Planex News

There’s no use sugar coating it: According to one scribe in medieval England, A.D. 1110  was a “disastrous year.” Torrential rainfall damaged crops, there was an extreme shortage of food — and, as if that wasn’t bad enough, on one fateful night in May, the moon simply vanished from the sky. “On the fifth night in the month of May appeared the moon shining bright in the evening, and afterwards by little and little its light diminished,” the scribe wrote in the Anglo-Saxon script known as the Peterborough Chronicle. “As soon as night came, it was so completely extinguished withal, that neither light, nor orb, nor anything at all of it was seen. And so it continued nearly until day, and then appeared shining full and bright.” Clouds weren’t the problem; if they were, the scribe would not go on to describe how bright and twinkling the stars appeared while the moon faded from view. Nor was the moon being blocked from view by Earth’s shadow — if it was, the skywatcher would have seen the...

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 -...

Many companies like SpaceX have tried (but failed) to send rovers and robots to Mars, also known as the Red Planet. But now NASA is going to move forward with their new Mars rover. Just like Solar Orbiter, Perseverance promises to ‘touch the Red Planet’, with a whole heap of hi-tech technology on board. The mission takes the art of space travel further as the whole point of the mission is to see whether life existed on Mars, or even see if microbial life exists NOW. It does this by searching for habitable conditions or dips in ground level where water could have thrived millions of years ago. Perseverance introduces a fast moving, hi-tech drill that can bore into the ground. It sends a message to the ‘brain’, which sends ANOTHER message to the arm, which picks the sample up and stores it in a drawer which will later be examined back on a Earth. Bigger samples or samples that share too heave will be left behind a special rock which future humans will pick up on a future mission. There a...

In Hucknall, Nottinghamshire we go past a theme park testing facility, a local told us. Here, they test exciting rides to see if they are safe before they are shipped all across the world. These, of course, are the latest rides available and I’m sure they will thrill and excite even more than they used to. In 15th century Russia, people would slide down wooden slopes covered in ice. Fast forward four centuries, this sort of entertainment was found in Paris, but with some simple modifications, like adding wheels. Later on, in the 19th century, there was machinery in place that would pull the cars to the top of the track. The first ever modern rollercoaster was revealed to the public in 1884 in the US. Although this only went up to speeds of 6mph, it still entertained people. The revolution in rollercoaster history happened when people decided to use metal instead of wood. Steel, the metal they used, is more aerodynamic, is stronger, and can cope with much faster and more forceful moveme...

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...

I bet you’ve all heard of the delicious drink cola. It has so much sugar that your mum or dad has probably banned you from drinking it. But what if I was to say that you could put all that sugar to good use? Yep. It’s a bit messy, but it’s worth it! Get a big bottle of cola (Diet Coke works best) and put it in an area of your garden where nothing will get damaged. Then, get a pack of mentos (and a few extra, just in case) and open the lid of your cola. Carefully, place the mentos inside and run at least a metre away. Watch as the cola explodes up into the air, but prepare to clean up aftarwards! Now we’ve had our fun, time for the science bit. A carbonated beverage is packed full of dissolved carbon dioxide gas, which forms bonds with water. While the soda is in the bottle, the gas is kept in solution by the bottle’s pressurized conditions. When you pour some soda into a glass, some gas escapes and forms foam, but most stays trapped by the surface tension of the water. But all those ga...

On stormy days, you should probably expect lightning. But what is lightning? You’re about to find out... Lightning is a naturally occuring electrical discharge (the sudden flow of electricity) that happens when two electrically charged regions in the atmosphere temporarily equallise themselves, causing the instant result of, well, lightning! When you get struck by lightning, you won’t nessccesarily die straight away. There was one man who was struck by lightning 7 times and still survived! Thunder is the sound of lightning. They happen at the same time, but depending on how far away you are, the thunder might sound like it happens after the lightning. Lightning is a bright flash of electricity produced by a thunderstorm. All thunderstorms produce lightning and are very dangerous. If you hear the sound of thunder, then you are in danger from lightning. Lightning kills and injures more people each year than hurricanes or tornadoes; between 75 to 100 people. That’s even more than the Coro...

Technology has definately developed over the years. Since Michael Faraday’s discovery of electricity, the world has gone crazy for it. We’ve had ovens, tumble dryers, TVs, computers, even LEGO that you control with a laptop. But, most importantly, robots. They come in all shapes and sizes, from a few micrometres wide to  as big as a skyscraper. But what are robots and how do they work? When you think of a robot, you think of a humanoid-like thing (left). But they aren’t all like that. Some can be just a few micrometres wide, and take the form of a computer’s CPU (see last issue). Some can be bigger than skyscrapers and have a huge wrecking ball attached to them. Did you know, there are actually more CPUs than humanoid robots! To build a humanoid robot, you will have to study the human body. Instead of bones, robots have lots of moveable segments attached to one another. Each segment is fitted together with special metal ‘joints’, which can spin, turn, twist and much more when you p...

Film-makers have created a lot of cool films over the years, some with cool graphic effects or creepy alien invasions. But how would they work if they WERE real life? Read this article to raise your brain levels up and outsmart your parents... The classic Star Wars character C3P0 is not much different to any other humanoid robot. Instead of bones, robots have lots of moveable segments attached to one another. Each segment is fitted together with special metal ‘joints’, which can spin, turn, twist and much more when you program them to do so. All these special parts make the robot really flexible. In the American film Back To The Future, a professor invents a time-travelling car powered by plutonium. Based on this, the british chemist and inventor Professor Flux, PhD invented a time-travel machine. Powered by Ghlucoshianian Acid, a substance only found on Saturn, this incredible invention had to have cleaning machines to concentrate the acid, because it would horrible mutate humans if i...

The ancient aztec city of Teotihuacan (say tee-otto-hoo-i-can) has puzzled more experts than the Great Pyramids Of Giza have! The pyramid complex  consists of quite a few building and temples. At the front of the city, The Temple Of The Sun sits proudly overlooking the rest. A few more pyramid-like buildings follow, all leading to what is now known as the Avenue Of The Dead. This is quite a few miles long, but all of the buildings are the same, except one. Temple of the Feathered Serpent Quetzalcoatl is the third-largest pyramid in the whole site. Also on the avenue is the Great Pyramid Of  Cholua and The Pyramid Of The Moon. Interestingly, a lake of liquid Mercury was discovered in an excavated tunnel beneath the Feathered Serpent Pyramid. There has been various lakes of other metals in other areas of the Mayan empire, but never Mesoamerica. Even more interestingly, Mercury is a superconductor. Although it is extremely dangerous to human beings, scientists have performed expe...

Electricity is everywhere. But what is it? Let’s find out. Electricity is the flow of tiny particles called electrons. They are one of the particles that make up an atom (see last week’s issue). The other two, protons and neutrons, are stuck in the centre and usually don’t move. But electrons are free to move from atom to atom, causing an electrical current. If an atom has fewer electrons than it wants, it is called positively charged. It tries to pull electrons from neighbouring atoms that have more electrons than they want and are called negatively charged. If you get the electrons to flow through an electrical component, some of the energy can be converted to another form of energy like  light, heat, sound or movement. So how do we get this electricity to flow? Well, we have to make a circuit. In it there is an energy source liken a battery. Electrons get pushed out one end of the batteryand flow from atom to atom until they reach the other end. The wire is made of the most cond...

Computers have come a long way from the traditional versions that are the size of a house. These could only be instructed by people putting cards with holes punched in them into a special scanner. Now, you can activate an app by the press of a button or touch of a finger. Your PC or laptop is most likely to have special features such as voice-recognition technology, like Cortana, speakers, cameras and many ways to communicate with the outside world. Beneath all that clever coding, the idea stays the same: computers are machines that solve problems by making vast numbers of mathematical calculations. To a computer, everything is a number. A picture? Number. A sound? Number. A word? Number. A computers ‘brain’ is called the central prosseccing unit (CPU). This microchip consists of many millions of tiny electronic comductors and components, aranged in ways that allow them to calculate faily simple maths but at high speed. The chip races through billions of sums per second. That’s even ...

In Glasgow, Scotland, a passage was discovered that lead to an old laboratory. Scientists observing the lab said that it was strangely abandoned in 1852, but haven’t figured out why. One of their four only theories is that the observatory was having renovations of some sort, hence the huge hole in the roof, and the people that worked there were afraid the laboratory was going to get discovered. Other scientists studying the history of it think it was going to carry out a top-secret mission that was being prepared when the renovations were happening, and if anyone found out then the leader would be killed.

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...

We’re going to shed some light on the world’s tiniest thing, but before we do that, we’re going to have to shink down... Here, not even a microscope can detect us. If you were to shink to this size, what you would see is this huge blue area, similar to space. The ’stars’ would actually be atoms a long way away - so far away they look white. What you would notice about an atom is that they have about 5 yellow rings (like the picture on the right) and 3 smaller white ones. Orbiting these are electrons, which generate electricity when going at speed. If you make them hop from atom to atom, this  would generate an electric current and power the generator, but that is not what this article is about. Atoms are made of three things: protons, neutrons and electrons. If one was to be taken away, the atom would collapse to the ground. If a few million atoms collapsed, the object would be unstabalised. There are also different types of atom, with different amounts of protons, neutrons and ele...

Black holes are the remains of giant stars that went supernova. Stars generate heat and light because their strong gravity smashes millions of particles together in the core. They can keep doing this for millions and millions of years, but eventually, the star runs out of particles to smash together. What happens next depends on how big the star is. An average size star (such as our sun) will turn into a red giant, then it will shed its outer layers into space and what’s left will slowly cool until it becomes a brown dwarf. But the biggest stars will become a red supergiant star. Then, instead of just fading away, a huge explosion occurs (known as a supernova). Supernovas are so bright they can be seen from many light years away.    The core of the star has so much gravity it collapses in on itself, forming a mini black hole which quickly eats away the rest of the star, making it bigger. Black holes have so much mass concentrated in a relatively small space that their gra...

Uses: Sticking together Users:   billions Who: George de Mestral Why: wanted to stick things together Swiss electrical engineer George de Mestral invented his first touch fastener when, in 1941, he went for a walk in the woods and wondered why burdock seeds clung to his coat and dog. He discovered it could be turned into something useful. George patented it in 1955, and soon it became one of the most famous inventions of all time. The fastener consisted of two components: a lineal fabric strip with tiny hooks that could “mate” with another fabric strip with smaller loops, attaching temporarily, until pulled apart. The first ever strip of Velcro was made out of cotton, which proved impractical after getting reports of them ripping apart. Now, the fastener is made of nylon and polyester. Ask The Pro Yo! I’m writing this letter to you in 1964, because some dude told me to. Velcro straps together all of my fancy clothes, and my guitar! I also used velcro to create my quiff, because ...

Levitating Lamp Uses: Lighting Users:   200,000 worldwide Who: Miros Hampton Why: wanted a quirky way to work As much as the levitating lamp sounds incredible, it is merely just a light bulb floating on top of a base. A magnet inside the bulb contains a coil which receives the electricity transmitted from the base and powers the bulb through the air. As for the levitation, when gravity pulls the bulb downward, the opposing force of the magnetism causes it to repel the base, leaving it suspended in air. Mobile Phone Uses: Lots Users: over 70,000,000 global Who: Martin Cooper Why: wanted to do lots of things in a small box In the most basic form, a phone is essentially a two-way radio, consisting of a radio transmitter and a radio receiver. When you chat with your friend on your phone, your phone converts your voice into an electrical signal, which is then transmitted via radio waves to the nearest cell tower. For other things, this is the same except instead of calls it broadc...

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 ...

For an enviromental special, you probably wouldn’t think of having an article about space, because, after all, there is no land in space. But actually, this article is about what it’s like in the cosmos, including black holes. Firstly, I’ve got to tell you of a rare event that happens usually once a century in the cosmos: a hypernova. You might/might not have heard of a supernova, which is when a huge star collapses in on itself, creating a huge show of dancing lights, usually forming a black hole. Well, a hypernova is basically the same thing, but with two differences: the star is so big  you  probably wouldn’t know it exists, but also, there are no black hole formations. Another amazing thing is that it could happen in your lifetime. To be around one would mean you would be completely dead; wether you knew about it or not. Even though our technology is very advanced, we still haven’t explored every region of The Milky Way. There could be unknown textures on different worlds,...