Astronomy

A so-called mini-moon of Earth that has been lingering in the heavens since September will begin a journey towards the sun on Monday as it prepares to disappear until 2055.The school-bus-sized asteroid known as 2024 PT5 might actually be a huge boulder that broke from the moon after another space rock crashed into it centuries ago, astronomers say.Currently 2m miles (3.2m km) from Earth, about nine times farther than the distance to the moon, the asteroid never quite came close enough to be captured by the planet’s gravity.But its farewell pass will bring it as close as 1.1m miles in January for a final look before the sun’s gravitational pull hauls deeper into space.The mini moon’s small size, about 33ft wide, and distance meant it was never visible to humankind’s naked eye, only through ...

Stem cell transplants could reverse diabetesIan SampleHalf a billion people worldwide live with diabetes. There are different types with different causes, but all lead people to have too much sugar in their blood. If not well controlled, this excess glucose can inflict damage throughout the body, putting people at risk of gum disease, nerve damage, kidney disease, blindness, amputations, heart attack, stroke and cancer.For now, patients manage the condition with medicines, insulin and lifestyle changes, but a new generation of treatments could reverse the disease. Details of the first woman treated for type 1 diabetes with stem cells taken from her own body were announced last month. Beforehand, the 25-year-old needed substantial amounts of insulin. Now she produces her own.In April, a sim...