BEIJING, March 26 (Xinhua) -- The following is a summary of published science and technology news of China.

NEWLY DISCOVERED ASTEROID

An asteroid made a flyby of Earth earlier this week at a distance of about 144,000 km, the closest pass by a minor planet observed through telescopes, a Chinese observatory statement said.

The asteroid called 2020 FL2 flew past Earth at 4:38 a.m. Beijing Time on March 23. The newly discovered minor planet belongs to the Apollo group of asteroids and has an estimated diameter of about 20 meters, also the smallest near-Earth object spotted by telescope.

CLOUDS EMITTING MYSTERIOUS RADIATION

A study jointly conducted by researchers from eight countries has uncovered the origin of Lyman-alpha blobs (LABs), the enormous clouds that emit mysterious ultraviolet radiation.

The infalling gas was low in abundance of metallic elements, suggesting that the LAB's infalling hydrogen gas originated in the intergalactic medium, rather than from the star-forming galaxy itself. The infalling gas can be closely related to the formation of galaxies, and may contain key information about the evolution of galaxies.

SOIL WATER AND NUTRIENTS

Chinese researchers have disclosed that soil water content is improved when the plant species community composition is increased.

Researchers from the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden under the Chinese Academy of Sciences hoped to examine the effects of the species composition of trees, shrubs and herbs on soil water and nutrients. The research, recently published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, is expected to be helpful for selecting suitable plant species by keeping the management of agriculture and forestry balanced. Enditem

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