Temporary 'minimoon' discovered orbiting Earth

A tiny natural satellite that may have been in orbit for as long as three years has been spotted by scientists.

There's no denying that our planet's orbit has become an increasingly busy place over the last few decades with as many as 5,000 satellites and several million pieces of space debris circling high above our heads.

Not everything in orbit around the Earth is man-made however; also up there at any given time are one or more minimoons - tiny space rocks (at least relative to the actual Moon) that enter into orbit for a brief time before venturing back out into space.

Detecting these pint-sized visitors however has proven quite the challenge - so far only a single minimoon has ever been conclusively identified - a 3ft-long object known as 2006 RH120 which arrived back in 2006 and left orbit again a mere 18 months later.

Now astronomers at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory believe that they may have discovered a second minimoon - an object named 2020 CD3.

Thought to be up to 11.5ft long, this temporary natural satellite may have been in orbit for up to three years, however there are indications that it could be making its escape within the next few months.

According to Kacper Wierzchos, a senior research specialist for the Catalina Sky Survey (CSS), the object's brightness is typical of most carbon-rich asteroids.

Assuming it maintains its current orbit, it will likely depart again sometime in April.  

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Multiple realities can exist at the same time

A mind-boggling quantum physics experiment has seemingly confirmed the existence of multiple realities.

The research sought to answer a decades-old physics question first posed by physicist Eugene Wigner in the 1960s. Known as "Wigner's friend", the idea puts forward a situation in which an observer in an isolated laboratory measures the polarization of a photon.

Initially, the photon is in a state of superposition - meaning that its polarization is both horizontal and vertical at the same time. When the laboratory observer measures the polarization, the particle assumes a fixed state, however for someone outside the laboratory who doesn't know the result of the measurements, the photon is still in a state of superposition.

The reality of both these individuals, therefore, differs - even though both are technically correct.

Now, several decades on, scientists have finally been able to conduct an experiment to actually test this concept and demonstrate that, in quantum physics at least, multiple realities can exist.

"Theoretical advances were needed to formulate the problem in a way that is testable," said study co-author Martin Ringbauer from the University of Innsbruck in Austria. "Then, the experimental side needed developments on the control of quantum systems to implement something like that."

The findings seemed to confirm that Wigner's observations held up in practice.

"It seems that, in contrast to classical physics, measurement results cannot be considered absolute truth but must be understood relative to the observer who performed the measurement," said Ringbauer.

Source: Live Science

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