Montreal man on the hook for thousands of dollars after a feature on his Tesla caused an accident
A Montreal man is warning Tesla drivers about using the Smart Summon feature after his vehicle hit another in a parking lot.
A NASA spacecraft named Lucy rocketed into the sky with diamonds Saturday morning on a 12-year quest to explore eight asteroids.
Seven of the mysterious space rocks are among swarms of asteroids sharing Jupiter's orbit, thought to be the pristine leftovers of planetary formation.
An Atlas V rocket blasted off before dawn, sending Lucy on a roundabout journey spanning nearly 6.3 billion kilometres. Researchers grew emotional describing the successful launch -- lead scientist Hal Levison said it was like witnessing the birth of a child. "Go Lucy!" he urged.
Lucy is named after the 3.2 million-year-old skeletal remains of a human ancestor found in Ethiopia nearly a half-century ago. That discovery got its name from the 1967 Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," prompting NASA to send the spacecraft soaring with band members' lyrics and other luminaries' words of wisdom imprinted on a plaque. The spacecraft also carried a disc made of lab-grown diamonds for one of its science instruments.
In a prerecorded video for NASA, Beatles drummer Ringo Starr paid tribute to his late colleague John Lennon, credited for writing the song that inspired all this.
"I'm so excited -- Lucy is going back in the sky with diamonds. Johnny will love that," Starr said. "Anyway, if you meet anyone up there, Lucy, give them peace and love from me."
The paleoanthropologist behind the fossil Lucy discovery, Donald Johanson, had goose bumps watching Lucy soar -- "I will never look at Jupiter the same ... absolutely mind-expanding." He said he was filled with wonder about this "intersection of our past, our present and our future."
"That a human ancestor who lived so long ago stimulated a mission which promises to add valuable information about the formation of our solar system is incredibly exciting," said Johanson, of Arizona State University, who traveled to Cape Canaveral for his first rocket launch.
Lucy's US$981 million mission is the first to aim for Jupiter's so-called Trojan entourage: thousands -- if not millions -- of asteroids that share the gas giant's expansive orbit around the sun. Some of the Trojan asteroids precede Jupiter in its orbit, while others trail it.
Despite their orbits, the Trojans are far from the planet and mostly scattered far from each other. So there's essentially zero chance of Lucy getting clobbered by one as it swoops past its targets, said Levison of Southwest Research Institute, the mission's principal scientist.
Lucy will swing past Earth next October and again in 2024 to get enough gravitational oomph to make it all the way out to Jupiter's orbit. On the way there, the spacecraft will zip past asteroid Donaldjohanson between Mars and Jupiter. The aptly named rock will serve as a 2025 warm-up act for the science instruments.
Drawing power from two huge circular solar wings, Lucy will chase down five asteroids in the leading pack of Trojans in the late 2020s. The spacecraft will then zoom back toward Earth for another gravity assist in 2030. That will send Lucy back out to the trailing Trojan cluster, where it will zip past the final two targets in 2033 for a record-setting eight asteroids visited in a single mission.
It's a complicated, circuitous path that had NASA's science mission chief, Thomas Zurbuchen, shaking his head at first. "You've got to be kidding. This is possible?" he recalled asking.
Lucy will pass within 600 miles (965 kilometres of each target; the biggest one is about 70 miles (113 kilometers) across.
"Are there mountains? Valleys? Pits? Mesas? Who knows? I'm sure we're going to be surprised," said Johns Hopkins University's Hal Weaver, who's in charge of Lucy's black-and-white camera. "But we can hardly wait to see what ... images will reveal about these fossils from the formation of the solar system."
NASA plans to launch another mission next month to test whether humans might be able to alter an asteroid's orbit -- practice in case Earth ever has a killer rock headed this way.
------
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
A Montreal man is warning Tesla drivers about using the Smart Summon feature after his vehicle hit another in a parking lot.
Sheldon Keefe told his players hockey history would remember them one way or another.
How legitimate are claims by some content creators that the average person can earn passive income from social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram? Personal finance columnist Christopher Liew says it's quite possible, if you're willing to put in the initial time and effort.
A man was denied a $5,000 payout from his brother after a B.C. tribunal dismissed his claim disputing how many kittens were born in a litter.
As Ukraine marked its third Easter at war, Russia on Sunday launched a barrage of drones concentrated in Ukraine's east, wounding more than a dozen people, and claimed its troops took control of a village they had been targeting.
Almost a week after all London Drugs stores across Western Canada abruptly closed amid a cyberattack, they began a "gradual reopening" on Saturday.
Cabinet minister Dominic LeBlanc insists he's not planning a leadership campaign to head the Liberal party, should current leader and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau resign, seemingly quashing rumours he's planning to make a move for his boss' job.
People living in Puslinch, Ont. may have the answer to why their water smelled so bad last year.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.