Kids News - Science Articles

After being eradicated for over 19 years, measles is making a comeback in America. Since January 2019, the highly-contagious disease has infected more than 700 people, mostly small children. The cases have emerged across the country, all the way from New York, which is facing its worst measles crisis since 2000, to Washington and California. According to the American Red Cross, as of April 26, 2019, 22 states have reported measles cases, and the number seems to be increasing daily. So what is measles, and why is the outbreak causing such anxiety? Read on . . ....

Meteor showers, which happen when our planet traverses through debris streams left behind by passing comets, are a fairly common occurrence. While the tiny rocks usually burn up when they collide with our atmosphere, resulting in what we call "shooting stars," every so often one manages to survive the impact and land on Earth. That is precisely what appears to have happened in Costa Rica recently....

While rain on Earth is associated with water, precipitation on the Sun comes as giant clumps of plasma, or supercharged gas, which drizzle down from the star's atmosphere on to its surface. Though coronal rain has been observed on numerous occasions, its source, which researchers believed would help them better understand how the Sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, gets so hot, had never been discovered. Now, thanks to Emily Mason, a graduate student at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., the mystery has finally been solved....

Researchers have long known that the ancestors of the mighty whales were nimble, four-legged creatures that were comfortable both on land and in the sea. However, given that the only evidence of the early mammals had been found in present-day Pakistan, India, and parts of Africa, scientists were unsure of how the mammals had dispersed to the Western Hemisphere. Now, thanks to the aptly-named Peregocetus pacificus (P.pacificus), or "traveling whale that reached the Pacific," paleontologists finally have an answer to this all-important migration mystery....

The existence of black holes, first proposed by Albert Einstein in his 1916 general theory of relativity, has been known for decades. However, astrophysicists have thus far relied on indirect evidence, such as the stars orbiting a large and invisible object in the center of the Milky Way galaxy, to prove their presence. That changed on April 10, 2019, with the release of the first-ever direct visual evidence of a black hole in the center of the galaxy M87, located 55 million light-years from Earth....

While even the mention of a shark swimming close to shore is enough to send residents scurrying for cover, the "WasteShark" is being welcomed with open arms. The brainchild of South African entrepreneur Richard Hardiman, the aquatic drone is designed to devour all floating debris, including plastic and other non-biodegradable trash, that has accumulated along coastal waters, before it drifts out to sea....

Termites are famous for their superior architectural skills. The mounds created by the industrious insects contain an elaborate network of tunnels with a series of chimneys that help regulate oxygen levels, temperature, and humidity to ensure the queen, who sits in a chamber underneath, is comfortable....

Female mosquitoes, which feed on human blood to obtain iron and amino acids required to produce eggs, are notorious for transmitting viruses responsible for deadly diseases, such as yellow fever, Dengue, and Zika. Over the years, researchers have devised various solutions, ranging from repellents to vaccines to genetic engineering, to combat the vectors. Now, a team at New York's Rockefeller University has come up with a unique solution to fend off the dangerous insects - filling their little bellies with diet drugs to curb their appetite for human blood....

When a university intern stumbled upon a seven-foot fish washed up on the beach at the University of Santa Barbara's (UCSB) Coal Oil Point Reserve on February 19, 2019, scientists assumed it was the mola mola sunfish. One of the world's heaviest known bony fishes, the species, found in tropical and temperate waters around the globe, is common in the Santa Barbara Channel....