The week Junior Science Nature Strange New Worlds

12 STRANGE NEW WORLDS

Take a trip beyond our solar system and visit the weird and wonderful planets orbiting other stars.

Welcome to a very special issue of The Week Junior Science+Nature. This month we’re celebrating World Space Week (4–10 October), and we are hugely excited to have space scientist, writer, TV presenter, and all-round space ace Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock to be our guest editor. Her phasers have been set to stun, so strap yourself in as we set off on a tour of the universe!

Hieveryone. What do you think of when you think about space? Do you imagine astronauts blasting off on adventures or peering deep into the universe with giant space telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)? Well, although I got to work on the JWST, much of my work as a space scientist has been observing our planet from orbit. Climate change is one of the biggest issues we’re facing right now. This is why I am so happy that this year’s World Space Week will focus on “space and sustainability”. Monitoring our planet from space makes Earth a better place for everyone.

I first got the space bug when I was very little. When I heard about the Moon landings I just thought, oh my goodness, that’s what I want to do – I want to get out in space! New missions to the Moon (see page 6) will inspire the next generation. The UK space industry is booming now, and we need not just space scientists, but space artists, space lawyers and space marketers. So, if you catch the space bug from reading this magazine, there’s a place for you, too.

You might think it’s just a crazy dream to go to space. Only about 600 people have ever travelled out there so far, but by having my big dream and by thinking big, it means I get to do things that I would have never thought possible as a child – like being the guest editor of The WeekJunior Science+Nature! Remember to reach for the stars and have that big, crazy dream!

Maggie, guest editor

Turn to page 45 to find out more about Dr Maggie’s new book Am I made of Stardust? and enter a competition to win a copy.

MAKING SENSE OF THE UNIVERSE

Science+Nature is brought to you by the team behind The Week Junior. This issue’s explainers are writer Giles Sparrow, who explores alien worlds (page 12); wildlife presenter Jess French tells you what nature to spot (page 22) and writer Tom Jackson looks inside an astronaut training lab (page 32).

Readers who subscribe to both The Week Junior Science+Nature and The Week Junior now receive their copies in a paper envelope instead of a polywrap. This is part of our commitment to reduce plastic waste. Please reuse the envelope or dispose of it responsibly by recycling.

BUDGIE BONANZA

Budgerigars, nicknamed budgies, are green and yellow parrots native to Australia. They’re usually seen in flocks of around 100 at watering holes across the country. However, when smaller watering holes dry up in summer, budgies are forced to gather in their thousands to find a good place to drink. For years, wildlife photographer Charles Davis has been trying to capture one of these mass gatherings. In this photo, thousands of budgies can be seen flocking to a lake after heavy rainfall. Davis went out to the lake before dawn to photograph the budgies in flight. After a while, Davis started to feel cold from the draught the budgies were creating with their wings. NATURE

CHITTER CHATTER

Some budgies can speak hundreds of such as “hello”, “goodbye” and “thank you”.

Artemis 1, the first mission in the US space agency

NASA’s Artemis programme, is ready for lift-off. The Artemis programme aims to put astronauts back on the Moon by 2024, and prepare them for missions to Mars.

The first mission, Artemis 1, involves launching a capsule called Orion into space on board a rocket called the Space Launch System (SLS). The spacecraft will then fly around the Moon a number of times before heading back to Earth.

Artemis stands ready to blast off last crewed mission to the Moon was in 1972.

Future Artemis missions will land the first woman and first person of colour on the Moon, and NASA also aims to send equipment so that astronauts can stay for longer periods on the lunar surface. However, Artemis 1 is an uncrewed mission, which means no people will be on board. This is a test flight, to make sure everything on the spaceship works the way it’s supposed to.

However, that doesn’t mean the crew quarters will be empty. A dummy called Commander Moonikin Campos, a toy Snoopy, four LEGO minifigures, tree seeds, Girl Scout badges and CBBC’s Shaun the Sheep will all travel on board the spacecraft. Shaun even did some astronaut training, including a ride on the zero gravity “Vomit Comet”.

As The Week Junior Science+Nature went to press, NASA had missed its first launch window, because of a fuel leak. A launch window is a period of time during which a rocket must blast off in order to reach its destination at the right time. A rocket needs to launch when Earth and the Moon are closest, otherwise it needs to carry extra fuel That increases the rocket’s weight, so it requires even more fuel to lift-off.

Bill Nelson, the head of NASA, said the next launch attempt could be in mid-October. “This is part of the space business,” he told reporters, “we’ll go when it’s ready.”

NASA wants to send astronauts back to the lunar surface. but have all been American it’s nice that we’re a and other to amazin

TWIN NAMES

Discoveries, inventions and surprises

Artemis 1 is ready for lift-off.

In Greek mythology, Artemis is the twin sister of Apollo.

Drought reveals wonders of history

“Spanish Stonehenge”.

Blood types switched

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have successfully changed the blood type of three human kidneys. All people have one of four main blood types – A, B, AB or O. Your blood type is determined by your genes (short sections of DNA – a chemical that tells your body how to grow and develop). Kidneys are beanshaped organs that remove waste and water from the blood as urine.

NEED FOR KIDNEYS

didn’t match, the patient’s natural bodily defence system would attack and reject the new organ. However, kidneys with the blood type O can be transplanted to any patient.

FUNNY FOOD

D roughts across Europe and in the US have revealed some ancient wonders, from sunken Second World War ships to a “Spanish Stonehenge”. A drought is when there is a long period with little or no rainfall. This has led to rivers drying up, revealing hidden treasures underneath.

In Texas, US, 113 million-year-old dinosaur tracks were revealed. The tracks, belonging to an Acrocanthosaurus, were last seen in the year 2000, and are some of the best preserved dino tracks in the world. Meanwhile, an ancient stone circle resurfaced in Huelva, Spain. Called the Dolmen of Guadalperal, the stone circle is thought to have been built around 5000BC. It was flooded in 1963 by a reservoir, and has only been visible four times since then.

In the Danube river, in Serbia, sunken Second World War ships were brought back to the surface, some of which still had explosives on board. In the Czech Republic, the drying of the Elbe river has revealed “hunger stones”. These are stones set into the river bank with messages carved into them, such as “If you see me, weep”. If the water level drops, the stones become visible, serving as a warning. The fact that they have been seen is due to extreme weather. Droughts are made worse by climate change – long-term changes in the world’s weather caused mainly by human activities.

Until recently, transplants required the donor’s and patient’s blood types to match. For example, a kidney from someone with blood type A couldn’t be transplanted into someone with blood type B and vice versa. If they

Professor Mike Nicholson and Serena MacMillan used a machine to transform three donated kidneys to the O blood type. The device works by placing a special enzyme (a protein that speeds up chemical reactions in the body) into the kidneys that converts the blood type. It is hoped that this will increase the number of kidneys available to use. “It’s very exciting to think about how this could potentially impact so many lives,” said MacMillan.

Drought makes fruit and vegetables grow smaller and wonkier.

In the UK, almost 4,800 people are waiting for a kidney transplant.

Blood type O is the most common.

HEAVYWEIGHT

The Antarctic blue whale is the world’s heaviest animal, weighing around 200,000 kilograms.

A symbol of hope

On 16 July, a red panda cub, called Little Red, was born at Paradise Wildlife Park in Hertfordshire, England. Red pandas are an endangered species due to hunting and habitat loss. Aaron Whitnall, operations coordinator at Paradise Wildlife Park, said Little Red’s birth was a “symbol of hope” following the death of their father Nam Pang. Little Red’s parents Nam Pang and Tilly had been trying to have a cub for four years as part of an international breeding programme. for animals at zoo

I n August, zookeepers at Whipsnade Zoo had to put 10,000 animals onto the scales for their annual weigh-in. Every year, the UK’s largest zoo weighs all of its animals. This is so they can keep track of the animals’ health and wellbeing. Many animals, such as Asian elephant Ming Jung, had to be tempted onto the scales with their favourite snacks.

A variety of equipment was deployed, depending on the size of the animal. An industrial-sized scale was necessary for Beluki, a 26-year-old greater one-horned rhinoceros, who weighed in at a mighty 1650kg, while more sensitive kit was needed for the butterflies and critically endangered desertas wolf spiders. Some animals were taking part in the weigh-in for the first time, including a three-month-

old northern rockhopper penguin called Dobby, and the recently-arrived aardvarks Nacho and Terry. All of the information is recorded in the Zoological Information Management System (ZIMS), a database that zookeepers around the world can access to find out more about endangered species.

“All of our animals at ZSL Whipsnade Zoo are weighed and measured regularly, but the annual weigh-in is an opportunity to review the information we’ve recorded, and ensure it is up-to-date and accurate,” says Matthew Webb, head of zoological operations at Whipsnade. The checks help keepers identify any pregnant animals. This is important when it comes to the endangered animals, who are part of the zoo’s conservation breeding programme.

Little Red.

Keeper Alex Johnson weighs penguins.

Weighing scorpions requires great care.

Nacho the aardvark.

Beluki the rhino.

Rare purple heron spotted in the UK

A birdwatcher in Derbyshire, England, spotted a purple heron flying above the Willington Wetlands nature reserve. The purple heron is an incredibly rare bird, and this is only the eighth time it’s been spotted in the county of Derbyshire. Only around 20 of the birds are seen in the UK each year. They are more commonly found in southern Europe and northern Africa.

The birdwatcher, Ian Elliott, hadn’t even heard of the bird until he read about some reported sightings the week before. This inspired

him to go and check out the bird for himself. “I just sat up for four or five hours – I was in the hide – and then all of a sudden it just flew from left to right, right along the length of the lake,” he told the BBC. “Luckily I had my camera ready – I was chuffed to bits.”

Aside from its different-coloured feathers, the purple heron is very similar to the more common grey heron, but it has smaller legs and bigger feet. “It looked a lot darker, and you can see it has got purple tinges to its wings and on its back,” said Elliott. “You could see that it wasn’t a grey heron.”

Hydrogen-powered trains

Afleet of 14 hydrogen-powered trains has hit the rails in Germany’s Lower Saxony region. This is a world first for “zero emission” train transport.

Hydrogen is a light gas that burns very easily. It is also the most common element in the universe. When hydrogen is burnt for fuel, the only product released is water. This is why hydrogen, when burned as a fuel, is considered a green energy source. Other fuels, such as coal, oil and gas, release harmful substances into the atmosphere, which contribute to climate change (long-term changes in

world weather patterns that are caused mainly by human activities).

Each new train will use a single tank of hydrogen each day over the 60 miles of track, giving out only steam and water. By replacing diesel trains, the technology will prevent around 4,400 tonnes of carbon dioxide (a gas that boosts climate change) from being released every year.

“This project is setting a global example, it is an outstanding example for a successful transformation,” said Stephan Weil, the Minister President of Lower Saxony.

Bumless beast mystery

Scientists say they have solved a mystery, bringing an end to the theory that a 500-million-year-old creature with no anus could be our earliest human ancestor.

When the tiny fossils of Saccorhytus coronarius were first discovered in 2017, experts thought that this spiky, sack-like animal with a mouth but no bottom was related to animals with backbones. However, new studies suggest that it belongs to a different group of animals

altogether. Scientists now think Saccorhytus coronarius is an ancestor of spiders and insects.

At first, experts thought that holes around the mouth of the creatures were gills (organs that allow animals to breathe underwater) – a feature of human ancestors. However, detailed studies with powerful X-rays showed that the structures were, in fact, spines that had snapped off. Scientists are still unsure why this creature evolved to have no anus.

Zero-emission

DID YOU KNOW?

Purple herons are large birds that stand up to 90 centimetres tall.

Purple herons are usually found in Europe and Africa.

The 500 millionyear-old creature has no bum.

Discoveries,

Mount Kilimanjaro gets Wi-Fi

Africa’s highest mountain – Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania – now has high-speed internet. Standing at nearly 6,000 metres tall, Kilimanjaro is a popular destination for hikers and climbers from around the world. Around 35,000 people try to reach the top every year, but this new development is not about surfing the net. The climb can be dangerous, and connecting to the internet will allow for more precise location and navigation. Tanzania Telecommunications Corporation has now set up online access at 3,720 metres – roughly halfway up the mountain.

Internet at the summit is expected to arrive later this year. “Previously, it was a bit dangerous for visitors and porters, who had to operate without the internet,” said Nape Nnauye, Tanzania’s Minister for Information.

The move is part of an international effort to connect some of the world’s most remote regions and make them safer for visitors. In 2020, masts were put on the world’s tallest mountain, Mount Everest, to provide it with a 5G internet connection. This enabled people to connect to the internet from the top of the mountain.

Ameca’s facial expressions are uncannily lifelike.

SLEEPING GIANT

Mount Kilimanjaro is a dormant volcano, which means it hasn’t erupted for thousands of years but might in the future.

Meet Ameca – the new face of humanoid robots

Ahumanoid (shaped like a human) robot called Ameca has just become even more lifelike, thanks to some new facial expressions. The UKbased robotics company Engineered Arts has given Ameca 12 new facial expressions, which include winking and a scrunched-up nose.

Engineered Arts makes robots for entertainment purposes, renting them out for businesses to use at events. The company describes Ameca as “the world’s most advanced human-shaped robot,

representing the forefront of humanrobotics technology”.

EYE SEE YOU

These new facial expressions are just the latest upgrade Ameca has received. In December 2021, it was filmed “waking up”, and displaying emotions such as amazement when it looked at its arms and hands. This was ahead of Ameca going on display at the Consumer Electronics Show, an important tech event, in January. There are still many things Ameca can’t do, however, including walking. Engineered Arts hopes to give it this ability in the future

Ameca has cameras in its eyes so it can detect objects and people, and react to their expressions.

Mount Kilimanjaro.

n March 2022, the US space agency NASA celebrated the discovery of the 5,000th known exoplanet – a world orbiting a distant star beyond our solar system. Just 30 years ago, no exoplanets were known, and many astronomers thought that our own solar system was a rare oddity within the Milky Way galaxy. Now, thanks to clever scientific tricks and new telescopes on Earth and in space, it’s clear that alien planets are much more common than first thought. What’s more, astronomers are coming up with ways to discover what these worlds are actually like, and are making discoveries far stranger than they could ever have imagined.

From planets with pink skies and ones covered by seas of lava, to worlds with twin suns and lonely wanderers far from any star – there’s an amazing variety of exoplanets beyond our solar system. So why not hop aboard for a whistle-stop tour of these strange new worlds?

Outsize oddballs

From the moment the first planet was discovered around another Sun-like star in 1995, astronomers realised that

I

Let’s journey far beyond our solar system to the weird and wonderful planets orbiting other stars.

LONG TRIP

The fastest spacecraft ever launched would still take more than 7,700 years to reach Proxima Centauri b, the nearest exoplanet to Earth.

LOOKS FAMILIAR

exoplanets would rewrite the scientific rule book. That planet, now known as Dimidium, orbits 51 Pegasi – a star in the constellation Pegasus, about 50 light years from Earth. A light year is the distance that light, the fastest thing in the Universe, travels in a year – roughly six million million miles. Dimidium is a gas giant world that weighs at least half as much as Jupiter (the solar system’s biggest planet), and has a deep atmosphere around a fairly small, dense centre. In our solar system, gas giants lie far out from the Sun and take many years to orbit around it, but Dimidium completes its circuit of 51 Pegasi in just 100 hours. This is so close to the star that the world is heated to a scorching 1,000°C.

Dimidium was the first example of what astronomers now call a “hot Jupiter” – a gas giant exoplanet orbiting extremely close to its star. The heat causes their atmospheres to puff up to enormous size. In some cases, such as Gliese 436b, the outer layers simply boil away into space

Burnt-out worlds

Another, rarer group of heavyweight bodies orbit just as close to their stars, but the material that they are made of is packed into a much smaller space. Take Kepler-57b – it weighs as much as 115 Earths (about one-third as much as Jupiter) but is just twice the size across. Astronomers think these super-dense planets are the stripped-down remains of hot Jupiters, whose atmospheres have boiled away almost completely. They call them Chthonian (say thoe-nee-uhn) planets, after an ancient Greek term for the mythical underworld.

Chthonian planets aren’t the only examples of exoplanets with a strange afterlife. Astronomers have detected a handful of planets orbiting around pulsars. Pulsars are the collapsed, fast-spinning cores left behind when monster stars end their lives in enormous supernova explosions. The supernova blast is powerful enough to tear apart anything that may have orbited around the

original star, but a second generation of worlds seems to be able to form out of the debris that’s left behind.

Spotting invisible planets

Detecting exoplanets often involves observing objects that astronomers can’t see directly. Planets only shine by reflecting light from their parent stars. This means they’re almost always lost in the glare of the stars themselves. Only a handful of planets have ever been photographed directly, although more advanced telescopes and new satellites are steadily increasing that number.

Despite this, there are countless other ways to discover and learn about exoplanets. The vast majority are known only through indirect observation – the way they affect the light from their stars (see box opposite). Dimidium and other early exoplanets were discovered in the 1990s using new technology that could probe the light from stars and detect tiny changes in its colour.

Too hot, too cold, or just right?

These techniques also give away a few extra bits of information about the planets. For example, their size or weight (sometimes both), and the time they take to orbit their star (the exoplanet’s length of year).

The surface of CoRoT-7b is lava.

A planet orbiting a fast-spinning pulsar.

Kepler-62f is a “super-Earth”.

An artist’s impression of Proxima Centauri b’s surface.

An illustration of Dimidium orbiting 51 Pegasi.

The largest known exoplanet system, Kepler-90, has eight major planets – the same number as our own solar system.

GOLDEN GLOW

If you stood on Kepler 186f at midday, its star would look as bright as the Sun does on Earth an hour before sunset.

Using this data, astronomers have set out an entire collection of different planet types. These include “super Earths” (rocky worlds that weigh a lot more than Earth) and “miniNeptunes” (gassy worlds smaller than any of those known in our solar system).

The length of an exoplanet’s year depends on how far it is from its star, which in turn gives clues to its temperature and likely conditions on the surface. Small planets orbiting close to their stars are charred to a crisp, and may be even hotter than our solar system’s own innermost planet, Mercury. CoRoT-7b, which is 489 light years away in the constellation Monoceros, is so hot that its surface is lava (molten rock). Rocky planets orbiting far from their stars are in the cosmic chiller, where chemicals such as water, and gases such as oxygen, freeze solid on their surfaces.

In between these two extremes lies a narrow region that some scientists call the “Goldilocks zone”. Here, conditions are neither too hot nor too cold, but just right for liquid water to stay on a planet’s surface. Water is one of the main ingredients needed for life

Kepler 186f could be home to alien life.

Spotting alien worlds

here on Earth, so planets in the Goldilocks zone are the best places to look for signs of alien life. One such world that astronomers are eager to study is Kepler-186f, which was the first Earth-sized planet orbiting in the Goldilocks zone ever discovered, in 2014.

Meet the neighbour

The closest exoplanet to Earth also sits neatly in the Goldilocks zone. Proxima Centauri b is a rocky planet roughly the same size and mass as Earth, orbiting the star Proxima Centauri in the constellation of Centaurus. In cosmic terms, Proxima is right on our doorstep, at a distance of just 4.25 light years. However, the star is smaller and much dimmer than the Sun – a so-called “red dwarf” star, so faint that you need a telescope to spot it.

Shining weakly, Proxima gives out little heat, and this brings the Goldilocks zone in tight around the star. Proxima b is so near to its star, it year is just 11 days long, but even so its surface is cooler than Earth’s. Orbiting this close to the red dwarf brings other hazards. Although the world sits comfortably in the Goldilocks zone, Proxima b is in the firing line for

WOBBLES:

If an exoplanet weighs enough, or lies close enough to its star, the planet’s gravity will tug the star in different directions as it orbits, causing the star to wobble slightly as it drifts through space. Astronomers can pick up tiny changes to a star’s speed towards or away from Earth as tiny changes in the colour of its light.

Best for: Heavy planets and ones close to their stars (although the longer you watch a star’s light, the better is your chance of picking up wobbles caused by planets in longer orbits).

WINKS:

If a planet’s orbit takes it across the face of its star (in what astronomers call a “transit”), then the alien world will reveal itself through a tiny dip, or wink, in the star’s brightness, as a fraction of the star’s light is blocked from view. The size of the dip shows the planet’s size compared to its star.

Best for: Exoplanets of any size that lie close to their stars. This is because the bigger the orbit, the less chance there is of the planet lining up exactly with the star.

Astronomers use two main methods to search for exoplanets. Scientifically, they’re known as the radial velocity and transit methods, but it’s easier to think of them as wobbles and winks.

Brightness dips Exoplanet moves in front of the star.

Earth Star

Exoplanet passes in front of star

Wobbles in star caused by exoplanet, affect starlight

the star’s frequent and deadly solar flares. Its unlikely that life could ever survive on the planet’s surface.

Strange but true

Of the 5,000 exoplanets that have been discovered so far, some are stranger than scientists could have ever imagined. Take HD 189733 b, for example. At just 64 light years away from Earth, HD 189733 b looks like a beautiful deep-blue marble floating through space, but you wouldn’t want to go there for a holiday. This dangerous world has winds blowing at up to 5,400 miles per hour – seven times faster than the speed of sound. It’s also scorching, with temperatures exceeding 1,300°C. Grains of glass form the pressure cooker conditions of the atmosphere, and rain down in deadly sideways showers.

Another oddball planet is GJ 504, which is four times more massive than Jupiter and glows a hot pink colour. This puffy pink place was first discovered in 2013 by the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii, US. It glows because it is still relatively

young in cosmic standards. Kepler 16b is a place that may remind you of Luke Skywalker’s world, Tatooine, from the Star Wars films. This double-star system has two suns that set over the horizon.

LONELY WORLDS

Although the exoplanets found by astronomers have are no doubt amazing, scientists believe there are weirder worlds waiting to be discovered. One of these is a “blanet” – a planet that may orbit a black hole. Scientists are also looking out for exomoons – moons orbiting exoplanets – for potential signs of alien life.

Eyes in the sky

While many exoplanets have been discovered using large ground-based telescopes on Earth, such as the ExTrA telescopes at

La Silla Observatory in Chile, many more are spotted by space telescopes. More than half of all known exoplanets were found by a single space telescope called Kepler, which operated from 2009 to 2018.

Kepler’s location above Earth’s atmosphere, in the permanent darkness of space, allowed it to keep its cameras pointing towards a single dense patch of stars in the constellation of Cygnus for more than four years. By steadily watching the light from these stars, Kepler could pick up the tell-tale signs of extraterrestrial bodies in orbit around them. In its lifetime, the telescope detected almost 2,700 confirmed exoplanets.

A handful of new planets have been found in different ways, most often when they pass in front of other stars. From Earth’s viewpoint, the light is distorted through an effect called microlensing. In

❝Rogue exoplanets that wander through the universe – such as OGLE-2016-BLG-1928 – blow our concept of a planet. Dark, foreboding and ‘out there’, they could even be under the influence of another star and join another solar system.❞

An illustration of a habitable exomoon.

The three ExTrA telescopes in Chile.

Some planets wander the cosmos alone.

IDR . MAGGIE, GUESTEDITOR

A 2012 study suggests there may be 100,000 times more rogue planets than stars in the Milky Way.

The Kepler Space Telescope

ALIEN

SUPER ZOOM

The James Webb Space Telescope is the biggest ever sent to space. It is 100 times more powerful than the Hubble telescope.

2020, microlensing revealed the most distant exoplanet yet found, which was given the catchy name OGLE-2018-BLG0677b. It’s in a star cloud 25,000 light years from Earth, near the centre of our Milky Way galaxy. Microlensing has also uncovered rogue exoplanets far from any star. These lonely worlds wandering through space were probably kicked out of their solar systems by a collision – or near-miss – with another planet.

Studying starlight

The tricks astronomers use to detect exoplanets can only reveal certain types of information, such as how large they are, how much they weigh and how long they take to orbit their stars. Now, a new generation of telescopes are following up on those discoveries to learn more about the planets themselves.

When astronomers can see an exoplanet directly, they can use a wide range of tools to learn about it.

Starlight reflecting off a planet is affected by the chemicals in the planet’s atmosphere, which may absorb certain colours, and reflect – or even generate – others. By splitting up the light bouncing off a body, scientists can create a unique coloured spectrum, a little like a rainbow. By analysing the particular colours (and those that are missing), researchers can detect which chemicals are present, from the minerals on the surface to clouds, dust and smog in the air. As scientific instruments become more sensitive, it will be possible to study starlight passing through an exoplanet’s atmosphere and pick up the imprint of the chemicals in the distant planet’s sky.

In fact, most astronomers think that studying starlight like this is our best chance of discovering life on an exoplanet. Some chemicals known from Earth, such as phosphine and methane, are only produced in significant amounts by living things, so if they are

THAT’S DISGUSTING

Poo planet

One way of confirming life on a distant exoplanet would be to look for a particularly stinky gas. Phosphine is a foul-smelling chemical that’s only made by tiny micro-organisms on Earth. It’s found in swamps, sewage works and penguin poo, but is toxic to most life and can easily catch fire if it mixes with oxygen. In 2019, US astronomer Clara Silva-Sousa suggested that phosphine created by alien microbes could hang around in the atmospheres of exoplanets that didn’t have as much oxygen as Earth. The substance could be easily detected thanks to its distinctive colour.

A stinky planet.

detected in the light spectrum from an alien world, it would be a strong sign that it is home to some form of life.

The search continues

The exoplanets whose existence has been confirmed so far are just the tip of a cosmic iceberg. NASA suspects that there are probably hundreds of billions of planets in our galaxy alone. Over the next few years, new space telescopes such as TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), the European Space Agency’s CHEOPS (the Characterising ExOPlanet Satellite) and the James Webb Space Telescope, (JWST) are aiming to learn far more about exoplanets.

Newly settled in its new home in the stars, JWST is already giving amazing insights. In August, the giant space telescope returned its first picture of a planet beyond our solar system. It also captured the first clear evidence for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a world orbiting a Sun-like star 700 light-years away.

As technology advances and our understanding of the universe gets better, we may find even more amazing alien planets out there. You never know, we may even find a twin of Earth itself, teeming with new life waiting to say hello. What we do know for certain is that this is just the beginning of our exploration of these strange new worlds.

James Webb will allow us to see distant galaxies, like these five galaxies known as Stephan’s Quintet.

TESS will search for new worlds.

NATURE’S

NIGHT LIGHT

Some species of fungi have the ability to glow in a process called bioluminescence. This neat trick attracts light-loving insects.

GLOW IN THE DARK

Looking like tiny fireworks shooting from the ground at sunset, wild Paepalanthus, are a type of rare glow-in-the-dark plant that only grow in the Brazilian savannah. This spectacular image was taken by Brazilian photographer Marcio Cabral and was the runner-up in the Nature category at the Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum International Photography Award (HIPA). This flower can reflect light when lit from behind, explains Cabral. “So, during sunrise and sunset, these flowers glow to create a magical effect.”

Paepalanthus are also known as sempreviva, which means “always alive”, because after harvesting they can last a long time without spoiling.

MARCIO

think that science is for everyone,” Wanda Díaz-Merced says during a TED talk, “It belongs to the people, and it has to be available to everyone, because we are all natural explorers.” When she lost her sight while studying at university, Díaz-Merced’s passion for science didn’t falter. Now, she is an astronomer whose ground-breaking research is making other scientists think about alternative ways to study the universe we live in.

Keen young scientist

hope about a future career in science, a friend introduced her to NASA’s Radio JOVE project.

DOWN THE PLUGHOLE

Ever since she was a child, her goal was to become a scientist. Díaz-Merced grew up on the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico with her older sister. Her mum and dad encouraged them both to study hard and focus on school. Díaz-Merced was inspired by the support and praise her sister got when she took part in science fairs, and determined to produce her own projects and experiments. She did well at school, and when she left, she went to study at the University of Puerto Rico.

Losing her sight

During her time at university, Díaz-Merced became aware that she was losing her sight. She didn’t tell anyone, as she was afraid that she wouldn’t be allowed to continue studying science, and that people would tell her to change her career plans. Díaz-Merced was beginning to realise that most areas of research relied on people being able to see visual data and results. Just as she was losing

Listening to rings

On 20 August 1977, Voyager 2 was launched into space by NASA to explore the planets of the outer solar system. In 1982, mission scientists transformed electromagnetic data from the spaceship’s passage through Saturn’s rings, into sound. By doing this, the scientists could plainly hear micrometeoroids – tiny particles of rock smaller than grains of sand – hitting the spacecraft as it flew through the rings. In the visual data, these impacts were lost, but in the audio data the repetitive impacts sounded almost like a hailstorm. Listening to the Saturn’s rings one of the most soothing – or spooky – space sounds you can hear.

This online educational project shows people at home how to build their own radio antenna and listen into signals from space. Using a technique called sonification, visual scientific data from research and experiments can be converted into sound, for people to listen to instead of look at. Speaking to the BBC, Díaz-Merced said, “When I heard the NASA Radio JOVE sound, it not only connected me but it widened my universe, a universe which was shrinking. Immediately, I felt connected again.”

The power of sound

Díaz-Merced became a regular attendee to early online conferences for the Radio JOVE Project, but didn’t feel confident enough to speak up. Despite her silence, however, her obvious passion didn’t go unnoticed. The NASA team invited her to attend a conference on their behalf at the Arecibo Observatory – a famous astronomy observatory in Puerto Rico.

While she was there, someone said to Díaz-Merced that she should sign up for NASA’s Access Scheme. This was a chance for her to go to NASA on a summer internship and work with other scientists on their research. She returned every summer for the next 10 years, working on sonification projects. During this time, Díaz-Merced decided that she wanted to do some more studying. At the University of Glasgow, in Scotland, she conducted groundbreaking research into the ways of converting visual data into audio data to study the stars. In 2013, she was awarded a PhD in computer science.

Using her new techniques, Díaz-Merced was able to show that listening to data turned into sound could make some things easier to identify. She made brand new discoveries, as well. Studying a twin star system, Díaz-Merced spotted signals hadn’t been picked up when the data had been studied visually. This proved that sonification isn’t just about making astronomy accessible for the visually impaired, but can also be used to make fresh discoveries that would be impossible to “see” in other ways.

Inspiring future scientists

Díaz-Merced now wants to progress sonification and see it more widely used in mainstream science. She has been involved in a project called REINFORCE, which works with thousands of volunteers to listen to audio data and analyse the results. Sound is just the beginning – there are many other ways to explore data, such as tactile (touch) and olfactory (smell) senses.

For Díaz-Merced, the point is that these techniques embrace all human beings, no matter what their abilities. Programs such as International Astronomical Union’s Inspiring Stars have now called for more inclusivity, so more people can engage with astronomy.

Speaking to the BBC, Díaz-Merced said, “My hope is that all of us will be able to participate just as we are. I do not have to leave my identities out in order to perform in science. That is my big hope.”

NASA recently released a video showing what the inside of a black hole sounds like.

Meet the pioneering astronomer who uses sound to observe the stars.

A close-up of Saturn’s rings. Wanda Díaz-Merced

Wanda Díaz-Merced

❝Wanda has made discoveries that sighted people probably wouldn’t make, because she’s doing it in a different way. I find her story exceptional – it just shows us the power of a human determination. We should be looking to do science – and attracting people to science – in different ways.

❞

ANIMALS AND NATURE

Wildlife watch

We are officially into autumn now. The leaves are golden, the mornings are misty and there’s a frosty chill in the air.

Preparations for winter are well underway, with nuthatches, jays and squirrels busily hiding supplies of nuts and seeds to see them through the winter.

for prints, while the ground is wet but not yet cold enough to freeze. Look for exposed areas of earth to see if you can find a clue about which animals have passed by.

OTTER LIFE

For hibernating animals it’s time to find a cosy spot to tuck themselves away, so look out for reptiles, amphibians and hedgehogs before they disappear until next spring.

While you’re out in nature this month, why not practise your tracking skills? It’s a great time of year to look

SPOT TOADFLAX

Can you see why common toadflax is sometimes known as “butter-and-eggs”? Look out for its tall stems along roadsides, hedgerows and wherever there is tall grass.

If you want to find secretive animals like otters, tracking is a really important tool. They leave large webbed footprints with five toes and no claw marks. You may see the drag lines from their heavy tails too. They spend much of their time in the water, so you’re likely to find them by rivers and streams. You may also find their droppings (called spraints), which often contain fish bones, shells of crustaceans, feathers and fur.

Common toadflax.

Knots

Knots are found in the UK all year but between now and spring their numbers will increase as foreign visitors escape the Arctic cold. Knots tend to flock to muddy estuaries where rivers meet the sea. There they can find their favourite food – molluscs (creatures with shells). Knots gobble their prey up whole, including the hard shell, which they crush in a muscular part of their stomach called the gizzard. You can spot these snail-snafflers all around the UK, especially in large muddy areas such as Morecambe Bay, the Solway Firth, Strangford Lough and The Wash, as well as the Dee, Humber and Thames estuaries.

Otters have adapted to life in the water by developing webbed feet, dense fur and nostrils that can close when underwater.

Find otters by looking for their footprints.

This is your last chance to see some animals before they hibernate for the winter.

Slow worm

It’s pretty late in the year to see reptiles – they are all making their way to hibernation spots to hunker down for winter – but on hot days you may still be lucky enough to spot a slow worm. Though they look a lot like snakes, slow worms are actually legless lizards. They are found throughout much of the UK, particularly in the south west.

Deer rutting

The three largest species of deer in the UK – red, fallow and sika – all take part in fierce mating battles at this time of year, commonly known as “ruts”. The battles start shortly after dawn and have several stages: roaring and parallelwalking are first. If those don’t work then stags will lock antlers in an attempt to push each other away. The rut is an incredible thing to watch but remember that deer can be very dangerous. They are large animals, pumped up ready for a fight, so keep your distance, keep your dog on a lead, and make sure a grown up is with you.

COPPER COLOUR

Male small copper butterflies are very territorial, you may see them basking in the sun or chasing off other insects that have come into their space.

HIDDEN STAG

Stags may thrash their antlers about in the undergrowth, covering them in vegetation to make them look bigger.

OUT AND ABOUT

Parasol mushrooms

As you might expect from their name, parasol mushrooms look a lot like umbrellas. These impressive fungi can grow up to 25cm in diameter and 30cm in height – it’s easy to imagine a hedgehog or rabbit sheltering under them from the rain. They are easy to spot in grassy areas. As always, don’t touch and never eat fungi that you find.

Pond dipping

There is a whole world of incredible creatures lurking in our ponds and waterways, but without getting under the surface it can be very difficult to see them.

Pond-dipping is a great way of getting up close and personal with these underwater beasties. Make sure you have a grown up around, don’t get too close to the edge, and always release the animals you find at the end.

Small copper butterfly.

Stags lock antlers.

WINNING PHOTOS!

It’s been a long, hot summer, and you have all been very busy. In June, we challenged you to go on a scavenger hunt and send us pictures of the treasures you found. We were looking for eye-catching images that showed off nature’s beauty, and you didn’t disappoint!

Into the wild

Looking through the entries has been like going off on a wild adventure with you. We’ve seen you swimming with jellyfish, climbing trees, zooming in on insects, taking to the skies and diving into rock pools. Every one of these images has made us smile. So, a HUGE thank you to everyone who sent an image – it’s been a fantastic competition!

NATURAL TREASURES

Feather cloud by Laila, aged 8

“I spotted this cloud when I was playing with dad in our garden. I love this photo because every time I look at it, it makes me feel so happy I want to jump up and catch it!”

The judges said:

“Laila has been very smart to spot – and capture – this brief and fleeting natural formation in the clouds. It truly is a treasure of nature.”

Runners up

Lonely iceberg by Celyn, aged 12

Coral fungus by Maya, aged 8

Winner!

See the winning pictures from our annual Scavenger Hunt competition, selected from many hundreds of entries.

PHOTOS!

Picking a winner

We received a staggering number of photos –more than 500 entries! Choosing our favourite images was nearly impossible. The judges spent ages trying to decide which of the many worthy entries to select as the winners. In the end, they also had to choose two runners-up in each category.

Dan Green, editor of The Week Junior Science+Nature said, “Yet again, we’ve been bowled over by the sheer creativity and brilliance of our readers. The amazing Science+Nature gang have smashed our challenge out of the park and totally captured the spirit of the Scavenger Hunt.” We hope these photos inspire you to have adventures of your own. Massive congratulations to the winners.

NATURE AND PEOPLE

Boy in a tree by Zhuoer, aged 14

“I was in a nature park with my parents and my brother, enjoying the sunny weather. I laid on my back and took a picture of my brother with the camera positioned exactly in the middle of the two trees to create a sense of great height.”

The judges said:

“A wonderful picture of someone having a wild adventure and getting a different perspective on life.”

Runners up: Cricket and young girl by Henry, aged 8

Wild car by Velvet, aged 14

Winner!

SIGNS OF SUMMER

Flower from above by Ella, aged 10

“I took this photo on Paros in Greece. We were walking along the coast path and the flowers were dotted around everywhere.”

The judges said: “A strikingly simple image – this flower has the Sun blazing in its centre.”

Runners up: Bee on a flower by Benjamin, aged 11

Butterfly on a flower by Florence, aged 11

TINY HEROES

Emerging dragonfly by Felix, aged 8

“I took my photo at my friend Alice’s house. We noticed a dragonfly larva had climbed up onto the garage door and emerged in the sun. It was there for ages, its wings slowly expanding and its body pumping up. It stood so still I could get really close to it!”

The judges said:

“This is an incredible picture. To capture a dragonfly emerging from a larva is a special moment.”

Runners up

Ladybird on green flowers by Filip, aged 12

Praying mantis at dusk by Isla, aged 11

Winner!

WET AND WILD

Boo the frog by Charles, aged 13

The judges said:

“Charles has caught this frog popping out of the water, and this funny fellow has so much character.”

Runners up Wet leaf by James, aged 11

Wasp in water by Julia, aged 12

Highly commended Ducks on a pond by Ella, aged 12

Overall winner

Highly commended!

The Hum conundrum

Do you hear that? Some people are plagued by a strange sound, but why can’t everyone hear it?

Imagine if you could hear a noise that nobody else could. A quiet, low-pitched sound with no obvious source, but always there and never ceasing. Then, imagine if all across the world other people were noticing a similar noise – and their neighbours and family couldn’t hear it either. This might sound like science fiction, but for listeners of the Hum, it’s very real. Many theories have been proposed to explain this mystery, but it continues to make experts say “hmmm”…

Unsettling vibes

Some of the earliest reports of the Hum emerged about 50 years ago. In Bristol, England, letters began appearing in a local newspaper about a low rumble heard by dozens of residents throughout the city. The magazine New Scientist published an article in 1973 about people complaining of a “low throbbing background noise that no one else can hear”. Hums started popping up named after the places where

The Hum may drive its listeners crazy, but at least they’re not alone. Spare a thought for 52 Blue, who is described as the world’s loneliest whale. Whales make calls to communicate with each other and to sense the world around them. These sounds are produced at range of pitches (how high or low a sound is, measured in hertz). Blue whales calls, for example, are usually between 10 and 40 hertz.

At 52 hertz, 52 Blue’s songs are too highpitched to be understood by other whales. No one has ever actually seen 52 Blue, so its gender and species isn’t known, but its lonely calls have been detected regularly since the 1980s. Recently, however, there have been reports of another whale singing at the same pitch. At last, 52 Blue might have someone to talk to.

Whales use calls to communicate.

they were heard, from the Taos Hum in New Mexico to the Auckland Hum in New Zealand.

It didn’t take long for both hearers and nonhearers of the irritating sound to start speculating about what might be causing it. In Bristol, an environmental team was brought in to investigate. They came to the conclusion that it was probably industrial noise from nearby warehouses. Experts on acoustics (the study of sound) offered ideas, including one suggestion that people might be hearing the jet stream – the high-altitude air currents that whip around the planet several miles above your head. As reports of the Hum spread around the world, however, it became clear that any good theory would have to answer two questions. First: was there one cause or many? And second: why could some people hear it but not others?

Droning on

blossoming number of cases of the Hum has shed light on the ways in which it affects people. Some victims have been forced to move house – or even to a new area – to escape the noise. The sound can make it difficult to sleep, taking a toll on mental health and leading people to feel isolated from friends and family. This misery and pain makes it all the more important to try and solve the mystery.

Humdinging studies

THE CHOSEN FEW

According to one estimate, whenever the Hum appears in a town, about one in 50 residents can hear it.

Over the years, the Hum has become a truly global phenomenon, estimated to now affect around one in every 25 people around the world. As the number of listeners has risen, so the number of theories has grown too. Some seem plausible – from vibrations caused by earthquakes to electromagnetic charges built up by the Earth’s eight million daily lightning strikes. Other explanations belong in the realm of conspiracy theories, including aliens chattering and government mind-control experiments.

Being part of an exclusive club of super-sensitive listeners might sound like fun, but for many of those plagued by the Hum, it’s anything but. The

Earth is a noisy place. In 2015, a team of French researchers proposed that the low rumbling is caused by ocean waves that extend all the way down to the ocean floor. As they bash into ridges and ride up over continental shelves they drum and vibrate the planet. The Scottish Association for Marine Science, meanwhile, offered a different explanation for the Hum – they suggested that in some coastal areas, it was caused by male midshipman fish crooning out their deep droning calls to attract mates.

Then again, since the Hum seems to affect people more in urban areas, it’s possible that it doesn’t have a natural cause and instead has something to do with man-made technology.

Other scientists have suggested that the Hum might not be coming from the outside world at all, but from within people’s minds or bodies. Tinnitus, for example, is a real medical condition that causes an unpleasant effect described as a “ringing in the ears”. Perhaps, in truth, everyone hears the Hum, but only some people have the ability – or the misfortune – to notice it.

The world’s loneliest whale

Does lightning cause the Hum?

SONIC

SOUNDS JUST FOR KIDS

The range of sounds we can hear reduces as people get older. This means that young people can hear some high-pitched noises that adults don’t even notice.

Can you hear it?

MAKING SENSE OF THE UNIVERSE

The Sombrero galaxy is 28 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. This galaxy appears flat because it is viewed from its side. At its centre is a giant black hole.

GETTY IMAGES

❝The Sombrero galaxy looks like a jewel in the sky. It is just astounding and very beautiful.

DR . MAGGIE, GUESTEDITOR

ISS modules

The ISS is made up of 16 modules connected together. The NBL has a replica of each module to make practising realistic.

Moon simulation

The bottom of the pool can be turned into a lunar landscape to train astronauts for Moon missions. Here, NASA astronauts wear weighted vests and backpacks to simulate a spacewalk on the Moon.

BIG SPLASH

The NBL’s water would fill nearly 10 Olympic swimming pools.

Jib crane

A crane lowers the astronauts into the water and lifts them out again. The cranes can shift almost two tonnes of weight

Suiting up

The NBL spacesuit weighs about 125 kg. That’s about 1.5 times as much as the astronaut inside. On land it is hard to walk, but once in water the suit floats as if it is weightless.

Integrated truss structure

The ISS has a long central steel truss, made up of 11 segments. The space station’s solar panels and other external kit attach to these. Just three fit in the NBL pool.

Clean water

The pool is completely replaced with clean water every 19.6 hours, and kept at a comfortable 30ºC.

ASTRONAUT TRAINING LAB

Take a deep dive into NASA’s school for spacewalkers.

Laboratories

The ISS is home to three laboratories in space, from Europe, Japan and the US. This is a replica of the US laboratory.

MAGGIE, GUESTEDITOR

Orion crew module Astronauts train for splashdowns (when a spaceship returning from space lands in the ocean). This replica of Orion – the spacecraft that will carry crew to the Moon – will help astronauts learn how to exit the capsule safely.

One day I want to go into space, but in the meantime I want to try one of these! The idea of stepping outside a spacecraft and being weightless must be overwhelming in many ways. Training helps you get over that and get the job done.

Why does NASA have one of the world’s largest indoor swimming pools? The Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) in Houston, Texas, in the US, is a 12m-deep and 62m-long pool, used to train astronauts for space missions. That’s big enough to completely submerge a row of five three-storey houses and their front and back gardens. Before they zoom up and out of the atmosphere, astronauts will spend many hours down in these deep waters, dressed in full spacesuits. They are learning how to spacewalk – how to move around outside their spacecraft when in orbit. Every astronaut is trained to do this in case of emergencies, but some are specialist spacewalkers. Lying in the bottom of the pool is a life-sized replica of the International Space Station (ISS). Spacewalkers practice the repairs and upgrades they will do in space, many times over before lift-off.

On Earth, building things involves lifting heavy loads, but up in orbit, everything – even an entire spacecraft – is weightless. Weightless objects do not fall when dropped, but they still have mass, which means they take a certain amount of effort to move around. Spacewalkers use the NBL to learn how to work in these conditions. Their suits and tools have neutral buoyancy, which means they do not float up or sink down in the water – just float where they are, as they would in outer space. That makes a dip in the NBL as close as you can get to the real experience.

Vomit Comet

The NBL is not able to copy every aspect of life in space. For example, astronauts in the pool still feel the weight of their own bodies. To experience that kind of total weightlessness, all trainee astronauts take a flight on the “Vomit Comet”. This passenger jet flies in a wave pattern of steep climbs and sharp dives. At the top of every “hump”, everything – and everyone – inside floats weightlessly for a few seconds. The sensation is so strange, people are often travel sick – hence the name Vomit Comet.

Dive team

SCUBA divers get in the water alongside the astronauts. Some are there to film the training session and others will rescue an astronaut if something goes wrong.

On board the Vomit Comet.

How did birds form wings to fly?

Find out how birds and other animals developed the power of flight.

Perhaps the first thing you notice when you see a bird is its amazing ability to fly. Modern birds fly using their arms, which have feathers and very strong flight muscles.

However, the ancestors of today’s birds couldn’t fly. Birds evolved from a group of dinosaurs called theropods, which walked on the ground. These included giant meat-eaters such as Tyrannosaurus rex, as well as much smaller, fast-running dinosaurs. The fossils of many of these small dinos show that they had simple fluffy feathers, but their arms were much too small or weak to fly. Even some of the giants may have had feathers, too.

What were dinosaurs doing with their feathers if they weren’t using them to fly? We can look for clues in today’s birds. Short, fluffy feathers help modern birds to stay warm, while brightly coloured and patterned feathers can also help birds to attract a mate. So, it’s likely that feathers evolved to do jobs other than helping the dinosaurs to fly. Only much later did they evolve into the stronger, longer feathers that build a flying wing.

Reach for the sky

At some point, the small, feathered ancestors of modern birds began to fly. One idea about how this might have started is that short or weak wings may have been useful for helping the animals to hop or glide from branch to branch in the trees. However, we don’t have much evidence to suggest that many of these small dinos were very good at climbing trees.

to help them climb. Many species of birds can scramble up very steep slopes and even vertical surfaces. Young birds flap their wings furiously in order to push themselves against the incline. If they don’t do this, they quickly fall or slide off. This may have been another use for the stubby wings of some small, feathered dinosaurs. These wings then gradually became more powerful and covered in feathers and were eventually used to fly.

Fellow fliers

Of course, other groups of animals also developed powered, flapping flight. The cousins of the dinosaurs were a group of reptiles called the pterosaurs or “wing lizards”. These evolved before the earliest birds, but instead of feathers, they had a membrane of skin stretched between their fourth finger and body. Some may have been enormous, with wings that stretched over 12 metres across. All of these creatures were wiped out in the mass extinction of the dinosaurs, 66 million years ago.

Today, bats use a similar membrane of skin to fly. Bats are mammals like us, and first appeared after the extinction of the dinosaurs. We know much less about the origin of bats but scientists have found that they evolved as part of a large group of animals that includes cats, dogs, horses, cows and even whales.

Another idea is that having short, stubby wings might have given a running dinosaur a bit of extra speed, if flapped fast enough – and perhaps even helped to steer them when chasing after insects and other small prey.

Perhaps a better clue comes from watching today’s groundliving birds, such as partridges, and young birds that haven’t yet learned to fly. If they are frightened, they will run up logs and other objects to get away from predators. Birds use their wings

However, the very first animals to fly by flapping are much older than birds, bats or even pterosaurs, and first took to the air about 400 million years ago: insects. Unlike birds and bats, insect wings didn’t evolve from pre-existing “arms”. Precisely how insects got their wings is something that scientists are still working out today.

Bats fly using stretched skin.

A theropod dinosaur.

Matthew Wills, Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology at the Milner Centre for Evolution, University of Bath. Published in association with theconversation.com

Birds wings have feathers and strong flight muscles.

WANDERING AROUND

The wandering albatross has the largest wingspan of any bird in the world, reaching up to 3.5 metres long.

t’s an exciting issue this month because we are celebrating all things space.

From 4–10 October, World Space Week will focus on the issues of “Space and Sustainability”. This not only means figuring out how to make space flight more environmentally friendly, but also showing how satellites in space can help change things here on Earth.

Co-presenter of BBC’s The Sky at Night, Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock thinks making space eco-friendly is critical. She told Science+Nature, “Much of my work as a space scientist has been on Earth observation – monitoring carbon emissions, looking at how plants photosynthesise, and how we can improve Earth’s chemical compositions so plants can produce more food.”

As part of this drive to understand Earth systems, engineers at Airbus

have built a giant “space brolly” that will weigh the planet’s forests from space. The high-tech hardware is part of a European space mission called Biomass that aims to get a better understanding of Earth’s forests.

Dr Maggie has also shared her pick of the best cosmic sights of the month. Towards the end of October, the Orionid meteor shower reaches its peak, giving an amazing display of shooting stars across the night sky.

Maggie says, “The words shooting stars is actually a misnomer – they aren’t stars at all. It’s just dust and debris left behind by comets passing through our solar system.” The Orionid meteor shower is created by bits of space rock left by Halley’s Comet. When Earth crosses this trail, the dust and debris burns up in the atmosphere with a bright flash of light.

On 4th October 1957, the Soviet Union (a group of countries that were once ruled from Moscow, the capital of Russia) launched a basketballsized sphere into space. The satellite, known as Sputnik 1, carried a small radio transmitter that beamed its beeping noise back to Earth.

Sputnik may have been small, but its impact was immense. This was the first artificial satellite in space, and its beeping broadcast could be picked up by anyone around the world with a radio set. A year after Sputnik was launched, the then US president, Dwight Eisenhower formed the US space agency NASA. This kick-started a competition with the Soviet Union, known as the “Space Race”. This rivalry saw many technological firsts, including the first humans to walk on the Moon and an orbiting laboratory in space. Since 2000 there has been a permanent human presence in space.

The brolly”.

Spacewatch with Dr Maggie

It’s a great month for some cosmic sights. Jupiter – the largest planet in the solar system – will reach opposition on 26 September. This means the gas giant will be at its brightest in the sky because it appears directly opposite the Sun as seen by us on Earth.

Kicking off on 2 October, the Orionid meteor shower is one of the best known and most reliable meteor showers of the year. It is called the Orionid meteor shower because you’ll see the shooting stars coming out of the constellation Orion. This is very useful because Orion is quite an easy star pattern to spot. You can see it in the west-southwest skies – look for the line of three stars that make up Orion’s belt. The meteor shower peaks on 21 and 22 October. So head outside when it is really dark on these nights to get the best chance of seeing a shooting star.

DID YOU KNOW?

Meet an astronaut

TIM PEAKE

Can you tell us about your book?

It’s about the beginnings of the universe, but it’s also a book about humans. We were created by the universe, forged in stars, supernovae and neutron star collisions. I was inspired to write it from a spacewalk I did, looking down on Earth.

What’s the most mind blowing fact from the book?

I love the chapter on black holes. There’s still things that have yet to be identified as to what happens beyond the event horizon. Is it another dimension? Is it a route through to another universe?

What fascinated you about space as a child?

I remember looking up to the night

sky and seeing the strip of the Milky Way and being mesmerised by it.

What’s the scariest thing that happened to you in space? We had a difficult docking. There was a failure in the spacecraft and so our command had to take manual control and kind of manually fly us in.

Can spaceflight be eco-friendly? We’re all much more aware of the impact of our actions on the Earth’s climate. So we have to look at the impact that spaceflight is having and look at how we make spacecraft and our rockets more environmentally friendly. There’s an awful lot of work and effort going on within the space industry to address those issues, and I think it’s absolutely right that we do.

All of the outer planets (Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune) have rings – they are just not as visible as Saturn’s rings.

The James Webb Space Telescope captured this amazing image of Jupiter complete with its faint rings.

Look out for shooting stars.

WE SPOKE TO THE FAMOUS BRITISH ASTRONAUT ABOUT SPACE AND HIS NEW BOOK, THE COSMIC DIARY OF OUR INCREDIBLE UNIVERSE

Tim Peake on board the ISS.

Here you can see Jupiter’s rings.

The science of yawning

Why are yawns so contagious? It’s a wide-open question!

Why do we yawn? This strange thing people do when they feel tired or bored is actually a mysterious phenomenon. Yawning can be incredibly easy to “catch” – when you see other people yawning, you may often find yourself wanting to yawn, too. Even reading about yawning can make you yawn. Is your chin dropping yet?

Andrew Gallup, who works at State University of New York Polytechnic Institute, in the US, is a yawn expert. According to him, a spontaneous (natural) yawn has nothing to do with boosting oxygen levels. Instead, it may help increase alertness and seems to be triggered by rises in brain temperature.

Contagious yawns are different. One study, from Baylor University, in the US, suggested that catching a yawn is all about empathy (the ability to feel the

THE FIRST YAWNS

emotions of others). The study showed that people who struggle to empathise with others are less likely to find a yawn contagious.

It’s not just humans who yawn, though. Scientists have also studied the behaviour in chimps, wolves, sheep, marine mammals and pet dogs. Do animals feel empathy too? A study of lions in South Africa found that after yawning, they would synchronise their movements (move in time with each other). This shows that a gaping mouth could be a way for the big cats to feel each other’s feelings, which is particularly important for highly social species such as lions.

Gallup says that this behaviour might have evolved to keep groups of humans safe. By mimicking each other, yawning may actually increase the awareness of a group as a whole. A person opening

wide signals they are not feeling alert. Seeing that person yawning might therefore cause an observer to pay more attention. As the yawns spread they would increase the awareness of danger of the entire crew.

Gallup conducted a study to test this theory. He showed a number of people pictures of snakes – which are seen as a threat, and frogs, which are not – before and after they had watched a video of others yawning. While watching the video didn’t affect their ability to spot the non-threatening frogs, they were much better at spotting the threatening snakes after watching others yawn.

So the next time someone yawns, don’t assume it’s because they’re bored. A yawn can mean many things, from showing empathy to communicating with others, or even protecting them from danger.

ALAMY GETTY IMAGES

Scientists believe that yawning began with jawed fish, 400 million years ago.

Animals yawn too.

Are we boring you?

The first asteroid ever discovered, Ceres, is so big that scientists now consider it to be a dwarf planet. are many challenges that we face here on Earth, space helps us with many of those challenges. want both sides to use space to help people here on Earth, also keep an eye what’s

Should we spend more on planetary defence?

ur planet is hit by about 17 meteorites every day. A meteorite is piece of space rock that is large enough to impact the planet’s surface. The vast majority of these objects hit the ground without harming anyone, but a handful of them attract attention. Some can cause serious damage and, very rarely, global destruction. Just look at the so-called K-T extinction, an event 66 million years ago when 80% of Earth’s species –including the dinosaurs – were wiped out. All these objects falling from the sky beg a simple question: shouldn’t we be spending more to defend our planet from them?

So, if the consequences of an asteroid’s impact could potentially be so catastrophic, what are the chances of it happening? Astronomers have calculated that the asteroid Apophis will whizz past Earth in 2029, only just missing us.

Professor Brian Cox, the famous scientist and television star, has said, “These things [asteroids], as outlandish as it seems, are a genuine threat and will happen at some point.” Cox points out that the football clubs Chelsea and Manchester United spend

more on player wages than we as a civilisation do on keeping the planet safe from space rocks. Surely, a bit more money could be spared for such a large threat?

PLANETARY PROMOTION

NASA, the US space agency, certainly seems to think so. In 2019, it spent £130 million on planetary defence – an increase of 4,000% since 2009. On 26 September, NASA will conduct the first-ever mission to protect Earth from dangerous space rocks. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft, will smash straight into an asteroid, 6.8 million miles from Earth, at a speed of around 14,000 miles per hour. Scientists will be watching closely to see how much the impact changes the rock’s orbit.

NASA engineer Kelly Fast, who works on DART, says the task is to “find asteroids before they find us”.

Another aspect of defence is minimising the damage of any strikes that do happen. After a meteor impact in Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013, injured more than 1,500 people, the European Space Agency studied ways in which they could have been better prepared.

Not everyone agrees with this analysis, however. Scientist Jon Giorgini says that the possibility of large

asteroids hitting Earth “just isn’t worth getting worked up about”. NASA calculates that the chance of an impact that’s big enough to destroy a city is only 0.1% each year. That’s a one-in-a-thousand chance. This falls to 0.000001% (one-in-a-million) when you only consider space rocks as large as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs.

Defending the planet requires lots of money, and some people see other, more urgent, problems that need addressing. Many of Earth’s species are endangered and in need of protection. “Nature is priceless… you cannot put a price on it,” says Dr Jane Smart from the wildlife charity IUCN. There’s also climate change (long-term changes in global weather patterns caused by caused by harmful gases released into the atmosphere). Paul Waidelich of ETH Zürich, a university in Switzerland, says it will be cheaper to reduce emissions of harmful gases than to deal with the effects of climate change. Finally, around 25,000 of the world’s people – including 10,000 children –die from hunger each day. “Every day of inaction is a matter of life or death,” said David Miliband, President of the International Rescue Committee.

So, what do you think? Should we spend more on planetary defence? Or are there more important matters that we should be focusing on? Earth safe is important, but some say we’re not spending enough money to do it. AGAINST?OR

An asteroid strike caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.

The consequences of an asteroid hitting Earth could be catastrophic. It’s important to protect people from the damage this would cause.

NASA, the US space agency, has increased its planetary defence budget by 4,000%. If they can do it, then the UK should do the same.

Some football teams spend more on player wages than we do as a civilisation on planetary defence. Surely countries could afford to spend more?

Countries should have measures in place not just to predict asteroid impacts, but also to deal with them when they do happen. These plans could make a big difference to people’s lives.

AGAINST

The likelihood of a destructive asteroid hitting the planet is pretty low. It’s not something to worry about.

Governments should put money into stopping endangered species from dying out. This is not a possible risk, it’s an issue that is already happening now.

Climate change is a far more urgent threat than asteroids, and it costs a lot more than planetary defence. We need all the money we can spare to fix it.

Thousands of people around the world die from extreme hunger every day. It’s important to do our best to stop that from happening, rather than focusing on asteroids.

LAST MONTH’S POLL

Last month we asked you if we should bring back extinct animals. Most of our voters felt that we should bring them back.

THE

YOUR OPINION COUNTS

TELL US WHAT YOU THINK

Should we spend more on planetary defence? Vote FOR or AGAINST by visiting our poll at sciencenature. theweekjunior.co.uk/poll or send your thoughts to hello@sciencenature.co.uk

“I am against… because they mainly died out due to changing conditions on Earth and therefore would not be able to survive in the modern day.”

Money could be spent on ending world hunger.

The DART mission will attempt to redirect an asteroid.

“Yes because it would be great if poor people have an experience of a real “Jurassic Park” and don’t have enough money to watch it.”

HEADSCRATCHERS

Seeking answers to your science questions? Ask our resident expert, Peter Gallivan

Hi, I’m Pete, and I love science and the natural world. I work at the Royal Institution (Ri) in London, where I organise exciting, hands-on science events for young people. I’ve teamed up with The Week Junior Science+Nature to answer your burning science questions.

For more cool science, check out the Ri website rigb.org

Maddie

If you live in a large town or city, you have probably seen a fox sneaking around at night. This is not a surprise, as scientists think there are around 150,000 urban foxes across the UK. Foxes are carnivores –the same group of animals as dogs and cats. This means their diet in the wild is 95% meat, the other 5% being worms, insects and fruit. For urban foxes, meat is only 50% of their diet – the rest comes from our bins.

LIVING THE HIGH LIFE

Urban foxes don’t get ill from eating rotten food because they have developed very strong stomachs, and a powerful immune system – the network of cells, tissues and organs that work together to help fight diseases. They have also had a long time to adapt to scavenging food – it is thought that foxes first started eating human leftovers 42,000 years ago. Also, wild foxes have always eaten the leftovers of larger predators like wolves and bears. Urban foxes actually help clean up other pests from our cities. Two common animals they hunt are pigeons and rats, so maybe they aren’t all bad!

How do astronauts pass wind in space?

Hanna

This is a topic scientists do need to think about. Most astronauts spend around six months up in the space station, so some farting will happen! There is no gravity in space, and the space station is an enclosed environment, so this means farts simply stay where they were “left behind”. This could be an issue as methane, one of the gases in farts, is flammable (easily set on fire) and a space diet causes people to produce more methane. As such, most astronauts decide to go to the bathroom to fart, where there is better ventilation.

Farting is actually less of a problem in a spacesuit – there is a rubber seal separating the helmet from the body of the suit, and filtration pads to absorb noxious gases like methane.

SEND IN YOUR QUESTIONS – remember to your

?

Why don’t urban foxes get ill from all the bad stuff they eat from bins?

While the Shard skyscraper was being built in London, a fox was found living on the 72nd floor.

You may have seen one of these in your neighbourhood.

?

Kaye

Cows and cars are both bad for the environment, as they produce lots of greenhouse gases. These gases trap heat from the Sun in our atmosphere, causing global warming. This warming affects the world's weather and is known as climate change.

The engines in most cars burn petrol or diesel, producing lots of carbon dioxide gas. Cows, on the other hand, burp out methane gas when

digesting their food. Methane is much worse for the environment than carbon dioxide, as it is 80 times better at trapping heat.

To make comparisons easier, scientists convert all greenhouse gases to the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide that would be needed to produce the same amount of warming. Cars produce around 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent worldwide every year, whereas cows produce a whopping 4.6 billion tonnes. Drastic reductions in both will be needed to slow climate change, so put down the burger and hop on your bike!

?

How big is the Earth?

PopJam User

The volume of the Earth is about 1,000,000,000,000 km3. The Moon is only a tiny 21,000,000,000 km3 in comparison, making the Earth 45 times larger! To make large numbers easier to handle, scientists write the Earth’s volume as 1x1012 km3, which basically means 1 followed by 12 zeros.

Jupiter, which is the largest planet in our solar system, dwarfs Earth, however, at 1.4x1015 km3. This means you could fit well over 1,000 Earths inside Jupiter! Planets can only really reach a certain size before they become so heavy that nuclear reactions happen at their core and they become stars. To turn Jupiter into a star like the Sun, you would need to add about 1,000 more Jupiters to its current mass.

What’s worse for the environment: cars or cows?

Earth

Jupiter

Fantastic

EVENT

New Scientist Live

From piloting a virtual drone to riding a rollercoaster in virtual-reality, there are many mind-bending experiences and groundbreaking pieces of technology on show at New Scientist Live. Brought to you from the team behind the weekly science magazine New Scientist, the event will be held at the ExCel Centre in London from 7–9 October.

It kicks off with Schools’ day on 7 October, when students and teachers can visit and find out more about careers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). Dr Jen Gupta is a special guest speaker who will explore the invisible universe, and Dan Plane’s explosive talk will take you through the history of science’s most incredible inventions.

Then the festival opens to everyone, with five stages, 56 talks on the main stage and more than 80 exhibitors. Drop by the Discovery Tours stand to sniff the smells of space, and even take home your very own spaceinspired fragrance. To find out more visit, tinyurl.com/SN-newscientist

COMPETITION

ROBOT FRIEND

Pepper is a semihumanoid robot capable of recognising faces and basic human emotions.

Win an adventure

Nosy Crow are giving away a copy of their new book How to Survive Anywhere and a VIP Safari Off Road Adventure at Woburn Safari Park for a family of four. To be in with a chance of winning, answer the following question: Humans need four basic things to survive: water, warmth, shelter and what else? a) Money b) Wi-Fi c) Food.

Email your answer to prize@nosycrow. com with the subject line HOW TO SURVIVE ANYWHERE before 31 October 2022. For full T&Cs, please visit: nosycrow.com/ howtosurvivecomp

COME ALONG

Meet the team!

The Science+Nature team will be at the Cheltenham Literature Festival on 15 October.

Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock, Isabel Thomas and Peter Gallivan will join editor Dan Green to answer your questions for How? What? Why? Expert Answers to Crazy Questions. Plus, deputy editor Stevie and junior editor Michael will be hosting two workshops for young journalists. To find out more visit tinyurl.com/SN-chelt

GET INVOLVED

Biology Week

Every year, to celebrate the biosciences, the Royal Society of Biology organises Biology Week. This year, it takes place from 1 to 9 October, and there are many ways you can get involved. One event is Stemettes Hack Midlands @ Millennium Point, a two-day online event where you can come up with a gadget to mark Biology Week. To find out more visit stemettes.org/events

Children with robot Pepper at New Scientist Live

5 BOOKS ABOUT THE SOLAR SYSTEM

These books are out of this world.

Big Questions about the Universe

By Alex Frith and Alice James

Illustrated by David J. Plant

Usborne (out now)

In this book, the staff of the Royal Observatory Greenwich tell you all you want to know about your solar system, outer space and the universe.

Professor Astro Cat’s Solar System

By Dr Dominic Walliman

Illustrated by Ben Newman

Flying Eye Books (out now)

Professor Astro Cat and friends are travelling around the solar system! Find out why Mars is red and why Venus is covered with volcanoes.

See Inside The Solar System

By Rosie Dickins

Illustrated by Carmen Saldana

Usborne Publishing (out now)

Discover how much you’d weigh on Jupiter and what makes up Saturn’s rings in this book published in association with the UK Space Agency.

Solar System

By Anne Jankéliowitch

Illustrated by Annabelle Buxton

Buster Books (out now)

This interactive guide takes you on a breathtaking journey, visiting the Sun and all its planets. It includes a glow-inthe-dark pull-out map of the solar system.

The Planets: The Definitive Visual Guide to Our Solar System

DK (out now)

The most detailed view of the solar system yet, this book features 3D models of the planets, put together using information from NASA.

BOOK OF THE MONTH

Am I Made of Stardust?

By Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock Illustrated by Chelen Ecija Buster Books (out 29 September)

How did the universe begin? How long would it take to fly to a star? And what would happen if you fell into a black hole? Find out the answer to these questions and more in Am I Made of Stardust? by Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock. Dr Maggie is a space scientist and presenter of BBC’s The Sky at Night Her answers are accompanied by photography from NASA and illustrations by Chelen Ecija. “I love talking to kids about space and astronomy – they have so many amazing questions. In this book I have taken some of my favourites and written answers so they can be shared with everyone,” she says.

WIN!

We have five copies of Am I Made of Stardust to give away. For a chance to win a copy, go to sciencenature.theweekjunior.co.uk/books and fill in the form by 23:59 on 13 October*.

Meet the author

DR MAGGIE ADERINPOCOCK

WE CHAT TO THE SKY AT NIGHT PRESENTER ABOUT HER LOVE OF SPACE.

Describe yourself in three words Astronomer, scientist, communicator.

If you could travel anywhere in space, where would you like to go and why? I loved to watch Star Trek as a child and they sort of just went on journeys through the galaxy, visiting different planets. There’s an exoplanet going around our next-door star, Proxima Centauri and it’s just really exciting. There’s some new technology that’s been developed, which means we could probably get there in about 20 years rather than 6,000 years. So that would be a nice gambit to start with.

Who’s your science superhero?

Carl Sagan. As a child I watched a series on television called Cosmos, and the show did this amazing, epic journey through the universe. It talks about a supernova, a star exploding and sending matter into space. I remember watching this on TV and the whole room filling up with light. I thought one day, I’d like to see that in a bit more detail, which is, I think, one of the reasons I became a space scientist.

Do you believe in aliens?

I do believe in aliens. I think there are aliens definitely out there. I don’t necessarily believe they visit Earth though because the universe is just so very big. Our galaxy contains 300 billion stars and now we’re finding what we call exoplanets (find out more on page 12). In the whole of the universe, we think there are about 200 billion galaxies. So there’s got to be life out there.

*We

Key information

Goats can usually give birth to one to three kids (baby goats) at a time. pupils give it a wider range of

With its long, floppy ears and aggressive headbutts, the Nubian is one of the world’s most recognisable species of goat. Nubian goats are matriarchal, which means that the female is the dominant figure in many groups. The more children the female goat has, the more dominant she is seen to be.

The Nubian goat is perhaps best known for its long ears. A Nubian goat in Karachi, Pakistan could soon hold the Guinness World Record for the longest ears on a g oat, at nearl y half a metr e long. While the Nubian go at can be aggressive, headbuttin g other goats to show its d ominance, it is normally v ery friendly, and enjoys inte racting with both humans an d other goats. fine coat can be either a single colour, multicoloured or spotted.

Its milk, which has far more butter fat than the usual amount (about 5%), can be used to make cheese.

DID YOU KNOW?

Kitchen chemistry

M a ke galaxy lemonade

Whizz up a colour-changing drink to blow your

What you need

1tsp butterfly pea flower tea (loose or in a teabag) cup hot water lemon juice honey

How does it work?

1

Boil the kettle and pour the hot water over your butterfly pea flower tea. Leave to steep for 5 minutes, or until it turns blue. Remove the teabag or sieve the tea leaves out of the water. Leave your blue tea to cool completely. Now, in a separate jug, mix the lemon juice and honey together.

Fill a tall glass with ice, and pour over your sweet lemon juice.

5

Now for the magic. Slowly pour the tea over the lemon juice, and watch as the tea changes from blue to purple and then to pink. You can leave your lemonade as it is for a galaxy effect, or stir it all together.

Although it looks like a magic trick, what you’ve just created is something called an indicator solution. This is a liquid that can detect the amount of acid in a solution (a liquid mixture) by changing colour. Butterfly pea flower contains a pigment (a chemical that provides colour to things) called anthocyanin, which changes colour if an acid is added to it. Lemon juice is acidic, since it contains a high amount of citric acid. When you add the lemon juice, the tea changes from blue to purple. Adding more lemon juice will turn the lemonade pink.

Butterfly pea flower tea.

The first know n version of lemonade was made in 12thcentury Egypt. Lots of things to make and do

Become a Rock painting

Get involved!climate

Save the planet one step at a time with these fun activities.

T

What you need

1 With a grown-up, go out to a park, a beach, or somewhere else where you can find small, flat rocks. Select some rocks you like the look of and bring them home.

2 Wash the rocks with water and leave them to dry.

3 Using non-toxic paint (paint which doesn’t contain chemicals that are harmful to the environment), create your own Climate Champions message. This could be anything you like a painting of planet Earth, for example.

4 Place your rock paintings somewhere people will see them or can find them. This could be on your windowsill, front garden, or even back where you found them in the first place champion

hese activities have been adapted from Cartoon Network’s Climate Champions initiative. Climate change is the long-term changes in world weather patterns including rising temperatures, caused by human activities. You can visit Cartoon Network’s Climate Champions website, and sign up for more than 100 challenges, each of which are focused on saving the planet. With more than one million challenges accepted all around the world, you can see what young people in other countries are doing, and get involved with friends and family. Check out Cartoon Network Climate Champions and accept a challenge today!

cartoonnetworkclimatechampions.com

Get creative and spread the word about climate change.

How does it work?

Rock painting is a great way to be creative and tell people about something you care about. Pick smaller, flatter rocks, as those ones will be easier to paint. You should use non-toxic paint as that’s better for the environment. Non-toxic paints are made from natural ingredients, such as water, plant oils and resins. Non-toxic paints are also called natural paints or Zero or Low VOC. Ask a parent or guardian to check the paint for you. When you’ve finished, put your rock somewhere people can see it, to spread the word about climate change.

Make a tug toy

Turn unused clothes into a toy for your furry friend.

What you need

Things to make and do

How does it work?

This is a great way to reuse and recycle old and tatty clothes. Your pet pooch (or someone else’s dog) will love it! It’s estimated that 73% of all used clothes end up in landfill or are incinerated, which means roughly every second a rubbish truck of textiles waste goes to landfill or incineration. If you don’t have a dog, you can still do this activity, and donate your fun toys to an animal rescue shelter.

1

Look through the clothes in your house and gather all the shirts and jumpers that either no longer fit or are filled with holes. Look for clothes that are in the worst condition.

2

With the help of an adult, cut these clothes into strips of fabric.

3

Bundle some strips together, and using another piece of fabric tie them together with a double knot a few inches from the top.

Braid the strips together, stopping a few inches from the bottom. Then, using another piece of fabric, tie the end together with another double knot. Your tug toy is now ready.

Clean the park

Protect your local wildlife by keeping their homes clean and tidy.

What you will need Rubbish bags Gloves

1 Next time you go to your local park with a parent or guardian, take along a rubbish bag and some gloves. You could also ask your friends to join you.

2 Search the park to see if you can find any rubbish that’s been left on the ground. Carefully pick up any rubbish you find. Be careful of any sharp objects and don’t pick up anything without a grown up’s permission.

3 Divide what you find between rubbish and recycling, making sure everything goes in the correct bin.

How does it work?

Litter picking is an instant way to help the environment and your local wildlife. A survey by the charity Keep Britain Tidy found that more than half of all parks in the UK have had to spend more on cleaning up litter since the pandemic, with an average 57 tonnes of additional waste. Be sure to wear gloves to keep your hands clean, and take care in case of dirty or sharp objects.

Build an mini Mount Vesuvius. erupting volcano

What you need

How does it work?

Just like an onion, Earth is made up of layers. The top layer, known as the crust, isn’t one piece of solid rock. It’s broken up into giant slabs, called tectonic plates. These plates float on top of the mantle – the layer of semi-molten rock underneath the crust – and constantly slide past and bump into each other. Where one tectonic plate slides underneath another, parts of the mantle melts and the molten rock, called magma, rises to the surface. The magma builds up in a chamber near the surface, until the pressure causes the hot, liquid rock to be pushed up and erupt.

In this experiment, mixing baking soda with vinegar causes a chemical reaction. Vinegar is an acid and baking soda is a base (the opposite of an acid). The reaction releases carbon dioxide gas. This bubbles up in the bottle, forcing the liquid to froth out of the top.

1

Stand back and watch your volcano blow its top!

Ash cloud

Vent

Side vent

Ash

Pipe

Sill

Lava Crater

Magma chamber

Rocks of Earth’s crust

FROM THE SEA TO THE SKY

Mauna Loa in Hawaii, US is the largest active volcano on Earth. The top stands more than 9,000 metres from its base on the seafloor.

3

Now, it’s time for the fun part. Add a few drops of the red food colouring to your vinegar and mix it together well.

4 Pour the mixture slowly into the top of your volcano and watch as it erupts. Add more baking soda and vinegar to repeat the eruption.

5 Take it further! Try swapping your empty bottle for a bottle of orange soda. Next, pop four or five mentos and watch what happens.

CREATE AN

Design your own alien to be in with a chance of winning a book bundle. CREATE ANCOMPETITION

Aliens may need to in between – but can you what life about on an alien how would your creatures survive and how

Life can take incredibly varied forms on Earth – from tiny microbes to giant trees, and all the plants and animals in between but can you imagine what life might exist on other planets? This is your chance to invent your own alien Think about the conditions on an alien world: how would your creatures survive and h would this affect the way it looks?

Draw your alien here

Stronger gravity might mean shorter animals

How to enter

To be in with a chance of winning, take a picture of your alien and upload it to sciencenature.theweekjunior.co.uk/ littleinventorsinspace or simply scan the QR code (left). You will need to ask a grown up to do this for you.

One overall winner will receive a book bundle, which includes all four books in the Little Inventors series. Five runners up will win a copy of Little Inventors in Space.

Your aliens will be judged on the most fun and inventive drawings. Judges include Dan Green, editor of The Week Junior Science+Nature, and Michelle l’Anson from HarperCollins, the publishers of the Little Inventors series. The judging panel’s decisions will be final. The deadline for submissions is 11:59pm on 14 October. Winners will be contacted directly. For full T&Cs go to sciencenature.theweekjunior.co.uk/terms

Little Inventors in Space sends you out of this world and challenges you to fix problems in space by drawing your own inventions. This book is jam-packed with activities and cool facts about space that encourages budding inventors to think big and have fun with their imaginations. Published by Collins, Little Inventors in Space (RRP £9.99) is out now in all good bookshops.

In association with

Aliens may need tosurvive boilingheat, ice or acid.

by Katherine Mengardon and Dominic Wilcox

Inventing out of this world

Ceatu es co i in an at f methane (fart g )

SCAN ME

ME

Creatures could live in an atmosphere of methane (fart gas)

Write

Send to hello@science-nature.co.uk Every a Science+Nature Hero badge.

Super slushie

“We made the slushie from the lab page in issue 51.”

Philippa and George

That looks like a cool it!

Spotting a butterfly

“This is a photo taken whilst on holiday in America – Sacramento. It is a Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly.”

Miah What a beautiful butterfly.

Thanks for sharing, Miah.

A holiday read

“We have been driving through Europe in our campervan and my Mum found me reading Science+Nature under some vines in northern Italy. Now I know how wine is made! I love reading your magazine wherever I am and learning lots of cool new facts!” Morgan

Wow Morgan. This looks like a wonderful place to relax and read.

What a fun(gi) find!

“I found this fungi in some woods in Surrey and it looked like a staircase!” Lilly-Josephine

“Here I am with a surprisingly large bracket fungi (also known as shelf fungi) on a beech tree.” Gabriel

It must be the season for bracket fungi! What a great find, Gabriel and Lilly-Josephine.

Magazine mayhem

“I have been getting The Week Junior Science+Nature magazines for a while now, they are starting to add up. I really like them!” Megan

Wow! Thanks for being a superfan.

Lilly-Josephine

Hidden

What we learned?

This summer, Science+Nature’s junior editor Michael went to a ridiculous number of major sports events, including the Women’s Euros final, a Formula E “E-Prix” and the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. While in Birmingham, he ran into this massive mechanical bull. Standing at 10 metres high and weighing 2.5 tonnes, the bull is operated by puppeteers, who move its body using ropes, pulleys and computers.

Raging bull.

The Science+Nature editorial team

Editorial director: Anna Bassi

Editor: Dan Green

Deputy editor: Stevie Derrick

Junior editor: Michael Dalton

Staff writers: Augustus Bambridge-Sutton, Eve Gardiner, James Musgrave

Editorial assistant: Kaye O’Doherty

Group art director: Dave Kelsall

Picture editor: Mandy Rowson

Production editor: Philip Clough

Deputy production editor: Jack Millner

Senior sub-editor: Bushra Ali Khan

The contributors

Maggie Aderin-Pocock, Steve Clarke, Jess French, Pete Gallivan, Richard Gibson, Lisa Jacobs, Tom Jackson, Clarity Media, Heather Reeves, Giles Sparrow, Matthew Wills

The marketing team

Chief customer officer: Julian Thorne

Marketing director: Lucy Davis

Senior marketing manager: Jemma Foster

Senior marketing executive: Eloise Jacobi

Advertising Account managers: Garry Brookes (garry.brookes@futurenet. com); Hayley Brailey-Woolfson (hayley.braileywoolfson@ futurenet.com)

Production

Senior network production manager: Lawrence Brookes

The big cheeses

SVP current affairs: Sophie Wybrew-Bond

Managing Director: Richard Campbell

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