The Giant Hogweed is a terrible, no-good, dangerous plant. It also happens to be spreading across the United Stateswith shocking speed, and just touching can totally mess you up. A 17-year-old boy from Virginia named Alex Childress learned that in the absolute worst way possible, and now he’s dealing with severe burns and likely a lifetime of significant scarring.
Childress was reportedly doing a bit of summer gardening when he came across one of the large plants and promptly chopped it down, unknowingly getting some of the plant’s dangerous sap on one side of his face as well as his arm. Nothing happened at first — that’s what makes the plant so incredibly brutal — but that would change.
The sap of the Giant Hogweed doesn’t cause any direct damage to the skin. Instead, it causes what is called phototoxicity, making the skin much more sensitive to damage from UV light. The Sun puts out a whole lot of that, and if you allow sunlight to strike sap-soaked skin it can cause incredibly painful burns. You can mitigate the effects of the sap by thoroughly cleaning your skin immediately after coming into contact with the plant, but Childress had no reason to suspect that he was in any danger and just kept on working. – READ MORE
[divider][/divider]In late June the rock made its closest pass of Earth for the next 170 years, so scientists decided to spend a little more time studying it before it heads back out again. When they zoomed in on what they thought was a regular ol’ asteroid what they began to see double. 2017 YE5, it turns out, isn’t one asteroid. It’s two.
Rather than one chunk of space rock, YE5 is two separate objects that revolve around each other while the two careen through the Solar System. The rocks are virtually identical in size and appear to have very similar shapes as well.
Twin asteroids are incredibly rare, at least here in our Solar System, and they’re a huge treat for scientists whenever they’re spotted. Sometimes larger asteroids are orbited by much smaller rocks, but “equal mass” asteroid pairs are particularly special. In fact, 2017 YE5 is only the fourth such binary asteroid pair ever observed.- READ MORE
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