Posted: October 16, 2018

Not many people get to fly to the Moon. But right now people get a chance to bid on a chunk of it . . . without leaving their living rooms.

A 12-pound moon rock was discovered in Northwest Africa last year. People can bid on it online until October 18. It is one of the biggest moon pieces ever put up for sale.

Rock NWA 11789 has a nickname: Buagaba (“Moon Puzzle”). People think it plunged into Earth thousands of years ago. The meteorite is made of six fragments that fit together like a puzzle. The largest piece weighs about six pounds. Most lunar meteorites (moon rocks that fall to Earth) are small—about the size of a walnut or golf ball. Buagaba is also “toasted.” It has a partial fusion crust. That means its outside was burned by great heat as it fell through the atmosphere.

Moon rocks brought to Earth by astronauts belong to the government. But this one is up for grabs. Whoever buys it may pay as much as $500,000.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? ― Psalm 8:3-4

(AP Photo: The 12-pound lunar meteorite discovered in 2017 rests on a table in Amherst, New Hampshire.)

Posted: October 15, 2018

Families walk to the beach in Miami, Florida. They’ve got their swimsuits on, their sunblock applied, and their sand shovels in hand. But officials stop them. “Turn back! The beach is closed!”

In the last couple weeks, Miami has had a rare case of red tide. Red tide happens when toxic algae grow fast in the water. For people who live by the ocean, red tide is very, very bad for business. Red tide drives away tourists and their money—for good reason! Red tide can cause breathing problems in humans. It has been blamed for tons and tons of dead fish on beaches.

State officials say a red tide bloom that began last fall now stretches along roughly 135 miles of Florida’s coast. But on Wednesday, Hurricane Michael hit land in Florida. Its roaring winds could blow the red tide away. But its pouring rain could also give the dangerous algae more areas to breed. Will the hurricane lead to open beaches sooner? Time will tell.

(AP Photo: Dead fish float in the water near Canal Parkway in Mexico Beach, Florida, on October 3.)

Posted: October 12, 2018

How do you say “Happy Fall!” to a polar bear? Throw her a pumpkin!

Animal caretakers at the Detroit Zoo in Michigan deliver fall treats to anteaters, great apes, grizzly bears, penguins, and vultures. The treats are stashed inside pumpkins, cornstalks, and gourds. The animals have to smash the pumpkins to find the treats.

Zoo workers hide food throughout the zoo all year. It gives animals opportunities to forage (search for food) and stalk (follow food) like they would in the wild. But fall is especially fun for animals and visitors. And polar bear pumpkin time is a crowd favorite. The polar bears work to grab their slippery orange surprises from the water. To a polar bear, a pumpkin is a ball . . . and a snack!

(AP Photo: A polar bear shakes off as she holds a pumpkin at the Detroit Zoo.)

Posted: October 11, 2018

Just how many squirrels live in New York City’s Central Park? Squirrel counters want to know.

On October 6, counters with clipboards spread out in Central Park. The park is huge—840 acres. The counters mark down each time they see a squirrel. They take more notes. Are the squirrels running? Foraging? What kind of trees are nearby? Do those trees produce nuts? Have the squirrels built nests in them?

You might be wondering: WHY in the world are people counting squirrels? The counters say they just want to learn more about the city rodents. The Central Park squirrels have never officially been counted before. Counters say the more people study squirrels, the more surprises they find. Last year, researchers learned that squirrels sort nuts by size and type. They may even be splitting up nuts based on how much nutrition they have!

For by Him all things were created, in heaven and on Earth, visible and invisible. ― Colossians 1:16

(AP Photo: A squirrel walks between puddles.)

Posted: October 10, 2018

On April 15, Steve Daletas planted eight seeds in Pleasant Hill, Oregon. One of them grew into a pumpkin that weighs 2,170 pounds!

Mr. Daletas’s pumpkin is the second-heaviest pumpkin ever to be judged at the World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay, California. He has won pumpkin prizes four times. This year, Mr. Daletas won $15,190. That’s seven dollars for each pound of his massive pumpkin.

Thousands of people will take pictures with the huge pumpkin. But this pumpkin isn’t the biggest ever. A grower in New Hampshire produced the biggest in America last month. It weighed more than 2,500 pounds. And the biggest in the world was grown last year in Belgium. It topped 2,600 pounds. Just how heavy is that? It’s almost as heavy as a car.

(AP Photo: Steve Daletas celebrates at the 45th annual Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off on October 8.)

Posted: October 9, 2018

People in New York City separate table scraps, spoiled meat, rotten vegetables, and cut grass from the rest of their garbage. The waste goes into a brown bin. Machines turn the muck into compost, gas, or electricity. But there’s a problem. Most New Yorkers don’t want to participate. Why? Because saving and separating scraps STINKS!

Anselmo Ariza maintains the trash and recycling bins for several blocks of apartment buildings in Brooklyn. “Some people use them,” he says, “but most of them just put trash and plastic bags in there.” Others complain that city workers don’t empty the bins enough to keep rats and bad smells away.

Meanwhile, a $7.5 million waste-processing machine sorts plastic bags and other trash out of the food. Then it mixes the food into a “bio-slurry.” That slurry can be made into methane gas. But the machine runs for just a few hours a day. New Yorkers haven’t filled the brown bins with enough trash to keep it busy. Things will only improve if they get over the “ick.”

(AP Photo: Sabrina Deshong dumps leftovers from her lunch into a compost collection bin in New York.)

Posted: October 8, 2018

Meet the farmer of the future. His name is Angus. He weighs nearly 1,000 pounds. He can lift 800 pounds. He’s a robot!

Angus doesn’t look like a person at all—or even what you might think of as a robot. He looks like a big table. Angus is owned by a company called Iron Ox. During the next few years, company officials want to open robot farms near U.S. cities. Most vegetables and fruits people eat in the United States come from California, Arizona, and Mexico. Could robot farmers grow fresh food closer to home?

So what does Angus do? It’s mostly heavy lifting. Angus rolls around an indoor farm on wheels. It picks up growing plants and shuttles them to another robot. The other bot (which doesn’t have a name yet) puts plants into bigger pots as they grow.

Moving plants is a big job on the indoor farm. But it isn’t the only job. People clip veggies when they are ready for harvest. Will a robot someday handle that job too?

(AP Photo: The mover robot called Angus transports plants being grown at Iron Ox, a robotic indoor farm, in San Carlos, California.)

Posted: October 5, 2018

Several decades ago, only 100 of these spiny razorback fish remained in the Colorado River. People pulled some of them out. But all the fish looked old. That was bad sign. It meant the fish were not reproducing anymore.

Razorback sucker fish grow up to three feet long. They can live as long as 40 years. Why were they in so much trouble? People dumped foreign fish into their waters. The new fish were great for fishermen. But they ate razorback suckers. People built dams along the river. That was good for cities and farms. But it shrank floodplains—areas beside rivers where baby razorback suckers can safely grow up.

People dumped the razorbacks they raised back into the river. Most did not survive. But some did. Dam operators let water out at the right time of year so little razorbacks could grow. It took a lot of work, money, and time. But razorbacks are back! Between 54,000 and 59,000 now swim in the Colorado River and its tributaries (rivers or streams that flow from it).

Finally! Razorbacks can be scratched off the “endangered species” list!

(AP Photo: A Colorado River razorback sucker fish swims in a tank at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service office in Lakewood, Colorado.)

Posted: October 4, 2018

The Parker Solar Probe is headed to the Sun. Why not swing by Venus on the way?

The spacecraft launched in August. NASA scientists will use information gathered by the probe to learn about the Sun’s atmosphere (or corona). But to get really close to the Sun, Parker needs a push. It will use Venus’s gravity to move itself in the right direction.

Parker will fly by Venus six more times. It will orbit the Sun 24 times. Each time it goes around, it will get closer and closer to the Sun. The whole mission will take more than six years.

But Parker is about to break a record already. By the end of October, Parker will have come closer to the Sun than any other spacecraft in history. In 1976, a NASA spacecraft came within 27 million miles of the Sun. Parker won’t actually reach the Sun. But eventually it should get within 3.8 million miles.

(AP Photo: This illustration comes from NASA. It shows the Parker Solar Probe spacecraft getting close to the Sun.)

Posted: October 3, 2018

These frogs grew up in the zoo. Now they’re riding to a new home in plastic jars.

 People raised 200 Pickersgill’s reed frogs at the Johannesburg Zoo in South Africa. When the frogs hatched, they carried them to the coast of South Africa. Then they let them loose.

Pickersgill’s reed frogs are teeny-tiny—just about an inch long. To survive, they need a home full of thick reeds and vegetation to lay eggs on. As time has passed, a lot of their habitat has disappeared. A fungus also killed many amphibian populations around the world in the early 2000s. Pickersgill’s reed frogs are critically endangered. So conservationists keep track of the released frogs. Will the frogs survive and reproduce?

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the Earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the Earth.”― Genesis 1:26

(AP Photo: A Pickersgill's reed frog at the Johannesburg Zoo)

Posted: October 2, 2018

For more than eight months, one of the world’s most famous clocks stood silent. Now it is back to work!

Have you heard of the Orloj? It is much more than a typical clock. One hand measures Old Bohemian Time. In Old Bohemian Time, the day begins and ends at sunset. Another dial measures German Time, in which the day begins and ends at midnight. If you know how to read it, the Orloj can also tell you the phase of the moon, the number of daylight hours, and what time the North Star will rise. An added clock face underneath shows the calendar.

Thousands of people gathered in Prague, Czech Republic, on Friday to watch the clock start again. Four figures beside the clock move. They represent what people thought of as dangers to the city of Prague at the time the clock was built: avarice (greed), vanity, death, and the invading Ottoman people. Above the clock, two blue doors open. Figures of six men file through on each side. These represent the 12 apostles. The Orloj has put on this show since 1410!

(AP Photo: Thousands of people gather in Prague, Czech Republic, on September 28 to watch the clock restart.)

Posted: October 1, 2018

Two jumping robot rovers drop onto asteroid Ryugu. They snap photos and send them back to Earth. The photos show that the asteroid is . . . drumroll . . . rocky!

That makes sense. Asteroids are space rocks!

The asteroid floats in space about 280 million miles from Earth. It took more than three years for the spacecraft Hayabusa2 to reach it. In September, the spacecraft dropped two small rovers onto the asteroid. The rovers don’t have wheels. They jump around on the asteroid.

Next Hayabusa2 will drop a lander onto the asteroid. The lander will collect rock samples to send back to Earth.

(AP Photo: An image captured by Rover-1B shows the surface of asteroid Ryugu.)

Posted: September 28, 2018

A wild turtle at the Maryland Zoo is rolling around . . . on a wheelchair made from Legos!

The grapefruit-sized eastern box turtle has a broken shell. Veterinarians performed surgery. After surgery, the bottom of the turtle’s shell needed to stay off the ground so it could heal. No one makes turtle-sized wheelchairs. So a veterinarian working for the zoo sent sketches to a friend who loves Legos.

A few weeks after the surgery, the turtle had a wheelchair. The chair gets the shell of the ground. It lets the turtle move. Good thing it works! He will probably use the wheelchair until spring.

(AP Photo: A wild turtle with a broken shell gets around on a wheelchair made of Legos.)

Posted: September 27, 2018

It's not quite the World Wide Web. But for a spider web, it’s HUGE!

The spiders in Aitoliko, Greece, have a lot of little bugs to eat right now. The more food available, the more an animal population grows. The tiny, well-fed spiders cover trees, bushes, and grass in thick webs. The webs go on for a few hundred yards!

Experts say the numbers of lake flies have gone way up because of humid weather. And locals say there’s an advantage to having loads of spiders around: They eat the mosquitoes.

(AP Photo: Spider webs cover bushes in Aitoliko, Greece.)

Posted: September 26, 2018

Fishermen in Alaska count their fall salmon catch: 105,798 fish. Uh-oh. That’s not enough. It’s half of what they normally get!

People living in Canada, Alaska, Oregon, and Washington have to share salmon. The fish migrate thousands of miles through Pacific waters between those places. That means that when salmon need protection, a lot of people have to work together. How? They make salmon treaties!

A treaty is an official agreement between countries. The old salmon treaty will run out on December 31. The new treaty will last for 10 years. It has new rules. It doesn’t say, “No fishing!” But it says, “Less fishing!”

Less salmon fishing will give salmon populations a chance to bounce back. It will mean orca whales have more food to eat too. (Salmon is their favorite!) But fishermen may not like the new rules. Will U.S. and Canadian government officials sign the treaty? Time will tell.

(AP Photo: A chinook salmon is hooked near Brookings, Oregon.)

Posted: September 25, 2018

Winnie-the-Pooh has been around for almost 100 years. But for kids and parents around the world, he never gets old!

Here’s how Winnie-the-Pooh came to be. A man named A. A. Milne gave his son, Christopher Robin, a teddy bear for his first birthday. At first, the bear was named Edward Bear. Later, his name was changed to Winnie. As years passed, Christopher Robin was given more stuffed animals: Tigger, Eeyore, Piglet, and Kanga. Mr. Milne started making up bedtime stories about the toys. Later, he worked with illustrator Ernest E. Shephard. They turned the stories into books. Now the books have been translated into 50 languages!

Just how did Mr. Milne and Mr. Shephard do this? A new exhibit at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts will tell visitors all about it. Visitors will see nearly 200 original drawings, letters, photographs, and early editions of Winnie-the-Pooh books. And kid visitors will get a chance to play on a slide coming out of a display of Pooh’s house.

(AP Photo: Stylists arrange antique Winnie-the-Pooh bears. They are preparing the “Winnie-the-Pooh: Exploring a Classic” exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.)