The scene of an asteroid hitting the earth and threatening human survival has been staged many times in Hollywood movies.

In order to prevent the plot in the movie from becoming a reality, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) conducted an impact test on September 26, local time, and let a spaceship hit an asteroid in an attempt to change the orbit of the asteroid.

This is also the first attempt in human history to change the motion of natural celestial bodies in space.

At present, the impact has been successfully completed, and it will take weeks or months to observe whether the asteroid’s orbit can be successfully changed.

According to official website news of NASA, after 10 months of space flight, NASA’s spacecraft carrying out the “Double Asteroid Redirect Test” (DART) mission successfully hit an asteroid named “Dimorphos” at 7: 14 pm EST on 26th.

The project was launched in November 2021 with an investment of 325 million US dollars, which was jointly implemented by NASA and the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University.

When it hit Dimorfos, the speed of the NASA spacecraft reached 22,500 km/h, and the camera carried on the spacecraft sent back the last picture before the impact.

After the spacecraft signal disappeared, the ground staff cheered and celebrated, and the project team announced that the impact mission was successful. Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Department, said that this mission has opened a new era for mankind, an era when humans may be able to prevent asteroids from hitting the Earth.

Katherine Calvin, chief scientist and senior climate consultant of NASA, also pointed out that dinosaurs had no space plan to prevent asteroids from hitting the Earth, but now “we have”. Scientists speculate that the impact of the “Hicksulubo” asteroid on the earth 65 million years ago led to the extinction of dinosaurs.

The asteroid “Dimerforth” that was hit this time is 160 meters in diameter, about the size of a football field, and it runs around another asteroid “Didymus” with a diameter of 780 meters. At the time of impact, the two asteroids were 11 million kilometers away from the earth and did not pose a threat to the earth.

It takes 11 hours and 55 minutes for “Dimorphos” to go around “Dimorphos”. NASA hopes that the impact will shorten the running time of Dimorphus by 1%, about 10 minutes. At present, it is uncertain whether the impact has successfully changed the orbit of the binaural bat, and it will take weeks or months to accurately measure the orbit change.

However, NASA firmly believes that due to the small weight of the spacecraft, the impact will not have a devastating impact on Dimorfors. The NASA spacecraft weighs 579 kilograms, while the Gemini weighs 5 billion kilograms. The researchers described it as hitting the pyramid with a golf cart.

After NASA completes the impact mission, the European Space Agency plans to launch a spacecraft to Dimorphos in 2024 and investigate the impact crater and geology of Dimorphos in 2027.

For many years, scientists have been tracking near-earth objects that may pose a threat to the earth. It is estimated that there are about 25,000 NEOs with a diameter of 140 meters in space, but at present, NASA has only observed 40% of them.

In 2026, NASA will launch a near-earth object observation project to track celestial bodies in the solar system that may pose a threat to the earth.

Against the background of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the persistent epidemic in COVID-19, the climate crisis and the intensified energy crisis, the 2022 Nobel Prize will be announced on October 3rd.

Two years ago, affected by the COVID-19 epidemic, the traditional award ceremony and dinner were cancelled, and the award process was changed to live online and TV. Only the Norwegian Nobel Committee held a small peace prize awarding ceremony in Oslo, Norway last year.

This year, traditional ceremonies will be fully returned. In December, the winners of the 2022 Nobel Prize and the winners of 2020 and 2021 will be invited to attend the award ceremony and dinner in Stockholm, Sweden.

From October 3rd to 7th, the Nobel Committee will announce the prizes in physiology or medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace. Among them, the Peace Prize was promulgated by the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

On the 10th, the committee will announce the final prize of economics. This year’s prize is 10 million Swedish kronor (about 6.41 million yuan) for each award. If more than one person wins the prize, the prize money will be distributed equally.

Except for the final winner, the Committee does not publish the list of candidates to the public. Before the final results are announced, predicting who will win the prize has become an annual activity of the media and gaming companies.

Compared with the unknown prize in physiology or medicine, physics prize and chemistry prize, literature prize and peace prize are popular prizes for prediction and betting every year.

Among them, the literary prize is recognized as the most unpredictable award. Goellner, winner of last year’s literature prize, didn’t even appear on the odds list of British bookmaker Nicerods.

In this year’s European edition of Nicer Odds, the top three are French writer Michel Houellebecq, Kenyan writer Ngugi Wa Thiongo and Indian-born British and American writer Salman Rushdie.

Among them, Rushdie was attacked while attending an activity in new york in August this year, and was stabbed in the neck and other places. His novel The Satanic Verses caused great controversy. Rushdie himself was hunted by Iran and is still regarded as a sworn enemy by radical religious figures.

China writers Yu Hua and Can Xue made the list again, and Can Xue ranked 20th in the EU list.

But for this year’s Peace Prize, the better odds did not publish the odds list. The website only says that this year’s Peace Prize is the most competitive since the establishment of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1895.

According to the statistics of the Nobel Committee, there are 343 candidates for this year’s Peace Prize, of which 251 are individuals and 92 are institutions. This is also the year with the second largest number of candidates since the establishment of the Nobel Peace Prize.

The largest number of applicants was in 2016, with 376 people. There were 329 candidates for the Peace Prize last year, the second highest in history before this year.

It is widely predicted by the media that this year’s peace prize will be related to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which may also cause the most controversy, given that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine continues to affect the whole world.

Several members of the European Parliament demanded that the Peace Prize be awarded to Ukrainian President Zelenski. However, dan smith, director of the Stockholm Peace Research Institute, pointed out that the tradition of the Peace Prize is to reward those who end conflicts, not wartime leaders.

Smith predicted that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) or organizations and individuals fighting climate change are more likely to win the Peace Prize. In the context of the stalemate in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the award of the International Atomic Energy Agency can highlight the voice against the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and also recognize the agency’s efforts to ensure the safety of the Zaborozh nuclear power plant, Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant.

Besides, the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Russian opposition leader Nawani and Belarusian opposition leader Tikhanov Skaya are all popular candidates.

Last year’s Nobel Peace Prize winners were Filipino journalist Maria Reza and Russian journalist Muratov.

Historically, the Nobel Committee has also suspended the awarding of peace prizes. During World War I and World War II, the Committee did not award the Peace Prize, but only awarded it to the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1917.

In the physiology or medicine prize to be awarded on the 3rd, nervous system diseases, cancer science and mRNA vaccine technology are considered to be popular award-winning fields.

Other popular candidates include Mary-Claire King, an American geneticist who discovered the role of BRCA1 gene mutation in breast cancer and ovarian cancer; Stuart H. Orkin, an American researcher, discovered the genetic changes behind various types of thalassemia; Li Minyi, a Chinese-American scholar who has contributed to the study of neurodegenerative diseases.

Among the physics awards, the past awards mainly focused on four fields, particle physics, astrophysics, condensed matter physics, atoms and molecules and photophysics. This year’s hot predictions involve quantum physics, carbon nanotube technology and optics.

The prediction around the chemistry prize focuses on genetics, gene sequencing technology, semiconductor polymers and so on. Bao Zhenan, a Chinese-American scientist who has made flexible “electronic skin” semiconductor polymers, is regarded as one of the popular candidates.

From 1901 to 2021, a total of 947 people and 28 organizations won the Nobel Prize, some of which won many awards. The youngest winner is the 2014 Peace Prize winner, Pakistani girl Yusuf Zai, who was 17 years old at that time; The oldest person is Goodnow, winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, at the age of 97.