Label: Science News
July 20, 2011
Sperm Whales May Have Their Very Own Names
If you’ve ever seen pictures of whales, chances are you’ve seen a sperm whale. These great creatures of the oceans have massive heads (that are typically one-third of the animal’s entire length!) and are known to have the largest brain of any animal on Earth. (That doesn’t mean, however, that they could beat you on a math test. Just because they have larger brains, it doesn’t mean that they are more intelligent than humans (but we’ll talk about that in another post)).
Like most animals, sperm whales have found a way to communicate with each other. They do so through a series of "clicks" and in fact, these sounds are the loudest sounds produced by any animal. Whales can hear them even when they are miles apart. Recently a bunch of marine biologists (scientists that study animals and other organisms of the ocean) suggested that each sperm whale communicates in a very unique way. Since the communication is so unique, the scientists think that these clicks are a way of identifying each whale - much like the way your name identifies you!
The marine biologists analyzed the sounds and found that there are differences in the timing of these clicks. This is what they think sets one whale apart from the other. It makes sense that the whales should be able to figure out who’s "speaking" without actually seeing them - especially because there are times when the water in the ocean can get quite murky and hard to see through! As exciting as this discovery is, the scientists need to study many more sperm whales to confirm that these creatures each have a unique way of communicating.
Now that you’ve got sperm whales on the brain, I thought I’d leave you with my favorite whale cartoon: The Whale Who Sang at the Met. (It’s a You-Tube video about a sperm whale who just loves to sing…) Enjoy!
Want to know more about whales in general? Check out Seymour Simon’s book here.
Image: NOAA
Posted by: Liz Nealon
July 14, 2011
Pyramids from Space
I’m pleased to introduce a new Seymour Science blogger, Saira Jesani. Saira has a degree in Microbiology & Immunology from McGill University, worked as a science writer for Seed magazine, and helped to launch Visualizing.org, which uses data and design to help make sense of scientific and economic issues. We’re very pleased to have her as a contributor to the Seymour Science blog!
— Seymour
Who knew you could find things on Earth - which you thought were lost forever - when you look from Outer Space?That's exactly what happened when space archaeologists found some long lost pyramids in Egypt. They spotted 17 of the ancient memorials - built with a square base and four triangle-shaped sides - by studying satellite photos.
They even think some of those pyramids may be buried under the Nile River! Not sure the old Egyptian kings (commonly called pharaohs) would have been too happy about that!
The BBC television network has made a program called "Egypt's Lost Cities" about this discovery. The image above, from that program, is a computer generated picture (CGI) that they created to to bring the satellite images of the lost pyramids to life.
Want more fun facts on pyramids? Check out Seymour Simon's book: Pyramids and Mummies. Happy reading!
Posted by: Liz Nealon
July 5, 2011
What’s That in the Garage?
A Southern California man heard noises in his garage, and thought that a raccoon, or maybe a squirrel had gotten in there. When he went in to check, he found himself face-to-face with a mountain lion!
Jesse Taylor snapped this photograph - which is our Cool Photo of the Week - while his wife called 911. Animal control experts eventually tranquilized the cat and released it into the San Bernardino National Forest.
Biologists said that the mountain lion was a young male just beginning to explore on his own. Boy, will he have a story to tell when he gets home!
Posted by: Liz Nealon
June 10, 2011
Video : Magnificent Eruption
The best video of the week has to be the massive solar flare that erupted from the sun on Tuesday morning. Our friends at SpaceWeather.com wrote that "this recording of the blast by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory ranks as one of its most beautiful and dramatic movies (ever)." Click here to see the video.
"It looks like someone kicked a clod of dirt in the air," said solar physicist C. Alex Young of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in a YouTube video interview. "I’ve never seen material released in this way before - an amazing, amazing event."
People who live in the northern latitudes may see particularly beautiful auroras (northern lights) this week, as the CME (coronal mass ejection - a massive burst of solar wind and magnetic fields released into space) makes its way toward Earth.
Video: NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory
Posted by: Seymour Simon
June 7, 2011
Lightning Tears the Sky above Chilean Volcano
Today’s Cool Photo of the Week is simply incredible. A volcano in Chile erupted this week for the first time in 50 years, and the friction caused between the rising cloud of dust and the air above the volcano created this astounding cloud-to-cloud lightning.
This is a massive eruption. Ash has been blown six miles into the sky, 3500 people have been evacuated, airports are closed, and cities in Chile and nearby Argentina are covered with so much ash that it looks as if there has been a snowstorm.
Officials say that they can’t even tell which one of four volcanoes in the Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcanic chain has erupted, because of all the ash clouding the sky. Chile’s chain of about 2,000 volcanoes is the world’s second largest after Indonesia. Like Indonesia, Chile is situated on the "Ring of Fire" - the area in the Pacific Ocean that has the strongest geological activity on Earth, including many earthquakes and volcanoes.
Posted by: Seymour Simon
June 6, 2011
Guess What? Dogs Drink Just Like Cats!
One of the most popular posts on the Seymour Science blog this past year was called: DOGS vs CATS: An Experiment. We reported on a study that showed that unlike dogs, who slurp their water and make a mess when they drink, cats drink daintily, using their curled tongue to pull liquid into their mouths in a neat stream.
Two scientists at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology decided to study dog drinking habits and see if this is actually true. They found that the way dogs get liquids into their mouths is very similar to what a cat does. And they have an x-ray to prove it!
Click here to see an x-ray of a dog drinking.
It turns out that dogs, just like cats, form their tongues into a "scoop" to pick up liquids. And also like cats, the liquid sticks to the tongue, forming a stream that is trapped when the animal closes its mouth.So dogs and cats are very much alike, at least when it comes to drinking!
To read more about puppies and why they do what they do, download my new eBook, WHY DO PUPPIES DO THAT? You can buy an iPad version in the iTunes store, and it is now also available for the Nook Color. Happy reading!
Posted by: Seymour Simon
May 27, 2011
Tears in Space
Did you ever get soap in your eye? It stings like crazy, and all you want to do is rub your eye and wash it out with clear water as quickly as you can.
So what happens if you are in the middle of a spacewalk, wearing a helmet that you cannot take off, and you get soap in your eye? Astronaut Andrew Feustel, a mission specialist on the Endeavour crew working at the International Space Station, ran into just that problem yesterday. "My right eye is stinging like crazy now," he radioed. "It’s watering a lot." It turned out that the soap-like anti-fogging solution that they spray onto inside of the astronauts’ helmets had gotten into his eye. Ouch. No way to reach up and rub your eye if you are floating in deep space!
For a few minutes, they thought that they would have to cut the spacewalk short and let him come back inside. Finally, he managed to rub his eye against a foam block in his helmet - normally used for clearing ears - and said that helped. He also noted that tears in space "don’t fall off of your eye ... they kind of stay there."
Kids (and adults) often wonder about how astronauts take care of simple things like having a drink when liquids float away. Same problem with brushing your teeth, or going to the bathroom. NASA had to figure out how astronauts would accomplish all of these things before we were ever able to send men and women into space. Yesterday’s incident was just one more example of things that we handle so easily here on Earth, but can become a real pain (in the eye) in space!
Photo: NASA
Posted by: Seymour Simon
May 27, 2011
Video: What was that Light in the Sky?!
If you were in the Atlanta, Georgia area last Friday night around 10:45 pm, you might have seen an object brighter than a full moon streak across the sky. People watching reported seeing bright blue-green flashes, luminous sparkles, and distinct fireball-shadows. If you thought you saw a UFO (Unidentified Flying Object), you did…. but it’s not "unidentified" any more.
According to Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office, it was a disintegrating piece of comet. "This icy, fragile object was about 6 feet (2 meters) wide, hit the atmosphere at a speed of 86,000 mph (38.5 kilometer per second), and completely disintegrated about 75 miles (60 km) above the ground." The comet was recorded by a NASA fireball camera at the Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville, GA, which is how he was able to tell us what it was. Bill Cooke says that "It was the brightest event we’ve seen in the three year history of our meteor network."
Here is the video. It is very short, but very bright, and comes to us courtesy of our Seymour Science favorite SpaceWeather.com website.
Click here to see video from Seymour Science.
Posted by: Seymour Simon
May 25, 2011
Tornadoes: What about the Animals?
It was amazing to watch people emerging, unhurt, from their storm cellars as we were watching television news last night of the latest powerful Oklahoma tornadoes.
That got me thinking. What happens to all the animals when a tornado strikes?
Rescuers searching for people trapped in the ruins often find animals, and say that frightened pets often wait until dark to sneak quietly out to look for their owners. In this photograph, taken after the devastating tornadoes that stuck in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, rescued kittens are waiting to be picked up their owners. More than 350 dogs, cats, birds, snakes, lizards and even a tarantula have already been found there.
Dogs also go to work alongside the rescuers when disaster strikes. In this photo, a live-find dog named ChicoDog searches for survivors in the wreckage of a public housing complex in Joplin, Missouri. His partner is Kathleen Kelsey, a canine rescue specialist with the Missouri Task Force One search-and-rescue team.
Kittens Photo: Dave Martin / AP
ChicoDog Photo: Mark Schiefelbein / AP
Posted by: Seymour Simon
May 24, 2011
Safety in Tornadoes
There is no such thing as being completely safe inside a tornado. And this is a very bad year for tornadoes in the United States. So far, nearly 50 deadly tornadoes have touched down in the United States in 2011. That’s more than twice as much as the yearly average of killer tornadoes in years past. And it’s only May.
Photo: Charlie Riedel / AP
The deadliest tornado in nearly 60 years and the second major deadly twister in a month struck Joplin, Missouri on Monday, May 23. The half-mile-wide twister blasted through the Missouri town killing more than 100 people and leveling thousands of buildings. The devastation was so complete that the city’s south side has been nearly destroyed.
There’s not much that you can say about safety in a tornado that big and that strong. But MOST tornadoes are much weaker and CAN be survived. Listen to tornado forecasts and pay attention to the warnings.
Here are some things to look for before a tornado arrives:
- The sky turns dark or greenish-black during the day.
- Dust or debris whirls on the ground under a cloud.
- Hail or heavy rain followed by either dead calm or a fast wind shift.
- Night: Small, bright flashes at ground level during a thunderstorm. This means power lines are being snapped by the winds.
- Funnel-shaped clouds may appear-but not always.
Here’s what to do:
- In a house with a basement, avoid windows and go to the basement.
- Get under a workbench or heavy table.
- Cover your whole body with a mattress of sleeping bag.
- KNOW where heavy objects are on the floor above (like a refrigerator) and don’t go under them. They may fall through the weakened floor.
- In a house with no basement, avoid windows and go to the lowest floor to a small center room like a bathroom or closet. Cover yourself with some sort of padding.
- In a large building, go to the center of the building on the lowest floor possible. Then crouch down and cover your head. Stay off elevators.
- In a mobile home, get out! If your community has a tornado shelter, go there. Otherwise lie flat on the ground away from your home away from trees and cars. Cover your head with your hands.
- At school, follow the drill. Get to an inside hall or room. Crouch low, head down with your arms over your head.
- Cars and trucks are NOT safe during a tornado. Get out! Either seek shelter in a strong building or lie flat on the ground, face down, arms over your head.
Remember that the best protection from most tornadoes comes from receiving and acting upon an early warning and knowing what to do in advance.
Posted by: Seymour Simon
