Planex News

We all know about donuts - rings of bread, usually covered with different icings, or mabye even sprinkles. The donut to a scientist is ‘the edge’ of human food, and no food could be more ansintoformosed - or weirder in the common tongue. New-to-science Bevel Astronu has explained to many universities and museums in England that there could be other foods out there - infinite combinations and flavours. And then, 3 years after telling the cleverest minds that a simple  donut was not the end of foods, he decided to start his experiments. He started 20 years ago and has finally finished his massive discovery. It is all written down on various sheets of paper and in complicated language, but our team at Toby News have manage to simmer it down to just three quarters of an article. “We live a new age - one of seven boundaries of the seven foodstuffs of  the seven planets revolving around eating. I call these limits the Phosferacational Layers, one that humanity has not ...

History has lots of mysteries that have never been solved. Wether it is the distant past or as recent as WWII, you never run out of questions to ask when you study this bizarre topic. The Bermuda Triangle Since humans just started to be able to read and write, vehicles have gone missing inside the Bermuda (or Devil’s) Triangle. Numerous reports of planes, boats, rafts - and evening people - going missing inside this area of sea have confused scientists, historians and investigators for centuries. Just what is so special about this mysterious patch of ocean? It is very mysterious as no scrap parts, dead bodies, or any objects suggesting that a plane crashed here. Adding to this, planes wouldn’t actually be able to crash, as there is no land in or anywhere near the Bermuda Triangle.   Since humans just started to be able to read and write, vehicles have gone missing inside the Bermuda (or Devil’s) Triangle Reports of vehicles suddenly going out of control are very popular around the...

Isambard Kingdom Brunel was a Victorian engineer who was one of the main architects of Britain’s industrial revolution. He was famous for his leading work on both Britain’s railways and ships; building railways and designing bridges, tunnels, viaducts and passenger ships. He built lots of bridges not just in London, but all across Britain. These included The Clifton Suspension Bridge (412m), The Royal Albert Bridge (667m), Maidenhead Railway Bridge (128ft), Wharncliffe Viaduct (270m), Winsor Railway Bridge, Gatehampton Railway Bridge, Moulsford Railway Bridge, Avon Bridge and Bishop’s Bridge. Here are some amazing facts about Isambard Kingdom Brunel: Isambard Kingdom Brunel was born on 9th April 1806, to a French father, Marc Brunel, and an English mother, Sophia Kingdom. He was educated in Normandy and England, with his parents giving him the best opportunities possible to learn the skills of an engineer. He completed an apprenticeship as a clockmaker. In 1822, Isambard took on his fi...

Geckos are small lizards that usually live in the jungle. They are only one among many species like Komodo Dragons, Vivipar Lizards, Green Lizards, Sand Lizards and hundreds more reptiles. In warm countries, where most geckos live, there are lots of houses that get annoying insects. Geckos sometimes come into people’s houses, and they are happy to have them there, because geckos eat the insects. Like chameleons, geckos have the ability to change colour to whatever they want. This can help them blend in to the surroundings and stop predators from spotting them. This also includes hunters who sell their scales for a lot of money. Scientists do not know how they do this. Most suggest there is a special organ in their body that stores chemicals and then, in a spraying-like action, it sends them up a tube which opens in a small whole in their body and it changes a colour when released to sunlight. Adding to this, their tongues are actually longer than their body! Yes, you heard that right -...

In the Kamchatka Peninsula of far east Russia, there lies a coral reef formally known as the valley of death. Surrounded by seas that are very cold and are almost frozen all year round, there are dozens of mini volcanoes crammed into one space it has got the nickname ‘Land Of Fire And Ice’.  However, there is more to Kamchatka than its wild beauty - in the shadow of one of one of its fiery volcanoes, called Kihpinych, there is a small, narrow valley - that animals enter - but never leave. The Valley Of Death was first discovered in 1975 by volcanologist Vladimir Leonov. At first, Vladimir thought is was just a normal coral reef, but as he explored further, strange icy clouds and a number of dead animals drew him in. Nobody had properly explored them before, so it was a complete surprise to him. But, just as he feared, there were hundreds of dead animals with blood dripping down their head that had been perfectly preserved by the ice. What was even more strange is that they don’t se...

Ancient civilisations around the globe have made many petroglyphs (huge drawing on the ground). But what do they all mean? Did aliens come down to ancient peoples and tell them to create them? As many mainstream archaeologists continue to say they just made them, no reason, Toby Parry-Russell investigates. Most petroglyphs and other huge drawings of its type are carved into usually the desert floor. The most-used technique is to carefully rub away the the darker sand to reveal the lighter sand underneath. When this is repeated in various shapes, it can form amazing patterns and picture most people will never be able to do even in their wildest dreams.  Most petroglyphs show images of the so-called ‘gods’. Usually as figures, the ‘gods’ look like humans except with strange features, like strange hair, small heads, strange scaly skin or something else. For example, among the Nasca lines of Peru - an array of strange petroglyphs, there stands two figures. The first one’s name translat...

Parrotfish are more than just ordinary fish. As well as being able to create pyjamas for itself, it can also help create coral reefs! Living alongside many other fish, such as clownfish and stonefish, the parrot fish may seem ordinary. But in reality, it anything but. One of it’s amazing powers includes creating ‘pyjamas’. It essentially vomits out a thick protective mucus that coats its body and stops predators from picking up its scent Night-night, parrotfish! Adding to this, they can also change from male to female! It might sound impossible, but the parrotfish thinks not. Scientists, don’t know how this happens though; maybe they can’t change! Why do white sandy beaches look so nice? Probably not because they are actually made of parrotfish poo! Yep, you heard that right - they can also help to form coral reefs!  As remarkable coral reef residents, these superheroes of the sea can come in many different colours and sizes. Their front teeth are fused together to make a beak, and...

The Chocolate hills in the Bohol province of the Philippines are a valley of densley-vegetated hills. In the dry season, the grass and crops go brown. From a distance, it looks like the hills are made of bubbly chocolate, thus getting their name. According to legends, the hills came into existence because of two giants who hurled rocks, boulders, and sand at each other. After their fight was over, this eventually led to a huge mess of hills – which is the Chocolate Hills we know today. The Chocolate Hills are a popular tourist destination in The Phillipines, and even feature on the regional flagof Bohol province, where they are the Bohol’s “main attraction”. These unique domed hills can be found in their hundreds in the towns Batuan, Carmen, and Sagbayan in Bohol They are listed as one of The Phillipines Top 3 geographical monuments and there are plans to hopefully include them in the UNESCO World Heritage List. The Chocolate Hills are conical karst hills and similar ones can be seen i...

Scients studying Saturn’s icy moon, Titan, have spotted traces of life millions of years ago. These would have lived under the huge sheets of ice over the sea. In fact, life could still exist on the cold moon, but it’s too far for our probes to go to. In fact, to do this, the probe would have to have a portable drill, scanners and sensors, some sort of a camera that could see through thick ice, and a function where the bot could swim. All of this would cost more than billions, and there would have to be millions of people working day and night. Quite frankly, no-one would be able to code such delicate modes in a matter of time. In the Pixar film WALL-E, everyone has evacuated because there is too much rubbish to clean up. The lonely robot WALL-E is left alone to put it into cubes and stack them in a pile. We would have to make a machine similar to WALL-E, but except with the ice. So how do we know what they look like? Scientists and film-makers have simulated lots over the years, but n...

Last time, we featured some of the world’s wackiest animals, but there are so many bizarre beasts on our amazing planet that we couldn’t possibly tell you about them all. So we’re back, with even more crazy-looking creatures for you to wonder and and learm more about. From the forests to the seas, we’ve scoured the globe to bring you some truly weird and wonderful examples to enjoy... 1. Sea Bunnies  Sea bunnies are a form of mollusc, specifically a nudibranch. The little bunny ears you can see are actually a form of rhinosphore which help them sense the world around them. They eat sea sponges which contain toxins. These chemical-sensing cuties are found primarily in Japan but have also been spotted off the shores of Taiwan, The Phillipines and Indonesia. 2. Sunda Colugo Until recently, it was believed that this Malaysia-dwelling creature was a form of flying lemur, but closer studying of the animals has revealed that they glide between trees. What’s more, it is not even a t...

Though they look harmless, plants can be one of the most deadly weapons of all time. Sometimes, they can even kill a human being, so stay away, readers! 3: Water Hemlock Closely related to the poison Hemlock (the plant that famously killed the greek philosopher Socrates), water hemlock has been deemed “the most violently toxic plant in North America.” Sometimes confused with edible parsnips or celery, this plant is infused with deadly cicutoxin, especially in its roots, and will rapidly generate potentially fatal symptoms in anyone unlucky enough to eat it. 2: Deadly Nightshade It is the sweetness of the berries that often lures children and unwitting adults to eat this lethal plant. A native of wooded or waste areas in central and southern Eurasia, deadly nightshade has dull green leaves and shiny black berries about the size of cherries. Nightshade contains atropine and scopolamine in its stems, leaves, berries, and roots, and causes paralysis in the involuntary muscles of the...

Everyone nowadays says that the lost city of Atlantis is found, or something like that. But in truth, no. People have ‘seen’ the underwater city in lots of places; near Ireland, just off the coast of Gibraltar, but none of these are actually correct. If you ever talk to someone studying Atlantis, they will probably describe it as ‘having greek-style buildings and advanced technology’, but, in fact, they haven’t looked at the real facts.  When the Greek philosopher Plato wrote about what he described Atlantis as, he didn’t say all this jibber-jabber. He said that it was made out of three rings around a central island. This was 4 stadis (A greek measurement) squared, followed by a ring of water (1 stadis), then an embankment of 1 stadis, then another ring of water (2 stadis), and so on and so forth. The final embankment was 3 stadis, covered on the outer edge by lots of stadis of water that Plato didn’t describe exactly. So now you know the real, time to find out about the fake. Myth...

The coral reef is one of the most beautiful places on earth, but sadly they are dying. For example, in Mexico, a mysterious disease was wiping out lots of the coral and fish. Also, as climate change rages on, when the coral gets too hot, they release the algae that live in their cells and provide them with nutrients, turning the corals white and sometimes causing them to starve. This usally causes the surrounding fish to die as well. In other news, a coral reef is an underwater ecosystem containing reef-building coral. Reefs are formed of colonies of ‘coral polyps’ which hold together with calcium carbonate. Most coral reefs are built from ‘stony corals’, whose polyps cluster in groups. There can also be ‘artificial reefs’, which are formed when  some sort of man made machine (such as a boat or car) sink into the ocean, and over time coral begin to form on them. When fish see the brightly-coloured stuff, they automatically go there. As crazy as it may sound, corals are actually liv...

Film-makers have created some crazy-looking creatures in the last hundred years, but nothing you’ve ever seen on screen can compare to the real-life, wild and wonderful animals you can find in the furthest and deepest corners of our planet. We’d like to share with you some of Toby News’s favourite weird beasts. Prepare to gasp and laugh... 1: Dumbo Octopus Don’t be fooled by the name, this cute thing can’t fly! Instead, it actually lives in the deepest part of the ocean; deeper than any other type of octopus. There aren’t many of them; that’s why the females carry all their eggs ready to be fertilised and made into babies. Cute! 2: Star-Nosed Mole This bizarre - faced beast is only the size of a Hamster, but that bonkers nose has over 25,000 sensory receptors (nerves that sense) that are so powerful that they can even detect earthquakes! Good job there aren’t many in North America, where they are to be found. 3: Lamprey Belive it or not, these freakish fellows are fish! People used to ...

On this journey you will go to Mount Everest and back, the home to many mountain goats and other rare species. The animals living here must cope with cold, lack of food, and steep rocky terrain. A mountain is a large landform that rises above the surrounding land. They can have high elevations that produce a colder climate than the rest. There is no fixed shape for a mountain. But they usually have sharp, jagged edges, but the size, height and steepness can be different. Mount Everest, the higest mountain in the world, in the Himalayas of Asia, has a summit of 8,850 metres. The formation of a mountain is the same as a volcano. The magma builds up pressure, whilst two tectonic plates push and rub each other, and in the end the magma explodes, pushing the two plates up in a triangular shape. As the lava made this happen, it doesn’t have enough time to burst out or come to the surface because the two plates have already fixed together. Scientists studying this never really know wether the...

You may have heard of Easter Island and its huge, legendary statues, but don’t worry if you haven’t. First of all, let’s talk about directions. You’ll definitely need a sat nav to go here! Well, it is just off the coast of South America - 4300 miles to be precise. Rapa Nui as it was called when the natives lived there, was first settled around 1200 AD. They set up civilization there but it declined becase of deforestation. By the time the Europeans first visited in 1720, there were only a few thousand inhabitants. Slavery, european diseses and emmigration further reduced the population, until there were only 111 islanders by 1870. The Europeans started to be curious about who built the stone statues and why, but there were so few natives that no-one could give the answer, and so the mystery of the stone heads was born... By the time there were no people left on Easter Island, it became a World Heritage Site. But that caused another mystery to arise: why did civilization leave?  Sci...

The forest is home to thousands of different species - some of which are not around today. But if we try and try and try we could stop this terrible thing from happening - one cell at a time. A forest is a large area dominated by trees. They are found all around the globe in many different climates and terrains. In the tropics are found rainforests, full of monkeys that can shelter themselves from the rain. Meanwhile, in the cold reaches of Siberia, North Canada and the Scandinavian countries, vast conifer trees cover the landscape. The word forest comes from the old french word forest which in turn comes from medieval latin foresta, meaning area of trees. The first forests on earth appeared in the Late Devonian (approximately 380 million years ago) from the early plant Archaeopteris. When Archaeopterises shedded their leaves, the cells inside morphed with another plant’s, ths creating the first ever tree.

What is a Volcano? You probably know; huge black hills that spew out tonnes and tonnes of pumice, ash and lava. One thing you might not know is some of the great eruptions: Mount Vesuvius, Krakatoa and the Yellowstone Supervolcano in the USA. You might wonder what causes a volcano to erupt. Well, they sit on places where the earth’s crust is particularly thin. The magma under it builds up pressure and eventually the magma escapes onto the surface, where it is known as lava. Over time, the lava cools and solidifies, making the volcano bigger. There are different types of volcanoes. One is the Compound Volcano, which explodes violently when it erupts, throwing ash and rock far into the air. Another is the Cinder Cone Volcano, where the lava is thick and cools around the rim, forming a tall, steep mountain.  Shield volcanoes have runnier lava, which trickles down the sides quickly. An underwater shield volcano created the islands of Hawaii. On the cold, outer planets and moons of the ...

When you look up in the stars, you might believe there are aliens out there, or you might not. Well, nobody really knows wether there is life out there or not, but they know one thing: they all need liquid to survive. There could be life out there that is in a different universe; one that can only be reached by a black hole, but let’s take a look at life on Earth. Desert Heat Well, you’ve probably heard of a desert, but do you know how hard it is to survive out there? Cacti only need water about twice a year, but that’s because they’re plants. How did anything evolve to live out here? It’s hard to tell... A well-known desert creature is a scorpion, an animal that has a deadly stinger to catch its prey, but does not need all that much water. It usually sucks the wetness out of the dead animal to get water, or hide in abandoned towns where there could have been water. Rain, Rain, Rain Sometimes there can be too much water. Such places include rainforests, etc. How do these animals surviv...

You might think ‘Forest Hunt’ is a very misleading title for what’s about to come up, but the truth is, no. Reports are flooding in of people seeing one murderous hunter. The killer, who’s name is formally known as Lord Hugos has been spotted multiple times attempting to kill or capture animals. All of the goverments of the world have come together to form a plan to stop his reign of terror, so they sent Waylon Anvilton to do the dirtywork. All of the channels on TV will show him today. 20 miles into the forest, Waylon went off the beaten track to search for Hugos, with only a single cameraman to follow him around. Suddenly, he spotted a sinkhole, narrowly missing falling into it. Waylon continued to walk, keeping an eye on the road ahead, when all of a sudden, he spotted a shadowy figure pointing a sharp blade at an innocent, little bunny rabbit. Without warning, all of the back-up Anvilton sent for came in on helicopters, and froze Hugos’s plan immediately, but a group of seven evil ...