Coast to Coast AM 1/3/2010: The Year Ahead

George Noory returned from vacation to chat with psychic Joseph Jacobs about what he sees in store for the new year ahead, and beyond. Worldwide in January, he foresees some breaks, and some reconstruction.

Nearby Nova Could Spell Doom For Far Future Earth [2012]

Space.com — A massive, eruptive white dwarf star in the Milky Way — long overdue for its next periodic eruption — is closer to our solar system than previously thought and could threaten the Earth if it fully explodes millions of years from now.

New observations of the white dwarf and its sun-like stellar companion are giving scientists a better understanding of the star's precarious position as a possible supernova, astronomers said here today at the 215th meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

The two stars are in a close binary system called T Pyxidis, located in the Southern Hemisphere constellation Pyxis ("The Compass Box"). Researchers found that the system is only 3,260 light-years from our solar system – far closer than anyone previously thought. (A light-year is the distance that light travels in one Earth year, or about 6 trillion miles.)

Unusual space object, possibly man-made, approaches Earth

An unusual space body with parameters similar to a man-made object will approach Earth on Wednesday at a distance about three times less than the moon's orbit.
The object, named 2010 AL30, will fly by Earth at a distance of at least 128,000 km (about 80,000 miles) at 12:48 GMT. As it is some 10-15 meters long, there is no chance it will directly impact the planet.
According to Italian scientists Ernesto Guido and Giovanni Sostero of the Remanzacco Observatory, it has an orbital period of almost exactly one year and might be a man-made object such as a spent rocket booster.
Alan Harris, senior researcher at the U.S. Space Science Institute said, however, the object had a "perfectly ordinary Earth-crossing orbit."
"Unlikely to be artificial, its orbit doesn't resemble any useful spacecraft trajectory, and its encounter velocity with Earth is not unusually low," he said.
Astronomers will be able to observe 2010 AL30 as a 14th magnitude star in the constellations of Orion, Taurus, and Pisces.
MOSCOW, January 12 (RIA Novosti)