Asteroid nears  Earth

The asteroid that NASA labeled 2012 DA14 will make a close pass by Earth on Feb. 15—closer than the moon’s orbit.

This asteroid, 45 meters in diameter, will be about 17,200 miles away from Earth as it passes. However, it will not strike the Earth, according to NASA.

What is interesting about the 2012 DA14 asteroid is it passed by in 2012 and will sweep by again in 2020.

The possibility of a 2020 collision with Earth was speculated, but has recently been confirmed to have a one in 83,000 chance of occurring, making it a highly remote possibility, according to NASA astronomer Donald Yeomans.

The asteroid is too small to be seen with the naked eye but can be viewed through a telescope or through live, online streaming on the Clay Center Observatory’s Ustream channel.

Plants can care too

A new study revealed that plants are capable of showing altruistic behavior.

Altruism is a characteristic usually found in the animal kingdom, such as when a tiger adopts piglets or when a female albatross takes an orphan chick into its nest.

The study by the University of Colorado Boulder compared how corn seed embryos grow when raised by their parents’ nutrient-providing endosperms to adopted parent endosperms. The results showed that parent endosperms gave their seeds more nutrients than adopted parents, yet the adopted parents still cared for their orphan embryo enough to let it live.

This is the first observation of plants showing altruistic behavior. Though not as touching as a piglet wearing a tiger-striped shirt, this discovery provides a new way to look at the unique world of plant biology.