Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2019 i Ask Science and Arts Magazine for Kids and Children

Planet Hunter 2 The Kepler telescope has spent ten years in space, looking for planets around other suns. But now it’s time for it to retire. Kepler launched in 2009. It circled the sun and took pictures of other stars. It snapped the same stars over and over. Then scientists compared the pictures to find stars that got a little dimmer on a regular schedule. That happens when a planet passes in front of its star—like a person walking around and around a lamp. Kepler’s pictures have uncovered more than 2,600 planets. Scientists now think there are even more planets than stars. But the hard-working spacecraft finally ran out of fuel. Kepler will keep drifting around the sun, but its search for planets is over. In 2019 a new telescope…

If you are a bike rider, you may remember your first long ride. On a bike, you could travel so much faster and farther than you ever could on foot. Off you went to your friend’s house, to school, or to the park. What freedom! The first humans to ride horses probably felt the same way. Wild Herds Who was the first to throw a leg over the bare back of a horse? Scientists aren’t sure. But they do know that horses once ran wild through the open grasslands of Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Prehistoric people first viewed horses as a source of food. Long before humans learned to farm, they were hunters. For food, they searched for fruits and nuts, and stalked bison, mammoths—and horses. Then, about 10,000…

Horses are very intelligent animals. They pay close attention to what other horses are doing and how they’re feeling. This helps the herd get along. Horses show how they’re feeling with body language. Humans can learn to read these cues too. Horses Can Also Read Us Horses are great at reading the body language of other horses—and of people. They can tell whether a person is confident, shy, or afraid just from how they stand. Recently, scientists tested how well horses can read human faces. They showed horses photos of smiling and frowning people. After a few hours, the people in the photos met the horses with a blank expression. The horses were more friendly to the people who had been smiling in the photos. One famous horse, known as…

Ancient myths and legends are full of fantastical horses: centaurs, unicorns, Pegasus with wings, even horses with fish tails (hippocampi) or eagle claws (hippogriffs). For this month’s contest, invent your own fantastical mythical horse creature, and draw us a picture. We’ll rustle up a rodeo of the rarest in an upcoming issue of Ask. Contest Rules: 1. Your contest entry must be your very own work. Ideas and words should not be copied. 2. Be sure to include your name, age, and address on your entry. 3. Only one entry per person, please. 4. If you want your work returned, enclose a self-addressed, stamped envelope. 5. Your entry must be signed or emailed by a parent or legal guardian, saying it’s your own work and that no one helped you,…

If a cheetah and a horse ran a 100-meter dash, who would win? Probably the cheetah—as the fastest land animal, it can run 70 miles (112 km) an hour. Even the fastest racehorses reach speeds of only about 45 mph. But what if they raced a mile? That would be a different story. The cheetah would get tired and quit half way. But a horse could keep running for miles without tiring. It’s built for both speed and endurance. Standing Naps Can you sleep standing up? A horse can! Its legs can lock into a standing position when it naps. That way, it’s always ready to run. Long-Distance Legs The horse’s long legs let it cover lots of ground with each step. The leg bones are the same as in…

The horse as we know it has evolved over millions of years. Ancient horses were very different. But as their environment changed, their toes and teeth adapted. That helped them survive. You might not recognize the fox-sized creature known as Sifrhippus as the horse’s earliest ancestor. This small horse lived 55 million years ago. Its feet were like paws, with four toes on the front feet and three on the back. The toes were awkward for running, but good for stepping through the marshy forests. Sifrhippus was a browser—it nibbled berries and leaves with its tiny teeth. Mesohippus, or “middle horse,” developed about 35 million years ago. It was still a browser, like Sifrhippus, but it was larger—the size of a sheep. It had just three toes, a big middle…

Picture yourself on a strong, sturdy horse, ready to race. Other kids on horses crowd around. A rope stretched across the starting line drops, and you’re off! Hooves pound like thunder, and a dust cloud rises. You race for miles over short Mongolian grass. If you and your horse are the first to cross the finish line, you’ll earn the title of tumny ekh, or “leader of ten thousand.” You will have won Mongolia’s Naadam Festival. The Mongolian people have a bond with horses that goes back thousands of years. Mongolia is a country between Russia and China. It’s twice as big as Texas. Much of Mongolia is grassland with few trees, called the steppe. Horses arrived in Mongolia long ago, crossing over on a land bridge from North America.…

For centuries, artists drew running horses as if they were flying through the air, legs stretched out and all four feet off the ground. But for a long time, no one knew if horses really ran like that. A horse simply runs too quickly. It was impossible to see clearly how its legs moved—until photographer Eadweard Muybridge took up the challenge. In 1872, a wealthy horse trainer hired Muybridge to help him prove that a galloping horse sometimes has all four feet off the ground at once. Most cameras of the time could not take pictures of moving objects. To capture an image, their shutters had to stay open for at least 15 seconds. If the subject moved in that time, the picture was blurry. On school picture day, you…

1 Long ago—55 million years, to be exact—a tiny horse called Hyracotherium grazed happily on shrubs in the woods of North America. It didn’t look much like a horse, really. It was about the size of a dog and looked more like a three-toed deer. Gradually, the land began to change. Less rain fell. Forests changed to grassland. The family of little Hyracotherium grew into many different species. Some got bigger and began to eat grass. They spread out all over North and South America, living on the broad grasslands and mountains and in the forests and deserts. 2 One day, around five million years ago, some early horses living in what is now Alaska wandered a bit farther west than usual. Back then, a strip of solid land connected…

Dear Marvin, What pranks do you like? My favorite is Eric C., by email Dear Eric, I just invented a fantastic new prank! It reprograms people’s keyboards so that when they type in words, it comes out as emojis! What do you think, would that be hilarious? Prankmaster Marvin Dear Ask, How hot is the sun? And how cold is Uranus? Please put this in a space magazine with other space facts. Cady M., California Dear Cady, The sun is quite hot. Its core can reach 27 million degrees F (15 million degrees C). At the surface, it’s hot enough to vaporize iron. Uranus, on the other hand, is rather chilly. The temperature there is about —325º F (—200º C). So bring warm undies. I live for space facts! Bot Dear…