Tell you what, it’s certainly not everyday someone shoots at an asteroid.

Japan’s space agency, JAXA, tried to do just that with its Hayabusa-2 spacecraft, which was launched in 2014. It’s been hanging out on asteroid called Ryugu since June 2018, where it’s been studying the surface. 

SEE ALSO: Astronaut Anne McClain shares stunning moonset from the International Space Station

A bit before midday Japan Standard Time (JST) on Friday, the spacecraft attempted to blast a new crater on Ryugu by firing something called a “small carry-on impactor” (SCI) toward the asteroid.

The SCI is a 2 kilogram (4.41 pound) copper lump which was fired toward the asteroid at a speed of 2 km per second (4,473 mph). 

Shaped like a cone and containing an explosive, the SCI is designed to create an artificial crater on the surface. 

The SCI was shot from an altitude of 500 metres (1,640 feet) from the asteroid’s surface, and the time from release and explosion was about 40 minutes.

In a press conference following the explosion, mission managers were worried about the potential debris from the operation, but said none of it made contact with the spacecraft.

You can catch the feed of the operation in its entirety below.

The purpose of the experiment is so researchers can analyse changes to the asteroid’s surface after shooting at it, and capture materials that might be hidden underneath.

You can see what it looks like when they shoot the SCI into Ryugu, thanks to a ground test simulating the experience. 

The fragments of gravel are meant to simulate the asteroid’s surface, but you can imagine the lack of gravity in space would make for a lot more debris floating about.

It’ll be a few more weeks until the team goes hunting for the crater, with the search operation set to begin the week of Apr. 22.

Researchers will take images of the surface where they think the bullet has hit, then look through the images by eye to see where they’ve made their mark. 

As for Hayabusa-2, it’s expected to make its return to Earth sometime between November and December, with landing set for late-2020.

You know the line. It follows Game of Thrones star Kit Harington around everywhere he goes, including to his own wedding.

Your ol’ pal Jon Snow caught up with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show on Thursday, ahead of the premiere of Season 8 on Apr. 14.

Of course, the iconic line, “You know nothing, Jon Snow,” came up, which Harington said is regularly shouted at him and his wife Rose Leslie, who said the line as Ygritte in the show.

But even Harington’s brother dropped it at a highly inopportune time.

“I hate it when people say it, and my brother managed to get it into the end of my best man speech,” he said. 

“It was quite sweet actually, he said, ‘But looking at the woman you’re marrying, it shows you do know something, Jon Snow.”

Aw. Free pass.

Bohemian Rhapsody was so 2018. 2019 will be the year of Rocketman.

The Elton John biopic shared about seven minutes of footage at Paramount’s CinemaCon presentation Thursday, and while this reporter is on the fence about whether or not it looks good, I feel fairly confident saying it’s going to make a ton of money.

The extended first look follows Reginald Dwight from his very early years as a shy kid with a natural talent for classical piano, to his young adult years as an unstoppable creative force, to a troubled middle age in which he seems to have lost sight of who he really is. (Taron Egerton plays John in adulthood.)

We get to see him meet songwriter Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell) and manager John Reid (Richard Madden), change his name to Elton John (according to this movie, he happens upon the surname when he happens to spot a photo of the Beatles), play the Troubadour and Dodger Stadium, and so on. 

SEE ALSO: Glitzy first trailer for ‘Rocketman’ debuts the fantastical Elton John of our (and his) dreams

In between, there are what look like full-on musical numbers, like one for “Saturday Night’s Alright,” set at a carnival, and lovely moments of magical realism, like a shot of someone playing piano at the bottom of a very deep pool. The familiar music alone should be enough to get butts in seats.

These dreamy touches also help set Rocketman apart from Bohemian Rhapsody, which it otherwise seems to follow beat for beat, down to the obligatory scene of a foolish record executive who just can’t seem to understand that what his oddball artist has brought him is actually the next great masterpiece. 

That the films might share some similarities isn’t terribly surprising, given that Rocketman director Dexter Fletcher also helped steer Bohemian Rhapsody after Bryan Singer’s exit. But it also speaks to how paint-by-numbers Bohemian Rhapsody felt. Hopefully, Rocketman has a little more fun coloring outside the lines.

The other key draw here is Egerton, who seems to capture John’s crackling energy while layering his performance with doubt, arrogance, and determination. He also does his own singing as John, and in the bits we saw, fared impressively well. Hey, we know John’s already a fan.

While we do not know how things pan out for Captain America in Avengers: Endgame, it seems pretty clear that Chris Evans is ready to move on. 

And what better way to do that than with a role that emphasizes how un-Cap he can be?

The first trailer from Rian Johnson’s Knives Out debuted at CinemaCon Thursday, and in it, Evans demonstrates exactly the kind of behavior that would have Steve Rogers glaring with disapproval.

Described by Johnson as an Agatha Christie-inspired whodunit with a starry cast, a Hitchcockian flair, and a modern American setting, Knives Out centers on a family gathering that goes sour when one member turns up dead. 

The trailer opens on a stately manor, as “Live and Let Die” plays. A family sits gathered around as a pair of detectives, who introduce themselves as Elliott (LaKeith Stanfield) and Wagner (Daniel Craig) explain that they’re there to investigate the death of the family’s patriarch (Christopher Plummer) on the occasion of his 85th birthday. 

The second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth things Evans says are variations on “Eat shit.” Cap would never.

“How was it?” asks Elliott.

“The party? Pre my dad’s death?” deadpans Toni Collette’s character. “Oh, it was great.” 

The family are asked to stick around until the investigation has concluded, and it becomes apparent that Wagner (whom Craig gives a pronounced Southern accent) believes someone at the party may have committed murder, much to the outrage and irritation of the family.

Evans plays the son of Jamie Lee Curtis and Don Johnson’s characters, and comes across in the footage like a pampered douchebag — think Roman from Succession. 

The first thing we hear him say is “Up your ass.” The second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth things Evans says are variations on “Eat shit.” Cap would never. 

From there, we cut to an intriguing but mysterious montage of needles, knives, and spiders, as our characters demand answers from one another. 

SEE ALSO: Jamie Lee Curtis and Chris Evans have adorable Twitter exchange during the Oscars

Ana de Armas plays what Curtis calls “the moral compass of this cast of lunatics.” Michael Shannon, Katherine Langford, and Jaeden Martell round out the cast. It’s probably going to be a while before we get more precise details on how they all fit together, though.

The trailer is stylish and energetic — the recent trailer of Knives Out mostly reminds me of Bad Times at the El Royale, and not just because a Marvel Chris is involved — and promises things will get much stranger before they start to make sense again.

“This is a twisted web and we are not finished untangling it, not yet,” warns Wagner. 

Too bad we’ll have to wait a while to see how it unravels. Knives Out opens Thanksgiving weekend, just in time to spice up your own family gatherings.

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Most people welcome spending time in nature and green space. After all, taking a few moments in the outdoors offers a much-needed break from the chaos of everyday life. And it can also lend positive physiological benefits, including lower stress levels, fewer symptoms of depression, and even a lower mortality rate. 

Still, despite everything scientists know about the connection between nature and well-being, they still can’t say with certainty how much time outdoors leads to improved mental and physical health. 

A new study, published Thursday in Frontiers in Psychology, attempted to answer that question by asking participants to spend time in a place that “brings a sense of contact with nature” for at least 10 minutes per outing, three times per week, over the course of eight weeks. The researchers found that participants who immersed themselves in a “nature experience” for at least 20 minutes per outing experienced a significant decrease in their levels of the stress hormone cortisol. 

The study’s authors wrote that they envision ultimately developing a “nature prescription” — or “nature pill” — that health care providers can offer to their patients as a low-cost, preventive mental health treatment. (The “pill” is the time spent outside.)

SEE ALSO: One overlooked way we can significantly improve our mental health: more nature

This research is the first step toward that goal, says MaryCarol R. Hunter, the study’s lead author and an associate professor at the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. 

That’s because the subject is tricky and expensive to study. Scientists don’t yet know exactly which aspects of nature and green space — whether they’re trees, grass, water, or plants — trigger the benefits of being outside. It’s also difficult for them to design studies using the gold standard of a randomized clinical trial because neither scientists nor study participants are supposed to know which treatment or intervention the subject receives. In a study about exposure to nature, it’s typically obvious to both the scientist and their subjects who’s being sent to green spaces. 

So Hunter and her colleagues tried an “adaptive management” approach instead. They let their 36 participants freely decide where, when, and how long they spent time in nature, provided they obeyed certain ground rules. They couldn’t use phones or internet-connected devices to browse social media or the internet, and they couldn’t make calls or read during their designated time outside. Their nature experience also couldn’t include aerobic exercise. The researchers were collecting saliva samples that, in addition to cortisol, measured the hormone amylase, which can be influenced by physical activity. 

“You could go sit next to one tree and just be with the tree, that could do it for you.”

“They could pick any place they wanted,” says Hunter, “but when they went to the place they actually had to feel some resonance to nature, feel connected to it. You could go sit next to one tree and just be with the tree, that could do it for you. The same person might go to a city park free of the noise of traffic.” 

Peter James, an assistant professor in the department of population medicine at Harvard Medical School who has studied the link between nature and well-being, says the study’s approach highlights the trade-off of letting participants shape the intervention based on their own interests. While it makes the research more feasible, it becomes difficult to know whether they stayed outdoors longer because of a personal inclination, like because they were having a great time — or some other factor unknown to the researchers. It’s also then hard to know the characteristics of the participants’ nature experience. 

“This is a consistent problem in the literature,” says James. “What is a nature experience? Is it looking at trees, grass, going on a hike, walking in an urban park? It’s one of the vexing problems in this area of research.” 

Hunter says that people’s changing perception of nature is at the heart of this challenge. Venturing into a wilderness area might feel relaxing and restorative for one person, but terrifying for someone else, who’d much rather decompress in an urban park. Doctors who want to prescribe a nature experience to their patients shouldn’t focus on a standard experience but rather encourage them to go where they feel most connected to the outdoors, Hunter says. 

She also plans to release additional research based on the data collected in this study. In particular, Hunter wants to look at the self-reported information she gathered from participants about their mood, stress, and energy level to see if there’s a correlation with the decrease in cortisol. 

While intriguing, there are limitations to broadly generalizing the findings. The small sample consisted mainly of white women, all healthy, with a mean age of 46, who responded to an ad seeking people interested in spending more time outdoors in green spaces. That group doesn’t reflect the population at large. Some research, however, does suggest that exposure to nature and green spaces has strong health benefits for low-income populations.

Hunter knows that 20 minutes in nature may be out of reach for many people. It might be difficult for them to reach green spaces or they can’t commit to that much time. In her own personal experience with friends and family, Hunter has recommended just five minutes per outing to start. It’s a number that seems manageable and can quickly turn into more time. 

“To be practical,” says Hunter, “it has to be something they can just do easily.” 

Apparently Slack isn’t the bragging type. 

The company behind the collaborative workspace tool favored by tech and media companies around the world quietly ended its policy of making employees to agree to forced arbitration in cases of harassment claims. And it did so late last year, to absolutely zero public fanfare. 

SEE ALSO: Slack might be making it harder to know if your boss is reading your DMs

So reports Yahoo! Finance, which notes that Slack announced the change internally in November, which is shortly after Google employees demanded a similar change at their company. Last November, Facebook also decided it would no longer force employees to take claims of sexual harassment and misconduct to a closed-door legal proceeding known as arbitration. 

“We changed our policy in November 2018 to give employees the choice of whether to arbitrate or litigate harassment claims,” a Slack spokesperson told Yahoo! Finance. “We think allowing this choice is best for employees and for Slack as a whole. One size does not fit all.”

Slack confirmed the November policy change in an email to Mashable, but declined to comment on what — e.g. employee or public pressure — drove the change. 

“There are some disputes where arbitration is a good venue, and some where litigation is a good venue,” Slack’s statement to Yahoo! Finance continued. “We want to make it clear to employees that they have a choice about claims of harassment.”

The fact that Slack carried out this policy change without an accompanying press release suggests that it didn’t feel the need to turn what is considered a pro-worker policy into a PR win. Google and Facebook, on the other hand, may have felt differently. 

In February of 2019, Google took things a step further and announced that it would end mandatory arbitration for all types of employee disputes — not solely those involving claims of sexual misconduct. 

“This victory never would have happened if workers hadn’t banded together, supported one another, and walked out,” tweeted a group of Google workers pressing for the policy change. “Collective action works.”

It’s unclear if Slack simply sought to avoid a public shellacking similar to the one received by Google, and thus preemptively made the change, or just truly thought ending forced arbitration for harassment claims was the right way to go. Either way, it’s a win for those who work at the company.