SCIENCE BOND

The event, which has only just come to light, occurred off the coast of Brazil at 13:55 GMT on 6 February.  As it burned up, the space rock released the equivalent of 13,000 tonnes of TNT.  This makes it the most powerful event of its kind since an object exploded overChelyabinsk in Russia in 2013.  That blast was much bigger, releasing the equivalent of 500,000 tonnes of TNT.  More than 1,000 people were injured in that incident on 15 February three years ago, most from flying glass from shattered windows. But the fireball over the Atlantic probably went unnoticed; it burnt up about 30km above the ocean surface, 1,000km off the Brazilian coast.  Nasa listed the event on its Fireball and Bolide Reports web page.  Measurements suggest that about 30 small asteroids (between 1m and 20m in size) burn up in the Earth's atmosphere every year.  Because most of the Earth's surface is covered by water, most of these fall over the ocean and do not aff...

Palaeontologist Diego Pol is talking about a very special fossil specimen, a giant dinosaur he excavated in the desert of central Argentina. This titan of the Cretaceous Period, or at least a fibreglass replica of its skeleton, has now taken up residence as an exhibit in New York's American Museum of Natural History (AMNH).  The cast is 122ft long (37.5m) and represents a giant plant-eating titanosaur that lived in the forests of Patagonia between 100 and 95 million years ago. It may well be the biggest dinosaur yet discovered, but is so new it doesn't yet have a formal scientific name.  The dinosaur cast was unveiled before a packed crowd of media on 14 January. The skeleton grazes the 19ft-high (5.8m) ceilings of the museum's Wallach Orientation Center and its head and neck stick out of the room, gazing towards the lifts. The story behind the exhibit is told in a new BBC One documentary presented by Sir David Attenborough. For Sir David, who is well known for...

Her annual report, which focuses on women this year, said tackling obesity should be a national priority to avert a "growing health catastrophe".  She said the food industry needed to do more or it should face a sugar tax.  Dame Sally is also calling for better treatment of ovarian cancer and more open discussion on incontinence.  England's top doctor said obesity was so serious it should be a priority for the whole population, but particularly for women because too often it shortened their lives.  In England in 2013, 56.4% of women aged 34-44 and 62% of women aged 45-54 were classified as overweight or obese.  Obesity increases the risk of many diseases including breast cancer, type 2 diabetes and heart disease.  Dame Sally warned that if the food industry did not clean up its act then new taxes may be the only option.She told "I think it is inevitable that manufacturing has to reformulate and resize, that supermarkets and others need to stop ch...

It replicates the repeating lattice of sodium and chloride ions found in a crystal of salt (NaCl).  Standing more than 3m tall, the model was built by Dr Robert Krickl from nearly 40,000 balls and 10km of sticks.  The world record attempt will be adjudicated by the Guinness Book of Records on 23 November.  It will be on public display until 30 November, and has already been commemorated on an Austrian postage stamp.Because of the regular pattern it is built up from, which causes hundreds of the "ions" to form precise lines from multiple angles, the huge model has a rather dazzling appearance. It also has particular significance this week, Dr Krickl said.  "This week it's the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prize for discovering what I show with this model: the arrangement of atoms in crystals."  The British father-and-son team of William and Lawrence Bragg won the physics Nobel in 1915 for originating the technique that is now known as X-ray crystallog...