On the Radar

News from the world of science

We have dust

A Japanese probe that visited an asteroid did collect dust samples, it was confirmed this week. The unmanned craft,

Hayabusa

, made contact five years ago with an asteroid called Itokawa and the probe returned to terra firma earlier this year, landing in the Australian desert.

On Tuesday, the Japanese space agency Jaxa released a statement saying that scanning electron microscopy had confirmed that the probe’s cargo included asteroid dust.

“About 1,500 grains were identified as rocky particles, and most of them were judged to be of extraterrestrial origin, and definitely from Asteroid Itokawa,” it stated.

Long in the tooth

A study of tooth fossils suggest that Neanderthals matured more quickly than modern early humans. Using synchrotron microcomputed tomography, scientists analysed the tooth samples to determine the ages of the individuals at death.

“The finding suggests that our slow development and long childhood are recent and unique to our own species, and may have given early humans an evolutionary advantage over Neanderthals,” said a statement from Harvard University, which was involved in the study. Details are described online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week.

"If our interpretation is correct, this is the nearest example where the birth of a black hole has been observed"
Daniel Patnaude of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics on X-ray observations of the supernova SN 1979C, which was first spotted by an amateur astronomer three decades ago.