This event will bring together renowned scientists and astronauts to talk about their research and expeditions
At every scale, our Universe is composed of the same particles. This Universe of particles is at the heart of the International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC), which kicks off its 39th edition on Monday, 14 July. The astroparticle specialists who meet there, like the physicists working on experiments at CERN, share a desire to understand our Universe by studying its fundamental constituents.
A special event will take place as part of the conference. The general public and the scientific community are invited to Science Gateway on 19 July to meet Nobel Prize winners and astronauts at the Stellar soirée.
Samuel Ting, winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physics, will present AMS, the dark matter detector mounted on the International Space Station. Barry Barish, winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics, will look back on the first detection of gravitational waves in 2015, a real leap forward for contemporary science. Takaaki Kajita, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics, will talk about neutrinos, the mysterious and elusive particles that pervade our Universe. Michel Mayor, winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics, will explain the path that led to the discovery of exoplanets. He will be sharing the stage with Meganne Christian, a reserve astronaut with the European Space Agency (ESA), who was selected at the same time as Slawosz Uznański, who has just returned from space. In this discussion, Meganne Christian and Michel Mayor will describe their respective journeys to the Moon and the Nobel Prize.
Three other ESA Astronauts will also share their experiences: Paolo Nespoli, who spent more than 300 days on board the International Space Station; Matthias Maurer, who will be talking about exploration of the Moon; and Luca Parmitano, who will be speaking live from the NASA Space Center in Houston and has made four spacewalks to perform maintenance on the AMS experiment.
Stellar will also be offering a host of fun activities, including an interactive science village with workshops, Apollo simulators where you can step into the shoes of an astronaut, and access to the Science Gateway exhibitions. The evening will be punctuated by live music, and stands will be serving refreshments.
You can consult the full programme here. For those unable to attend in person, the talks will be streamed on YouTube.
Speakers
Barry C. Barish, experimental physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics 2017
Michel Mayor, astrophysicist, Nobel Prize in Physics 2019
Takaaki Kajita, particle physicist, Director of the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research at the University of Tokyo, Nobel Prize in Physics 2015
Samuel Chao Chung Ting, physicist, Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nobel Prize in Physics 1976
Meganne Christian, ESA Reserve Astronaut, Exploration Commercialisation Lead at the UK Space Agency
Matthias Maurer, ESA Astronaut
Paolo Nespoli, ESA and ASI Astronaut
Luca Parmitano, ESA Astronaut and Colonel in the Italian Air Force
Patrizia Caraveo, astrophysicist, neutron star specialist
Former Manchester United defender Axel Tuanzebe is suing the club for alleged negligent medical advice.
The 27-year-old, who joined Burnley earlier this month, filed a legal claim with the High Court against United last week.
It relates to a period from July 2022 involving an unknown injury and is considered a high value claim, which is understood to be more than £1m.
Tuanzebe was out for 195 days in his final season at the club before he was loaned to Stoke in January 2023, where he made just five appearances.
He joined the club when he was eight, making his debut in 2017, and played 37 times for them before leaving in the summer of 2023, joining Ipswich as a free agent that September.
The right-back captained United at every level and his final appearance for the club was in the 2021 Europa League final loss to Villarreal, where he scored in the shootout as they lost 11-10 on penalties.
The former England Under-21 international – who now represents DR Congo – also had three spells on loan at Aston Villa, while he also spent time at Napoli in 2022.
Tuanzebe’s lawyers, Simons Muirhead Burton, and United both declined to comment when approached by BBC Sport.
Brazilian author Jorge Amado’s classic novel “Tieta of Agreste” will get a new movie adaptation written by and starring Brazilian actress Suzana Pires (Elite Squad, Casa Grande), with Joana Mariani (Todas as Canções de Amor) on board as the director.
Set in the 1970s, the novel tells the story of the return of Tieta to the remote village of Santana do Agreste 26 years after being banished for promiscuity, beaten and expelled by her father in front of all the town’s people.
The novel got the TV treatment in 1989, starring Betty Faria, while a 1996 film version starred Sônia Braga. Pires will take on the lead role of Tieta in the new movie.
Produced by Eliane Ferreira’s Muiraquitã Filmes, known for such movies as Portrait of a Certain Orient (2024) and Querencia (2019), the film will have the title Tieta, with the company promising a look at the protagonist “through a new and feminine lens.”
Pires, who has more than 20 years of experience as a screenwriter and 30 as an actress, said that the “goal is to reimagine Tieta through a feminine lens,” bringing a new perspective compared to previous adaptations. The idea is to emphasize how the character is a “symbol of resilience and freedom,” she added.
The movie will focus on the relationship between Tieta and Perpetua, “characters that represent freedom and castration, respectively,” according to the production firm. It hopes that the film will allow “another great, complex and profound character from Brazilian literature” to “conquer the global market.”
Amado, who died in 2001, is known for his works exploring such themes as love, social inequality, and cultural identity. Among his other famous novels are the likes of Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon, Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, which was made into a movie starring Braga, and Captains of the Sands, which has also been adapted for the big screen.
A top scientist on Earth’s polar systems says we may have passed a terrifying climate threshold in Antarctica — an event described as “beyond worrying.”
What’s happening?
Louise Sime, a leading scientist at the British Antarctic Survey, recently told the Guardian that she believes we may have already crossed a tipping point in West Antarctica.
The region holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by several feet, and new data shows it could be melting far faster than expected.
“As a human being, I have so much trouble trying to think about the magnitude of the sea-level rise that I’m not sure I have the capacity to really think it through,” Sime said.
Sime leads large-scale climate modeling efforts and has spent over two decades studying Earth’s climate history through Antarctic ice cores. These layers of ancient frozen water act like time capsules, and what they’re revealing now is deeply unsettling.
According to recent models, continued global warming could push Antarctic melt rates into runaway territory within decades, though Sime also noted the uncertainty involved.
Watch now: Giant snails invading New York City?
“West Antarctica is unlikely to catastrophically lose all its ice in tens of years,” she told the Guardian. “It could unfold over hundreds or even thousands of years, but once you cross the tipping point and initiate that process, it is possible that we’d immediately see a substantial acceleration and jumps in sea level. We need more study.”
Why is Antarctic melt concerning?
Melting polar ice isn’t just a remote concern. It’s a threat to coastal communities, global weather patterns, and food systems. Rising seas caused in part by Antarctic melt can worsen storm surges and tidal flooding, especially when extreme weather strikes — a pattern already supercharged by rising global temperatures.
Even a few feet of sea level rise could displace millions of people, damage infrastructure, and increase saltwater intrusion into freshwater sources and farmland.
More ice melt can also disrupt ocean circulation, which helps regulate temperatures worldwide. That could be a factor in generating more extreme droughts, heavier rains, and shifting agriculture zones, impacting everything from grocery prices to global health.
What’s being done to slow the melt?
While the warning is dire, there’s still time to avoid the worst-case scenarios, but action must be swift. That includes reducing planet-heating pollution by investing in clean energy, updating building codes to enhance climate resilience, and protecting natural carbon sinks, such as forests and wetlands.
“If we stop emitting carbon tomorrow, then it’s quite likely that we would see no further decreases in Arctic sea ice,” said Sime.
Every day, people can save money and also help the environment by supporting clean transit, reducing food waste, voting for climate-forward policies, and exploring solar for their homes.
Installing solar panels with battery storage can make homes more resilient during power outages caused by extreme weather. EnergySage offers a free tool to compare quotes from local installers and potentially save up to $10,000.
Another way to help is to educate yourself on critical climate issues that can help guide the planet-friendly choices you make.
Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don’t miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
When Elon Musk advised Germans to vote for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in elections last year, Manu Hoyer – who lives in the small town where the billionaire had built Tesla’s European production hub – wrote to the state premier to complain.
“How can you do business with someone who supports rightwing extremism?” she asked Dietmar Woidke, the Social Democrat leader of the eastern state of Brandenburg, who had backed the setting up of the Tesla Giga factory in Grünheide.
Hoyer said that in Woidke’s “disappointing, but predictable” answer, he denied the charge. “He said he didn’t know him personally. As if that excused him.”
Manu Hoyer has tried to question local politicians about Elon Musk’s support of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party. Photograph: Imago/Alamy
She had co-founded a Citizens’ Initiative to oppose Musk’s plans, announced in 2019, to build in the sparsely populated municipality in the sandy plains south-west of Berlin. The initiative’s fears at the time were largely over the potential environmental impact of the plant on the region’s pine forests and groundwater.
However, more recently it is Musk’s politics that have caused particular alarm. Not only has he offered his high-profile support to far-right European parties, but at a rally after Donald Trump’s inauguration he appeared to twice make the Nazi salute.
Elon Musk inspects cars as production started at the Tesla factory in Grünheide. Photograph: Patrick Pleul/AFP/Getty Images
In the meantime Tesla sales have slumped, especially in Europe – where new vehicle sales fell for five consecutive months despite an overall growth in the electric car market.
Heiko Baschin, another member of the citizen’s initiative, said he had been watching with a certain amount of schadenfreude. “We put our hopes in this,” the carpenter said, discussing the change in the company’s fortunes on a recent forest walk in the shadows of the sprawling Grünheide factory.
As sales have declined, the factory has suffered. Shifts manufacturing the Y-Model have been reduced from three to two a day. The trade union IG Metall – which recruited several hundred workers despite opposition from Tesla – has urged the company to consider putting workers on “kurzzeit”, the short-time work allowance much of the embattled car industry has introduced to enable it to retain workers during a downturn.
The regional press has reported how unsold Teslas have been moved on transporters en masse to a former East German airport 60km (37 miles) away, where, hidden behind trees and parked alongside solar panels, they bake in the sun.
Musk’s apparent Nazi salute was in general met with shock and horror in Germany but did not play large in Grünheide, until campaign groups projected an image of it on to the facade of the Tesla factory, provocatively placing the Nazi-associated word “heil” in front of the Tesla logo.
The shock caused by the incident was palpable on the factory floor, workers told the tabloid Berliner Kurier. “At Tesla Germany they had pretended they had nothing to do with (Musk) and were keeping quiet,” it wrote. Now they could no longer ignore their association.
Workers are hard to reach, most having been forced to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). But on Kununu, a job portal where employees can anonymously vent their feelings about their workplace, one Tesla worker has written: “The brand once stood for cosmopolitanism, progress, and tolerance, but now it stands for the exact opposite. That bothers almost everyone here, and you can feel it”.
Almut, a resident of Grünheide, said local politicians were keen to cite the benefits Tesla had brought to the region, but “neglect to mention at the same time the problematic reality that we are subsidising the richest man in the world, who in no way takes any social responsibility for what happens here”.
She said local people joke among themselves about what might take the place of the factory, should Tesla fail. “A munitions factory? A prison? In some ways these would seem like favourable alternatives,” she said. The only positive contribution as she saw it that Tesla had contributed to Grünheide was a robotic lawn mower it had donated to the local football club.
Grünheide’s politicians have been keen to tout the benefits of the factory, but some who live nearby are concerned about the environmental effects it has on light pollution and water use. Photograph: Michele Tantussi/Getty Images
Two weeks before the salute, Musk had followed his endorsement of the AfD in the German federal elections with an hour-long conversation with the anti-immigrant party’s co-leader, Alice Weidel. The two discussed topics including Hitler, solar power and German bureaucracy, which Musk said had required Tesla to submit forms running to 25,000 pages in order to build the Grünheide factory. Unmentioned was the fact that the AfD had vehemently opposed the Tesla factory, citing its fears over US-driven turbo capitalism and a watering down of workers’ rights. “People really need to get behind the AfD,” Musk said.
For Grünheide’s residents who oppose Musk, their preoccupation remains the impact of the factory on their rural community, which is characterised by its woodlands, lakes and rivers.
New cycle lanes and roads have required the felling of large swathes of pine forest, threatening the already perilous supplies of drinking water in a region declared a drought zone, the driest anywhere in Germany.
The Tesla Gigafactory with forests in the background. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
The 300-hectare (740 acre) large factory complex itself is due to be expanded in the near future by a further 100 hectares, under plans signed off by Grünheide’s mayor despite a local referendum in which 62% expressed their opposition.
Supporters point to the 11,000 jobs the factory has created, and the boost it has given to the local economy in a region of the former communist east and which was one of the lowest-performing in the country. Some young people enthuse that the trains to Berlin now run more regularly, the supermarkets are better stocked, and that their home town is now on the map as a beacon of “green capitalism” alongside Shanghai, Nevada and Austin, locations of the other Tesla factories. They hanker for an invitation to the “rave cave” techno dance space Musk has allegedly constructed within the factory complex.
The recruitment page of the factory’s website – which emphasises that diversity is at the core of its business model – shows a lengthy list of positions needing to be filled, from shift managers to maintenance technicians.
Nevertheless, the mood has cooled even among those who used to enthusiastically speak out in favour of Tesla, such as a group of local teenage schoolboys who habitually flew drones over the site when the factory was under construction and proudly posted them on YouTube – until Musk asked them to stop. “Nobody is willing to speak publicly about Tesla/Elon any more … even anonymously,” one told the Guardian via text message, without elaborating.
There was no response to a request for an interview with the company or for access to the factory.
Arne Christiani, the mayor of Grünheide and an unwavering Musk enthusiast, said he was confident Tesla would stay in Grünheide and would thrive. He was unmoved, he said, by what Musk said or did. “You have to distinguish between what happens in the US and here in Grünheide,” he said.
Hoyer, who lives 9km from the factory, said she had not relinquished her dream of one day being able to see a starry sky from her garden again. “Since the factory was built the light pollution from the round-the-clock operation has put paid to that,” she said, showing before and after pictures on her mobile phone.
Two days of intense racing in the Sukup INDYCAR Race Weekend at Iowa Speedway offered many opportunities for highs and lows, and they were numerous.
This edition of Instant Recall provides a review:
HIGHS
· Give it up to Alex Palou. Admittedly never outstanding on the short ovals in his five-plus seasons, the Chip Ganassi Racing driver produced 194 laps led in the second race – the Farm to Finish 275 powered by Sukup – and capitalized on the fortuitous timing of a late caution to score his first race win on such a track. By finishing fifth in Race 1 – the Synk 275 powered by Sukup – Palou came out of the two-day show with an even larger points lead. He’s now ahead by 129 points with five races remaining.
· Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward posted the same results as Palou only in reverse order. Netting the first win of the season by a Chevrolet driver in Race 1 was a huge score. In an odd twist, O’Ward won races in his 50th and 100th career start. He surely can’t wait for No. 150 which should come in the 2028 season.
· AJ Foyt Racing’s David Malukas, Juncos Hollinger Racing’s Conor Daly and Ed Carpenter Racing’s Christian Rasmussen surely left Iowa unfulfilled, but everyone watching these races knew they were there. Malukas scrambled back from that untimely late caution in Race 2 to finish fourth, and he’s had a strong stretch in this middle part of the season. Simply put, Daly again showed he’s a beast on these short ovals, and Rasmussen has finished sixth, third, sixth and eight on the ovals this season. Each of them is primed for a race win sooner or later.
· Marcus Armstrong scored a podium finish in Race 2 by coming home third. Don’t look now, but the driver from Meyer Shank Racing w/Curb-Agajanian has six consecutive top-nine finishes since the Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge, and that includes a ninth-place finish in Saturday’s race.
· Team Penske will make both of these categories. Its cars ran second, third and fourth in Race 1, and Josef Newgarden led 55.2 percent of the weekend’s laps (304 of 550). For a team having its worst season since 1999, it was refreshing to be back in the camera shot and contending for wins. In that sense, INDYCAR order was restored.
· In Race 1, McLaughlin overcame starting in last place (27th) due to the crash in qualifying and finished fourth with a magnificent drive. He followed Newgarden (second) and Will Power (third) to the finish line.
· Eight days after winning the 59th series race of his career, six-time season champion Scott Dixon contributed to another 1-2 finish for Chip Ganassi Racing. That’s two in an eight-day stretch and three for the season. Dixon finished 10th in Race 1, and the combination of results pushed him to third in the standings.
· Arrow McLaren’s Christian Lundgaard bounced back from a 21st-place finish in Race 1 to finish sixth in Race 2.
· Rookie Robert Shwartzman has certainly taken to these oval tracks despite having never competed on one prior to this season. He won the pole for the “500,” finished 10th at World Wide Technology Raceway and finished a career-best ninth in Race 2.
· Rookie Jacob Abel also posted his best finish of the season – 11th place in Race 2.
LOWS
· Andretti Global’s Kyle Kirkwood fell from second to fourth in the standings in a massively disappointing weekend. He crashed in Saturday’s high-line practice, which meant he had no experience with the repaired car heading into the two laps of qualifying. Suffice it to say, starting 18th and 21st in the races wasn’t ideal. Then in Race 1, he crashed again, finishing 26th. Going off sequence in Race 2 allowed him to lead nine laps, but the driver who has won three races this season finished 18th, his worst two-race stretch this season.
· Andretti Global had a weekend to forget. Marcus Ericsson and Colton Herta also had accidents, and the three drivers combined for an average two-day finish of 19.0.
· For as good as Race 1 was for Team Penske, Race 2 was the opposite. McLaughlin was collected (and eliminated) in the first-lap spin of Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Devlin DeFrancesco, and Power was out of the race with mechanical failure soon thereafter. Newgarden could have won either race — he again showed he’s the best driver at this track — but he had to settle for second- and 10th-place finishes to gain five positions in the standings (19th to 14th).
· PREMA Racing’s Callum Ilott would prefer to move on from this track after making wall contact in both races.
· Arrow McLaren’s Nolan Siegel’s rear-first impact with the Turn 4 wall in Race 1 left him not feeling himself, and he was not cleared to participate in Race 2.
· Juncos Hollinger Racing’s Sting Ray Robb crashed out of Race 2. That happened to him last year as well.
World No 1 Magnus Carlsen is currently on a roll. The Norwegian 34-year-old has won his last six tournaments in a row, scoring at the Chessable Masters, the Paris Freestyle Grand Slam, the Grenke Freestyle Open, the Chess.com Classic, Norway Chess in Stavanger and the SuperUnited Rapid & Blitz in Zagreb to add several hundred thousand dollars to his bank balance.
However, Carlsen’s next event, starting on Wednesday at Wynn Las Vegas, has the potential to derail his career trajectory. His opponents there in the third leg of the Freestyle Grand Slam include his arch-rival Hans Niemann, whose game with the then world champion at the 2022 Sinquefield Cup at St Louis led to cheating allegations and a $100mn lawsuit which was eventually settled out of court. Niemann was not invited to Las Vegas, but qualified against the odds for the final place in the 16-grandmaster event.
Niemann, now aged 22, ranked world No 19, and the best young grandmaster in the US, still believes he can reach Carlsen’s level. In recent weeks his results in Chess.com’s competitive online Titled Tuesday have matched those of Carlsen and the world No 2 Hikaru Nakamura.
A further test for the Las Vegas event was provided by an announcement that the Freestyle Grand Slam had cancelled its leg planned for Delhi in September, due to a lack of local sponsors. Instead, the $3.75mn Grand Slam will conclude with a final in Cape Town.
India’s classical world champion Gukesh Dommaraju, 19, who has defeated Carlsen twice in recent tournaments, has withdrawn from Las Vegas citing his own poor form in Freestyle.
However, there will be an interesting addition to the competitors in Bibisara Assaubayeva, aged 21, from Kazakhstan, and ranked among the best young women players in the world, who will become the first female ever invited to a Grand Slam.
Freestyle Chess’s principal organiser Jan Henric Buettner will continue as the public face of Freestyle in Las Vegas, although he has been replaced as its CEO by Thomas Harsch. A deeper problem for Freestyle is that it has so far failed to gain traction among amateur chess players, amid complaints that positions from the variant are too hard to relate to traditional strategies.
Nevertheless, players and organisers remain enthusiastic about the creativity of Freestyle. The programme for the week includes Chesstival, a pro-am tournament pairing grandmasters with top NBA stars, plus the main tournament with $750,000 prize money.
Meanwhile, the English Championship is taking place this weekend at Kenilworth, Warwickshire, with the first of seven rounds on Friday and the final round on Monday.
There is an entry of 85 players, although the top three seeds are the clear favourites: Gawain Jones, 37, is the defending champion, Michael Adams, 53, is the world senior champion, while Nikita Vitiugov, 38, is a former Russian champion who changed federations to England in response to the invasion of Ukraine.
One week later, the British Championship starts in Liverpool and continues for a week. The field will be stronger, and the prizes larger, but the same grandmaster trio will again be the favourites.
The championship is being played at a prime location in central Liverpool, where the congress, including junior and senior championships, has attracted a record entry of nearly 1,400 players and still counting.
Puzzle 2632
GM David Paravyan vs GM Alexander Rustemov, Freestyle Friday 2025. White to move and win.
The finals of the 13th Vaclav Huml International Violin Competition took place on 8 July in Zagreb, Croatia.
The overall winner was Maria Sotriffer ofAustria, who was awarded the Zlatko Baloković Prize worth €6,000, supported by Thomastik–Infield, Vienna. Vadym Perig of Ukraine was awarded the €3,500 second prize, supported by the Edwulstrad RMIC SA music shop in Geneva. Jiaqi Li of China won the third prize of €2,500, which was awarded by Milan and Vladimir Čalogović in memory of Eleonora Čalogović, née Huml.
Following the initial online selection, the competition rounds took place from 2–8 July and saw 22 international candidates taking part in the first heat. Twelve candidates were selected for the second round and the three finalists performed concertos with the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Pavle Zajcev.
A number of special awards were given: two concert dates with the Zagreb Philharmonic and the Zagreb Soloists were won by Maria Sotriffer. A performance at the Milko Kelemen Days Festival in Slatina was won by Ana Labazan Brajša of Croatia and Tao-Yuan Hsiao of Taiwan. The award for the best performance of a work by J.S. Bach and an Accord case was won by Ugnė Liepa Žuklytė of Lithuania. The best performance of the mandatory piece, Music for Solo Violin by Milko Kelemen, was won by Tao-Yuan Hsiao of Taiwan.
The international jury comprised chairman Pavel Vernikov, Eduard Wulfson, Goran Končar, Anđelko Krpan, Leonid Sorokow, Kimiko Nakazawa and Elly Suh.
In The Best of Technique you’ll discover the top playing tips of the world’s leading string players and teachers. It’s packed full of exercises for students, plus examples from the standard repertoire to show you how to integrate the technique into your playing.
In the second volume of The Strad’s Masterclass series, soloists including James Ehnes, Jennifer Koh, Philippe Graffin, Daniel Hope and Arabella Steinbacher give their thoughts on some of the greatest works in the string repertoire. Each has annotated the sheet music with their own bowings, fingerings and comments.
The Canada Council of the Arts’ Musical Instrument Bank is 40 years old in 2025. This year’s calendar celebrates some its treasures, including four instruments by Antonio Stradivari and priceless works by Montagnana, Gagliano, Pressenda and David Tecchler.
Asteroids don’t need to be on a collision course with Earth to make headlines. Take asteroid 2024 YR4, for example, a space rock that was once thought to pose a small risk to Earth but is now being closely watched for a possible Moon impact in 2032.
According to a report by Space.com, scientists say there’s currently a 4% chance the asteroid could hit the Moon. Although it no longer poses any threat to our planet, a possible collision with the Moon could have effects that go beyond just a big lunar crater.
No risk to Earth, but the Moon is being monitored
As per Space.com, asteroid 2024 YR4 was initially flagged with a 1 in 43 chance of hitting Earth. However, with fresh telescope data, astronomers have ruled out that possibility. Now, their focus has shifted to the Moon, which may be in the asteroid’s path when it makes a close approach in 2032. Astronomer Paul Wiegert from the University of Western Ontario told Space.com, “A 2024 YR4 impact on the moon would pose no risk to anything on the surface of the Earth… but the impact could pose some danger to equipment or astronauts (if any) on the moon, and certainly to satellites and other Earth-orbiting platforms.”
How strong would a lunar impact be?
If asteroid 2024 YR4 does strike the Moon, scientists estimate it could release energy equal to 6 million tons of TNT, making it the largest lunar impact in nearly 5,000 years. The impact could create a 1-kilometre-wide crater, says the Space.com report.
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Most of the debris from such a collision would fall back to the Moon. However, experts suggest that a small percentage, around 0.02% to 0.2%, could escape into space, which raises new concerns for objects in orbit around Earth.
Could lunar debris threaten satellites?
Although Earth is safe from any direct impact, space debris could still be a problem. Wiegert, as quoted by Space.com, explained that this debris could add “a flux of meteoroids 10 to 1,000 times higher than the normal background for a few days.”Travelling at speeds of nearly 22,400 miles per hour (or 10 km/s), these fragments might be slower than typical meteors but still fast enough to damage satellites or space-based assets. Some of this material could orbit Earth for years, posing a long-term risk to space infrastructure.
Is Earth completely safe from the debris?
Yes, says Wiegert, the surface of Earth is protected by its atmosphere. “The debris will burn up… we don’t expect there to be many pieces large enough to survive,” he told Space.com. To cause any damage on Earth, a piece would need to be 1 metre or larger, and most expected debris will be much smaller, more like pebbles or dust.
Still, for satellite operators and space agencies, even small particles in orbit can cause trouble, making this potential Moon strike worth tracking closely.
Does this need a new asteroid threat scale?
The idea of creating a new risk scale for events like this has been raised, but experts aren’t convinced. Planetary scientist Richard P. Binzel of MIT told Space.com that a new scale isn’t needed, as “the indirect consequences are too varied to compress into a single scale.”
He added that asteroid monitoring is already effective, saying, “What one can control… is determining with certainty whether you have a hit or miss.”
What happens next? Wait till 2028 for updates
For now, astronomers will wait until 2028, when asteroid 2024 YR4 comes into view again. That’s when they expect to update the Moon impact probability, which currently sits at 4%.
“The whole event would be exciting to watch in binoculars or a small telescope,” Wiegert told Space.com. The current research findings have been submitted to the American Astronomical Society and are also available as a preprint on arXiv, according to the same report.
