With their new Planetary Defense Coordination Office, NASA has taken on a very important job: detecting asteroids and comets, and defending the planet from their potentially destructive capabilities.

According to CNN, the office is managed by the Planetary Science Division of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington DC.

Its mission is centered around the early detection of potentially hazardous objects (PHOs). These objects consist primarily of asteroids and comets that have the potential to get within 0.05 Astronomical Units of Earth’s orbit around the sun (7.5 million kilometers) and are large enough to reach Earth’s surface — and do some serious damage while they’re at it.

An important part of ensuring Earth’s safety from these sorts of PHOs involves examining the orbits of other planets in the solar system as well, as factors like Jupiter’s massive gravity have the potential to redirect the trajectory of orbits in ways we might not have anticipated.

Aside from PHOs, we also have to worry occasionally about near-Earth objects (NEOs) which are closer and more direct threats than the average PHO.

More than 13,500 NEOs have been discovered to date and around 1,500 are detected each year.

“Asteroid detection, tracking and defense of our planet is something that NASA, its interagency partners, and the global community take very seriously,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Grunsfeld mentions that even though there are no direct impact threats at this time, the “2013 Chelyabinsk super-fireball and the recent ‘Halloween Asteroid’ close approach remind us why we need to remain vigilant and keep our eyes to the sky.”

In the future, the new office will also be able to detect asteroids that are near enough to the Earth to be exploited for their resources and raw materials.

An international research team has determined that newly formed dwarf galaxies are a likely reason that the universe heated up around 13 billion years ago, potentially creating a new way of understanding the 14 billion year history of the universe.

According to Phys, after the Big Bang the universe became massively hot and dense in a relatively quick hundred thousand years or so. In fact, the universe was so hot and dense that the matter was ionized instead of being in a neutral form.

A question still being debated by physicists is how, after the ionization of the universe, things cooled down enough to the extent that its matter reverted to a neutral form before ionizing again in a process called “cosmic re-ionization.”

One hypothesis involves galaxies which emit mass amounts of ions contributing to the reionization of the universe, though before recently there hadn’t been any data to support this hypothesis.

A nearby compact dwarf galaxy — which appears to be ejecting and emitting a large number of ionizing photons into the space between galaxies — was examined by the team using data from the Hubble Space Telescope. What the researchers found might be the key to figuring out how cosmic re-ionization occurred the way that it did.

“This galaxy appears to be an excellent local analog of the numerous dwarf galaxies thought to be responsible for the reionization of the early universe,” said University of Virginia Astronomer Tin Thuan.

Data from other such ion rejecting galaxies was examined for the study. These types of galaxies became known as “green pea” galaxies due to their apparent green color and compactness.

After discovering that “green pea” galaxies can eject and emit photons at level that had been previously unseen, astronomers might now have what they need in order to confirm their hypothesis.

Hoverboards might be all the rage right now, but apparently they come with a dangerous secret: they are prone to sometimes catch fire or explode due to complications with its battery. Thankfully, Stanford researchers may have developed a solution that would allow you to hoverboard with some peace of mind.

According to CNET, the reason hoverboards are prone to catching fire and exploding has to do with its lithium ion batteries, which are filled with highly flammable material that can overheat and ignite should anything go wrong.

Something being so catastrophically wrong so as to cause the hoverboard to ignite or explode has been relatively rare — and occurs sometimes in smartphones as well — but it’s still a problem Stanford engineers took it upon themselves to solve.

A team of Stanford chemical engineers has claimed to have developed a lithium ion battery, like the one that typically powers hoverboards, that is able to automatically shut down before overheating, preventing any risk of potential explosions or fire-starting. The battery allows the hoverboard to restart itself once it has cooled off sufficiently.

The self-regulating battery technology utilizes nano technology in order to determine when a battery is becoming too hot to properly function.

Here’s how it works: spiky nickel particles coated in graphene are embedded in a thin plastic film. To conduct electricity, the particles have to be touching each other, but when the battery heats up too much, the plastic film expands and separates the spiky nickel particles.

Though Stanford’s battery breakthrough should come as a relief to anybody currently feeling paranoid about their hoverboard exploding, it is important to note that the tech is not yet commercially available. It is recommended a fire extinguisher is kept within close proximity to a hoverboard, in case of emergencies.

Yellowstone’s climate predicting supercomputer, which has been the standard since 2012, is about to be one-upped — plans for a new supercomputer in Cheyenne have recently been unveiled, and when it is complete in 2017, it will be 2.5 more powerful than Yellowstone’s.

According to Engadget, the US National Center of Atmospheric Research has announced a climate predicting supercomputer which is to be constructed in Cheyenne. When it is completed, the computer will have 313 terabytes of memory, 20 petabytes of dedicated storage, and operate at up to 5.34 petaflops per second.

Since 2012, the climate predicting supercomputer in Yellowstone has been scientists’ go-to for creating models of climate change and major weather patterns. However, given its relative lack of power compared to the new, massive Cheyenne supercomputer, the Yellowstone supercomputer might see diminished use in 2017, when its powerful sister-machine is slated for completion.

Given its massive upgrades over the Yellowstone supercomputer, the climate mapping device being built in Cheyenne will allow scientists the capability of creating even more detailed maps of climate change and major weather patterns, along with improved models of pollution and solar storms.

While 2017 is the intended date of completion for the Cheyenne supercomputer, teams will need time to gather data and work with the machine before any real results can be produced. The potential for improvement over the current system, however, is vast — soon we might have a better idea of the ins-and-outs of the Earth’s weather.