An asteroid just hit Earth

Hello and welcome to the latest edition of New Scientist’s look at the best science and technology stories of the week. This time, we’ve got disappearing sharks, the answer to a deep, dark question, and a tiny moment of terror. Enjoy!

A small asteroid hit Earth and burned up over the Philippines

I had a brief moment of panic on Wednesday morning when I saw astronomers tweeting that a surprise asteroid was about to hit Earth, but quickly realised its diminutive size would make for a harmless impact . Still, it is impressive that we are increasingly able to spot space rocks before they reach us – 2024 RW1, has it has been dubbed, is only the ninth such example.

Pregnant shark that disappeared may have been eaten by another shark

It is a cruel world out in the ocean, where researchers who were tracking data from a pregnant shark were surprised to realise that it may have been eaten by another, larger shark in a form of predation never seen before.

We finally know exactly how dark deep space is

It is a question that every child has surely wondered about at some point – just how dark is it in space? Thanks to NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, we now have an answer – the dim light of the cosmos is equivalent to that from a refrigerator door as seen on a moonless night from more than a kilometre away

More from New Scientist

• My colleague Michael Marshall was not a fan of Yuval Noah Harari’s new book Nexus, as this rather brutal review lays out
• Our magazine cover story this week is about how quantum physics stole our notion of reality – and how we might get it back
• What is consciousness? Join our panel of experts in London this weekend to find out.

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Jacob Aron, News Editor