid impact that has a small chance of one day ending life on Earth. Their target is an asteroid named Bennu, a 85.5-million-ton (77.5 million metric ton) space rock that is on track to swoop within 4.6 million miles (7.5 million kilometers) of Earth’s orbit between 2175 and 2199. Although Bennu’s chances of striking Earth are slim — at just 1 in 2,700 — the asteroid is as wide as the Empire State Building is…

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Four ways artificial intelligence is helping us learn about the universe

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Ashley Spindler, Research Fellow, Astrophysics, University of Hertfordshire Astronomy is all about data. The universe is getting bigger and so too is the amount of information we have about it. But some of the biggest challenges of the next generation of astronomy lie in just how we’re going to study all the data we’re collecting. To take on these challenges, astronomers are turning to machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to build new tools…

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