Kids News - Science Articles

New Zealand is no stranger to beached whales. Every year, rescuers help refloat many disoriented mammals that get stuck in the coastal waters or sand during low tide. However, last week’s simultaneous stranding of two pods, totaling over 650 pilot whales, in the shallow muddy waters of Golden Bay at the northwest tip of South Island is almost unprecedented. Local marine experts say it is the largest known whale stranding since 1985 when 450 of the mammals were found beached in Auckland, and the third largest on record....

In retrospect, 2016 was a banner year for exploding devices. The trend began when hoverboards — two-wheeled self-balancing motorized devices — randomly began to burst into flames, hurting riders and causing millions of dollars in property damages. Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 mobile phone, which debuted to stellar reviews in August faced similar issues and was withdrawn from the market by October. It turns out that all the mishaps were the result of malfunctioning lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries used to power the devices....

Gordon, the barista at San Francisco’s Cafe X, will not greet you by your name or wish you a pleasant day. However, the one thing Gordon will guarantee is “precision crafted specialty coffee in seconds, the way the roaster intended.” That’s because Gordon is not a human, but a robotic arm programmed to make the perfect cup of java, using beans and recipes from local favorites like Peet’s, Verve Coffee Roasters and AKA Coffee....

A mako shark is being dubbed the “Energizer Bunny” after traveling a distance of half the globe, or 13,000 miles (just over 21,000 km), in less than two years. According to researchers at the Nova Southeastern University's (NSU) Guy Harvey Research Institute (GHRI), it is the longest track recorded in the Atlantic Ocean by a tagged mako shark....

To get into the spirit of last night’s NFL Championship game between the Atlanta Falcons and the New England Patriots, astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) also decided to play “ball.” In a video released by NASA, Tim Kopra is seen gently tossing a football down the length of the ISS. By the time it got to the end, the ball had covered an astounding 564,664-yards or the distance of 5,646.64 football fields!...

Avid Pokémon video and card game fans were recently called upon to use their expertise for an unusual task – to help scientists understand the inner workings of the brain. Specifically, Weiwei Zhang, an assistant professor at the University of California, Riverside, wanted to learn the connection between the short-term — or working memory — and long-term memory....

NASA’s Near Earth Object (NEO) Observations Program has discovered and cataloged over 15,000 Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) since they began scouring the skies in 1998. However, every now and again, one manages to escape their powerful telescopes and keen eyes. This was certainly the case with asteroid 2017 BS32, which was discovered on January 30 just three days before its close encounter with Earth....

For many of us, the mere thought of wiggling fingers approaching our rib cage or moving towards our underarms is enough to elicit squeals of laughter and giggles. However, while we all know that tickling makes us happy, Michael Brecht, a professor at Berlin’s Humboldt University, says, it is “one of the most poorly understood forms of touch.”...

When geologists from the University of Toronto discovered water dating back 1.5 billion years at the Kidd Mine in Ontario, Canada, in 2013, they thought they had hit the jackpot. However, digging further inside the world’s deepest base metal mine led to an even bigger discovery — water that has been locked in the earth’s crust for at least 2 billion years!...