Atom & Cosmos

Trojan asteroids, black hole interactions and a gargantuan watering hole in this week’s news

Earth’s Trojan asteroid
Trojan asteroids may sound like nefarious characters — sneaky buggers ready to unleash a barrage of meteorites — but they’re not much more than orbital tagalongs. Scientists report in the July 28 Nature that Earth has one of these rocky buddies sharing its orbit, as do Mars, Jupiter and Neptune.