Science News for Kids articles from February 2009

Science News for Kids archives from February 2009

Antarctica warms, which threatens penguins.
February 4, 2009... New evidence from satellites and weather stations suggests that way down south, Antarctica is feeling the heat. And that's not good news for penguins. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Scientists studying climate change knew some coastal areas of...

Invisible fossils of the first animals.
February 4, 2009... Gordon Love walked past the warm waters of the Arabian Sea as they lapped on a white sandy beach in the country of Oman. He entered a metal warehouse and walked past row after row of hallways lined with sliding metal doors. Some of these doors...

Science loses out when ice caps melt.
February 4, 2009... It's hard to imagine a mountain range without snow-covered peaks. But that may soon be the case in countries in or near the tropics. Studies show that the ice that sits atop the world's highest mountains is vanishing at an alarming rate,...

Hitting the redo button on evolution.
February 11, 2009... People have always wondered why plants and animals are built the way they are. Charles Darwin, an Englishman who lived in the 1800s, was very curious about the shape of life forms, and did lots of experiments to find some answers. He came up...

The man who rocked biology to its core.(Charles Darwin )
February 11, 2009... When the baby Charles Darwin arrived in the world, on February 12, 1809, modern science was also an infant. Chemists had begun talking about things called atoms. But nobody knew what atoms really were. Physicists didn't know much about energy....

When Darwin got sick of feathers.(Charles Darwin )
February 11, 2009... The great biologist Charles Darwin wrote to another scientist in 1860 that looking at a peacock feather made him sick. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] OK, he was halfway joking (you can tell from the rest of the letter). But still, you might...

Brainy bees know two from three.
February 18, 2009... One, two, three.... That's how high you could count if you were a bee. A new study found that honeybees can recognize a pattern based only on the number of elements in it. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] If the bees learn to recognize three...

Contemplating thought.(memory formation)
February 18, 2009... Think back to the first time you rode a bike or the last time you had ice cream for dessert. Now, imagine a perfect summer day. What's going on in your noggin' that allows you to remember, dream and think? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Lots....

Either Martians or Mars has gas.
February 18, 2009... Cows and Mars have at least one thing in common--methane. Like flatulent (or farting) cows that produce the gas, the Red Planet releases clouds of methane, according to a recent study. Researchers wonder whether colonies of bacteria hidden...

Greener diet.
February 25, 2009... Think about what you had for lunch: Was it a hamburger? A chicken sandwich? Barbecue? What about vegetables? Would it surprise you to learn that what you eat can affect the whole planet? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] It can--in a big way....

See Comet Lulin.
February 25, 2009... A glowing-tailed, first-time visitor to our solar system made a celestial debut visible to the naked eye, starting around 1:30 a.m. on Tues., Feb. 24. If you missed the display--because of clouds or sleep--you can log on to the Coca-Cola Space...

Supergoo to the rescue.(sodium polyacrylate used in cleaning radioactive materials)
February 25, 2009... Inside a disposable diaper are tiny crystals of a material called sodium polyacrylate that can absorb hundreds of times their weight in water. Just a small amount of the stuff--sometimes called "Super Slurper"--can sop up a lot of liquid, no...