Gliese 710 should arrive sometime within the next 1.5 million years

Our solar system's 'hood may get a bit rougher sometime during the next 1.5 million years. An astronomer has given an 86 percent chance for a neighboring star to smash into the frozen Oort Cloud surrounding the outskirts of the solar system, and may scatter some comets toward Earth, Technology Review reports.

That's not the only close encounter for our sun, according to Vadim Bobylev at the Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in St. Petersburg, Russia. He combined data from several databases of stars and found at least nine more stars that have already swung past the sun or will do so in the future.

The data on Gliese 710, an orange dwarf star, comes from position and velocity measurements of about 100,000 stars in the Hipparcos Catalogue published in 1997. Updates for the Hipparcos data in 2007 allowed Bobylev to calculate the likelihood that Gliese 710 might smash into our solar system. Read more »

As sequencing becomes more affordable, the way forward for diagnosis is not DNA snippets, but full genome workups

Despite coming from a range of different backgrounds, everyone whose genome has been fully sequenced has had one thing in common: they were all healthy. But now, two teams have decoded the first genomes of people who carry genetic diseases, with one group also performing the first-ever full sequencing of an entire nuclear family. By decoding the entire genome, rather than just snippets linked to a particular disease, the two research groups were able to identify the genetic roots of particular disorders more precisely than ever before, paving the way for a radical improvement in the usefulness of genetic diagnosis. Read more »

"IT" organisms may make up more than half of life on Earth

Despite the impact of mankind, the size of trees, and the sheer numbers of bugs, multicellular terrestrial life only makes up a small portion of the planet's biomass. The majority of life on Earth lives at the bottom of the ocean, much of it beneath the ocean floor.

Thanks to those extreme depths, science knows virtually nothing about the majority of the planet's lifeforms. But a series of deep sea drilling expeditions over the course of the next year looks to finally shine a light on our planet's richest, and most mysterious, habitats. Read more »

Toxoplasmosis, a common food- and pet-borne illness linked to hallucinations, personality alteration, and, since it's often carried by house pets, the stereotype of the crazy cat lady, infects around 15 percent of the US population. Luckily, a new technique that traps the parasite with gold nanoparticles, and then zaps them with lasers, should help ease the $7.7 billion the disease costs America every year. Read more »

They don't exactly look like the saviors of our energy economy, but that's exactly what some researchers think they could be. Gribbles -- tiny crustacean pests with a knack for digesting wood -- have long been considered a marine parasite for the destruction they cause to wooden hulls and piers. But the enzymes gribbles use in to break wood fibers down into sugars could make them the next biofuels breakthrough.

Essentially, gribbles are blessed with a digestive process unparalleled (to our knowledge) by other wood-consuming insects and animals. Their digestive enzymes can break down woody cellulose and even lignin -- the normally indigestible part of woody plants -- creating sugars that are more or less ideal for fermenting into alcohol-based fuels. Read more »