Between Mars and Jupiter lies the Asteroid Belt, where large chunks of the 170 km wide Baptistina asteroid had strayed to our side of the Solar System and hit the Moon and the Earth. One of the galactic boulders that hit our world may be the one that caused a mass extinction 65 million years ago and had wiped out the dinosaurs.

Scientists from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and Charles University in Prague believe that the Baptistina asteroid was hit by another asteroid measuring 60 km in diameter, causing it to spew out about 140,000 smaller pieces measuring 1 km each, and 300 more measuring 10 km each. Some of the fragments eventually broke out of orbit from the main body, with 2% of them hitting the Earth.

Scientists put the huge galactic drama within Earth's timeline, and found that the Baptistina collision may have caused the huge amount of craters whose ages go back 100 to 150 million years ago. They surmise that 20% of asteroid impact may have been caused by asteroids that broke off from the larger Baptistina family.

The event also ties up with a 85 km crater (called Tycho) on the moon, which was formed 108 million years ago. Scientists are excited at the prospects of connecting up the Baptistina collision to events on the Earth, the Moon and even on other planets. They hope to find out the implications the impact had on the geological and biological history of Earth. Maybe even how it affected human evolution.

Today's military aircraft are expected to withstand the rigors of combat and training sometimes for decades before being retired or undergoing an overhaul. Metal fatigue and tiny cracks found in engine and structural components can lead to disaster if they are not discovered and repaired in time.

Engineers at Southwest Research Institute have developed a new system that monitors the entire structure of the aircraft for any defects that may lead to the failure of critical components. The new method they have developed is non destructive and does not require the use of the external magnets needed for previous flaw detection systems.

An A-10 (Warthog) was used to test the new system and it successfully detected and monitored the growth of microscopic cracks in the aircraft. Southwest Research Institute is a pioneer in the use of this new technology, known as a magnetostrictive sensor.

Previously, the sensors were only used in pipelines to detect cracks and maintain the integrity of the system. Only after they refined the technology to make a, " lightweight, low-profile evaluation sensor that could maintain a residual magnetic field without the need for an external magnet," could it be used inside the tight spaces found in airplanes.

"Magnetostrictive sensors used by the pipeline industry are also limited by a "dead zone" - the distance associated with the time required for the excitation pulses to saturate the receiver. " The problem of "dead zones" was minimized by using a "much shorter wavelength or higher frequency signal."

According to the engineers who developed the sensor system, "with additional development, the new MsS technology will address the need for monitoring the structural components of today's high-cycle aircraft, such as T-37 and T-38 trainers, as well as A-10, F-16, F-15 and other military combat aircraft."

It also has potential for commercial fleets. With the average age of jets in the commercial fleet hovering above 20 years and structural cracks causing fatal crashes on a regular basis technology to detect and monitor stress cracks and other flaws is a Godsend.

We earlier reported about Venus South Pole having a giant double vortex. Newly released images of a double hurricane-like feature over Venus's south pole show that it is even more complex than first thought. Identifying the forces that shape it could help unlock the secrets of the planet's thick atmosphere, which keeps Venus hot via a runaway greenhouse effect.

At first, the pattern is thought to be a product of the super-strong winds that tear westward around the planet. But scientists do not understand why the winds produce a double vortex rather than a single one. The new pictures that were recently released and were taken last May 29 from a distance of 64,000 km., showed that the vortex' structure varies with height, with the double vortex more prominent and intricate at lower altitudes.

To have a full grasp of the Venus' vortex mystery, astronomers are trying to build a 3D view of the vortex to better understand it and the forces that shaped and are shaping it. The new images measure the double vortex between 59 km and 70 km above the planet's surface.

Understanding the origins of the double vortices could help scientists figure out how Venus's super-strong winds are generated; and because the vortices influence how the atmosphere circulates, they "probably play a fairly important role in establishing the temperature of the atmosphere" according to Mark Bullock of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, US, who is not part of the spacecraft team.

While Pluto's status as a planet is on shaky orbit (while the new definiton of "planet" is still being debated) there's a pair of good news from the far reaches of our solar system. The International Astronomical Union has officially christened Pluto's two newest moons Nix and Hydra.

The two tiny satellites were discovered just lat May by the Hubble Space Telescope and scientists believe they were borne from the same giant impact that created Charon, Pluto's larger moon discovered in 1978. The other moon's name, Hydra, comes from the the rather popular nine-headed mythological serpent that guarded Pluto's realm. 

"We thought it was an appropriately scary image to be the guard at the gate," said Alan Stern, lead astronomer of the Southwest Research Institute Arizona team that initially discovered the satellites.

The new names were also chosen for their first initials, "N" and "H" which match the first letters of New Horizons, the NASA spacecraft launched last January and currently heading for the Pluto system. The Hubble Space Telescope discovered the moons while providing support for the New Horizons mission.