An asteroid just came very, very close to hitting Earth

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Earlier this afternoon, an asteroid came reeeeeal close to hitting Earth. How close? It was well within the orbits of our GPS satellites. Yeah, that close.

Luckily, scientists were able to track the rock and knew that it wouldn't be hitting us, which is nice. Nobody freaked out too much because the chances are good that the asteroid would have burned up in the atmosphere if it had been more on target. But still!

They were also able to image the asteroid as it buzzed us, which you can see above. Pretty cool! But seriously, next time we've gotta have Bruce Willis and his team of oil drillers at the ready to take these things out.

If your planning on switching to Verizon.... Hurry up!

Having a hard time wrapping your head around the upcoming changes to Verizon's smartphone data plans? We just got all the dirty details dropped in our laps. Charts, e-mails, the whole kit and kaboodle, folks.

Let's start with what you see above. That's the official chart from the official training document (which you can see in full after the break.) As previously rumored, smartphone plans will start at 2GB for $30 a month, with $10 per gigabyte if you go over. There also are 5GB/$50 and 10GB for $80 plans. Unlimited plans are dead. These rates apply to 3G smartphones and 4G LTE smartphones.

Mobile hotspot access will cost $20 a month for 2GB of data.

Other points to note (many of which are detailed in an internal e-mail we've posted after the break):

• If you have Verizon's $29.99 unlimited data plan, you'll be able to keep it after July 7.
• You'll also be able to keep the $29.99 unlimited plan when you upgrade to a new phone. (No word on if there's a pricing difference or when that policy could change.)
• If you add a line to an existing account, you'll not be able to chose the $29.99 unlimited data plan.
• If you're a new customer between now and July 7, you'll still be able to choose the $29.99 plan.

So if you're in the market for a Verizon phone and want to get in on the current unlimited plans before the major changes take effect, you've got two weeks, folks.

Battery goo is like gas for electric cars, but better

Vial of battery goo with a prototype battery behind

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Electricity is nothing like gas. You can't just pump a tank full of it into your electric car, which means that we're reduced to lengthy charge times or inefficient compromises likebattery swap stations. MIT researchers may have come close to solving this problem with a battery goo that you can pump just like gas.

They're calling this black sludge "Cambridge crude," and it's really two different types of goo, each holding charged particles suspended in semi-liquid electrolyte, sort of like how quicksand is comprised of sand particles suspended in water. There's anode goo, and there's cathode goo, and when the two goos are separated by a goo-separating membrane, charge moves from one goo over to the other goo, generating current to power your car.

When all the charge has been used up, you can pull over to a goo station, which will suck out your used goo and pump new goo back in. Or, when you get home, you can plug your car into a wall socket and recharge your goo that way. So it's like having all the advantages of being able to pump gas, with the added advantage of being able to fill up at home, too.

And it gets better. The goo batteries are cheaper to build than conventional lithium-ion batteries, and they're not dependent on any particular goo chemistry, so as we get better at cooking up more efficient and tastier goo, we can just pump that in instead. The MIT team received a DARPA grant to make this all happen, and by 2013, they should have a reduced-scale system operational and serving as a prototype replacement for electric car batteries.

Giant Japanese tower sucks up wind to generate electricity

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Japan has taken a recent interest in alternative forms of power generation, and one of their latest ideas is this 160 foot tall hexagonal tower that works twice as efficiently as conventional wind turbines, without giant spinning blades of death.

Now, I know what you're wondering. You're wondering why this tower contraption is necessary when we already have such good luck with regular old wind turbines, the ones that look like giant propellers. Well, besides being a menace to both birds and majestic vistas, my gut feeling is that since they look like giant propellers, they probably generate enough thrust to slowly but surely speed up the rotation of our planet until at some point in the future, days will last only minutes, minutes will last only seconds, and seconds will barely last long enough for you to wonder why the days are so short all of a sudden.

It's entirely possible that I'm dead wrong about all of that stuff, but why take the risk? And Japan, I assume, agrees with me, which is why this tower is designed to suck in wind from all directions at once, funneling it down a tunnel through the center of the structure and compressing it to spin turbines and generate electricity:

The tower can harvest wind energy over its entire surface area, and is about 2.5 times more efficient than a conventional turbine system while costing half as much to maintain. The design comes from Zena Systems, and they're planning to build it Fukuoka, Japan

Levitating train flies like a plane, no magnets involved

Prototype of the proposed levitating Aero Train.

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This week at the at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics in Shanghai, China, a bunch of Japanese researchers led by Yusuke Sugahara at Tohoku University showed off a prototype transport that hovers inches above the ground without maglev rails. To put it into geeky Star Wars speak: this is the Landspeeder you're looking for.

Categorized as a "ground-effect vehicle," the unmanned plane-train uses fast-moving air and several plane wings to levitate itself above the ground. The plan is to use this prototype vehicle to create an Aero Train (below) that's capable of traveling at 124 miles per hour in a "U-shaped concrete channel."

As shown in the demo video (without the safety channel), the "train" looks wobbly a few times, but is generally stable at its slow speeds. Crank that speed up and stuff this sucker into a channel and who know's what it'll feel like eating dinner on this thing.

The prototype train has been in the works for a year and was presented at the IRCA 2011 in China as part of a study. I think it's incredible that people are still experimenting with ways to kill the wheel. No matter how you look at it, hover vehicles still make up a majority of the concept ideas that litter sci-fi entertainment. With that said, the first one to create a hover train or car that isn't rinky-dink will have DVICE's everlasting respect.

Yusuke Sugahara, via Spectrum

For the latest tech stories, follow us on Twitter at @dvice

Scientists could be months away from discovering antigravity

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Scientists at CERN have announced that they've been able to trap 309 atoms of antihydrogen for over 15 minutes. This is long enough that soon, they'll be able to figure out whether antimatter obeys the law of gravity, or whether it's repelled by normal matter and falls "up" instead. It would be antigravity, for real.

While it's never been tested experimentally due to how difficult it is to create and store the stuff, it's disappointingly likely that antimatter will fall "down" just like regular matter. The thinking behind this is that antimatter (despite the "anti-") is made of regular ordinary energy, and even if it's got an opposite charge, it should still obey the same general rules as matter does. Antimatter falling up would mean a violation of the law of conservation of energy, among other things.

That said, if antimatter were to exhibit antigravity, it would go a long way towards explaining some of the peculiarities of our universe. For example, the universe is supposed to have just as much antimatter as it does matter, but we don't know where the antimatter is. If antimatter and normal matter repelled each other, it could mean that there are entire antimatter galaxies out there. Also, that repulsion would explain why the universe is not just expanding, but speeding up its expansion, something that's tricky to figure out when everything in the universe is always attracted towards everything else.

In either case, the team at CERN should be able to put the debate to rest within a couple months, when they plan to trap a blob of antihydrogen and then just watch it to see which way it falls. Down, and the laws of physics stay in place. Up, and you might just get that hoverboard you've always wanted.

UV light heals scratched polymer paint in 30 seconds flat

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Go ahead, get your car and your laptop and your sunglasses all scratched up. A new "metallo-supramolecular polymer" can switch from a solid coating to a liquid under UV light, magically repairing scratches in less than 30 seconds.

Researchers at Case Western Reserve have developed a special polymer that changes its structure when exposed to UV light. It's specifically intended to be used on stuff that people own, from cars to furniture to gadgets. The polymer is made up of lots of tiny molecular chains, held together with a glue of metallic ions. When you shine a UV light on it, the metallic ions stop acting like a glue, and the chains separate into a liquid that fills in any cracks. Take the light away and everything turns solid and smooth again.

This process happens fast enough that you can just wave a handheld light over the surface you want to fix and it'll be good as new in about 30 seconds. And because of the properties of the polymer, you're not "using up" its fixing power every time you do this: you can scratch the same spot over and over and it'll just keep fixing itself right up.

The good news is that from the sound of things, the researchers are already in talks with a few different companies to get this stuff into the commercial market as soon as possible. When exactly that's gonna be is anyone's guess, especially considering that we've heard about this kind of thingonce or twice before, but hey, progress is progress.