INCOMING!

Okay, so the Large Hadron Collider has cranked up, crossed the steams, annihilated particles, but, even though it is April Fool’s day, nothing terribly bad has happened so far. No mini-black hole has vaporized Western Europe. No Time Lords have come burning back from the future to put a stop to it all. The Vatican is still standing. And my best instinct tells me that time is moving just as it always did, although it can sometimes be hard to tell. On the other hand, the Hubble telescope is keeping an eye on a mysterious X-shaped object traveling through outer space at 11,000mph. NASA says that P/2010-A2 may be a comet, product of the collision between two asteroids, but what’s really making the Hubble’s circuits sit up and take notice – aside from the thing resembling both a Klingon Bird of Prey and one of those evil Shadow vessels from Babylon 5 – the 100 meter-wide nucleus of the weird X is outside the dust halo and separated from the trail. This something never previously seen with a comet or any other object on a natural, solar-system system flyby. Click here for close-up and more.

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The secret word is Stardate