High Touch High Tech

Here at HTHT, we teach a LOT of science, and the best part about it is feeding young scientists’ curiosity about this amazing world we live in!  Although our programs are jam packed with experiments, we make time to let our young scientists ask us whatever questions they’ve always wanted to ask a scientist.   

In the coming weeks, we will be sharing a special series of articles answering some of the most frequent questions that come up from our young partners in science.  Our question this week is:

CAN SCIENTISTS STUDY GHOSTS?

At HTHT, we work with all kinds of future scientists, from engineers to paleontologists. Encouraging kids on their path to a fulfilling life in science is what we do!  This week’s question comes from a young scientist who was thinking about an unusual path in science … the field of paranormal research, aka GHOST SCIENCE!  Can scientists study ghosts?  When they study them, what do they find?! 

Yes!  Scientists in the field of Paranormal Psychology can study people’s reports of ghosts, and travel to haunted places all over the world to investigate and research!  But… no scientist has ever found a real ghost, or studied one.  There is no scientific evidence of ghosts at all.  But at the same time, there is no scientific evidence that ghosts don’t exist, either.  If you are dreaming of becoming the first scientist to prove ghosts are real, here are some things for you to think about!

Maybe you like to watch those awesome “ghost hunting” shows where people have all kinds of expensive-looking instruments like infrared cameras and electromagnetic field detectors.  They go to haunted places and record things that sound like voices, or weird shapes in the darkness.  Aren’t they getting evidence of ghosts?  They have all those cool detectors and machines, after all!  Well science friends, the truth is that you can have all of the cool technology in the world.  But if you are not following the scientific method, you are not doing real science, and whatever you find is not considered scientifically true.

Real-life scientific research has to follow the scientific method, which is a series of steps that ALL scientists, everywhere in the entire world, must use.  For something to be considered true and real, it absolutely has to be found using the scientific method.  One of the first and most important parts of the scientific method is that scientists have to be objective, which means they are not attached to looking for a certain result in their experiments.  All scientists know that if you are looking for a certain result, your mind will naturally look for it in all the experiments you do.  This means that you won’t find the scientific truth, you will find what you want to find!

For example, let’s say you are an ocean scientist looking for a Mystery Shark that lives in the Mariana Trench.  No one has ever seen it, but you’ve heard many stories and you are sure it’s real.  If you are using the scientific method, you do not ask Can I find the Mystery Shark?  This means your brain will think every weird thing you see could be the Mystery Shark, and you will probably start believing you found it. If you are thinking like a scientist, you ask Is there any evidence that the Mystery Shark is real?  You can go and collect things you think are evidence. Then you can TEST your evidence, using scientific experiments.

Ghost hunters on TV aren’t objective.  Most of them are very interested in finding ghosts, so to them (and to you watching the show) any little sound or image on a camera could be a ghost!  Although these TV shows use scientific instruments, they are not using the scientific method.  If a scientist looks for ghosts and finds evidence of strange heat on their infrared night vision camera, they cannot go ahead and say it is evidence of a ghost.  They have to carefully investigate other possibilities first to prove that it is not something else!  The truth is that when scientists follow the rules of the scientific method to investigate a haunting, they usually find something else that explains it.  This means that there is no scientific evidence that ghosts are real, but there’s no evidence they aren’t real, either.  All that we know is that every time someone has shown evidence of ghosts, when it was tested carefully according to the scientific method, it was shown to be something else.

Usually hauntings can be explained by other things….but what?  Are there any hauntings that science absolutely CAN’T explain? Next week we’ll investigate creepy real life ghost stories and the real life scientists who study them! 

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING:

A great animated explanation of the scientific method and how science works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nAETHZTObk

A scientist of Paranormal Psychology explains why people see ghosts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jve3p0ws-nI

Ghost Hunting TV shows and why they are not exactly scientific: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXu7tXixrtQ

Here at HTHT, we teach a LOT of science, and the best part about it is feeding young scientists’ curiosity about this amazing world we live in!  Although our programs are jam packed with experiments, we make time to let our young scientists ask us whatever questions they’ve always wanted to ask a scientist.   

In the coming weeks, we will be sharing a special series of articles answering some of the most frequent questions that come up from our young partners in science.  Our question this week is:

WHERE DO WHALES GO WHEN THEY DIE?

This most excellent question was proposed by a concerned young scientist who had watched some videos of humans dealing with whales that had washed up dead on the shore.  In these videos you can see huge whale carcasses, bloated like balloons from the gases that naturally happen when something is dead and decomposing.  A huge dead whale that’s stuck on land is a pretty big problem, and, in some famous viral videos, you can see whales on the beach either violently explode from the gases inside, or get exploded with DYNAMITE by people trying to get rid of them.  As you can imagine, this is really, really messy! 

Much to our young scientist’s relief, I was able to explain that, lucky for us, whales do not usually go to the shore to die.  Humans conducting a funeral for an explosive dead whale is actually pretty rare, and is not a problem humans have to constantly deal with.  Nature has a much better solution.  It’s called a WHALE FALL!

When a whale dies, its body begins to decompose.  This means the tiny microbes in and around the whale’s body begin to break the body down, and this process produces gas.  LOTS of gas.  Plus, the blubber in a whale is full of oil, which also floats.  A dead whale becomes like a balloon, floating on the ocean’s surface.  This might be gross to us, but in the open ocean, it’s like a happy party for everything out there that likes to eat meat.  Sharks especially come from many miles to feed on the tasty treat, taking huge bites until they can’t eat any more.  After the sharks have eaten as much as they can, the gas in the whale is all released, and the whale parts that are left start to sink. 

But the party doesn’t stop there! In fact, the best part is what happens after the whale sinks.  When a whale’s body sinks into the deep sea, it keeps falling until it hits the seafloor, which can be very, very far down.  After about one mile down in the ocean, it’s very different than the surface.  There is no sunlight in the deep sea, which means the tiny photosynthetic plankton that support life at the surface cannot live there.  Food is very hard to find in the deep sea.  Animals there usually have to scavenge their food from what is called “marine snow.”  Marine snow is a constant fall of tiny flakes of dead plankton, bacteria, and poop that comes from the surface above. When you live in the deep sea, ANY food is great, even if it is mostly poop from other animals far above you! 

Can you imagine what it is like for deep sea animals when a huge whale falls from above?  It’s like winning the lottery!  On land, a dead whale is big trouble, but on the floor of the deep sea, it’s a wonderful gift.  Instead of having to use dynamite to clean it up, many deep sea species just go ahead and eat every last bit of the whale.  It’s a snack that can last for years.  It’s estimated that every whale fall provides 2,000 YEARS worth of the nutrients that come from just marine snow alone!

First, big animals that can swim, like large sharks and hagfish, get their turn.  They eat every little scrap of meat that might be left on the bones.  Then, smaller fish, crabs, and starfish come and rake through the bones and sediment around the whale for tiny crumbs of food left by the bigger animals.  Then, bacteria and special bone-eating worms take over the skeleton, drilling deep into the bones to pull out the last of the nutrients inside.  When they do this, they release more even nutrients, which can feed even more small animals around the whale.  Finally, after several years, when the whale skeleton is just minerals, animals can attach to it like they would to rocks, and live their lives there. 

So, science friends, you don’t have to worry about meeting dead whales at the beach.  Nature has a much better answer than humans could ever come up with.  The energy in a dead whale’s body feeds many, many animals in the ocean.  Even though it’s kind of sad to think of a beautiful whale dying, you can be glad that nothing is wasted, and the whale’s body goes on to bring life to other animals for years after it dies.

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING:

Sharks enjoying a dead whale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2e3GE5M3CY

All about marine snow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAvQ3t4ueZw

An excellent explanation of whale fall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxSUsn8H2zs

Marine biologists very excited to discover a whale fall in real time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZzQhiNQXxU

Here at HTHT, we teach a LOT of science, and the best part about it is feeding young scientists’ curiosity about this amazing world we live in!  Although our programs are jam packed with experiments, we make time to let our young scientists ask us whatever questions they’ve always wanted to ask a scientist.   

In the coming weeks, we will be sharing a special series of articles answering some of the most frequent questions that come up from our young partners in science.  Our question this week is:

Could Scientists Really Bring Back the Dinosaurs like in Jurassic Park?

In 2021, an article appeared in a British newspaper called The Cambridge Independent.  The headline was “CAMBRDIGE SCIENTISTS AIM TO BIONEGINEER LITTLE DINOSAURS.”  The article read:

Cambridge scientists are aiming to ‘bioengineer’ real-life little dinosaurs that could help teach us more about the Jurassic era – and even carry out tasks such as collecting litter.

Biotechnology start-up company DinoDNA revealed the first details of the extraordinary project today after securing £25million in investment.

It follows what they described as “extremely promising trials” of the technology.

Many details of the pioneering scientific work have been kept under wraps, but the Cambridge Independent understands that it involves rebuilding genetic code from fragments of DNA found in fossilised remains.

The hope is that the mini dinosaurs could be allowed to roam in certain enclosed areas, safely interacting with the public.

Dr. Jean Ome, chief scientific officer at DinoDNA, said: “It might sound like science fiction, but genetic engineering technology has advanced so rapidly that we are quietly confident our first dinosaurs will walk the Earth this summer.”

WOW!! Sounds like a dream come true, right science friends?  Interacting with REAL dinosaurs?!  I get many questions from you about if scientists can really bring back dinosaurs like in Jurassic Park.  When I saw this article I got very excited!!  But then I looked at the date: April 1.  April Fool’s Day!  Sorry to say, dinosaur fans, the article was just a joke.  Could it really be possible to bring back dinosaurs using ancient samples of their DNA, just like in the Jurassic Park movies?  Well dino fans, if you’re hoping to meet a real live dinosaur one day, I have good news for you, and I have bad news.  Let’s do the bad news first, and end with the most awesome news!

There really are scientists who specialize in finding and studying ancient DNA. Scientists who do this are called molecular paleontologists or paleogeneticists. In the 1990’s, when this type of science was still fairly new, scientists extracted DNA from a bug called a weevil that lived at the time of the dinosaurs.  The weevil died trapped in tree sap that fossilized and became amber, much like you’ve seen in the movies.  It’s scientifically true that amber might be one of the very best places to find ancient DNA!  Amber is protective and helps stop the natural tendency of DNA to fall apart, or degrade, over a long time.  This is the real problem of why it’s very hard to find dino DNA.  DNA is fragile and very complex, and falls apart naturally even in our living bodies.  Some of your DNA right now, in your very own cells, might be a little ripped or broken, but just like all living things, you have wonderful processes happening in your cells that are always repairing your DNA and making it new and fresh!

When an animal dies, that process stops.  So, once a body’s natural repair systems are no longer correcting rips and breaks, the degradation of DNA goes even faster.  To bring back a dinosaur, scientists would need the full genome, the complete set of a living thing’s DNA.  When lots of degradation happens over a long time, scientists might get little bits of the genome, but not the full set.  This is why they were excited about the little weevil from the amber!  There was more ancient DNA than they had ever found before.  Maybe they could put together a whole genome of this bug that lived millions of years ago?  And if they could do that, maybe they COULD get dino DNA?

NOOOOPE!  It turned out most of the ancient weevil DNA the scientists thought they had found was actually from what is called cross contamination, where other things get into a sample and change the results.  There was DNA from modern fungus, trees, and even a human skin cell in the sample.  There was not much true dinosaur-era DNA in the sample at all.  Over time, and with much more research among scientists around the world, it was concluded that DNA simply cannot survive for more than about 7 million years, even if it is in amber or frozen in the ground. 

So, science friends, this is the bad news about bringing back dinosaurs: even if we wanted to, we just cannot get a complete dinosaur genome from a fossil or a bug because DNA degrades over time.  It’s impossible.  But now for the good news!  Technology is advancing all the time, and there are some cool techniques that might hold the key to building the dinosaur petting zoo of your dreams!  Thanks to gene editing technologies like CRISPR, a chemical process which can activate or deactivate DNA in a genome, some scientists at Harvard University were able to activate some of the more ancient genes in the velociraptor’s nearest living relative, the chicken!  The result was a chicken embryo with a “dinosaur-like face” and teeth!  But this was just a small study and the Dino-chicken was not fully hatched.  However, since birds and dinosaurs are such close relatives, as CRISPR technology develops, if you see a headline about a “Dino-chicken” in the next few years, it might not be an April Fool’s joke but the real scientific deal!

Now the most awesome news for last: just last year, in 2021, scientists in China were very surprised to find some intact cells in some very special dinosaur fossils from a place called The Jehol.  When they used a chemical called hematoxylin on these cells, they turned purple, indicating there MIGHT be some cells in the fossil that have a whole nucleus, which might contain several strands of intact DNA!  They think this might be possible because the cells went through an unsual process called silification, with parts of them being replaced by a natural, glass-like substance that protected them from degradation for millions of years.  But, this discovery is very, VERY new and will take many more years of research to understand if there is DNA inside, and if it really could be used to make a complete genome.  There could be something truly amazing revealed in the next few years, so keep your eyes on the science news, dino fans – except on April first.

Sources and Further Information:

The Cambridge Independent’s April Fool’s Day article: https://www.cambridgeindependent.co.uk/news/cambridge-scientists-aim-to-bioengineer-little-dinosaurs-9193529/

A great explanation of the science of Paleogenetics and the problems of ancient DNA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nJdWqtMljs

Famous Paleontologist Jack Horner on bringing back dinos with DNA and the Dino-chicken: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QVXdEOiCw8

Full article on the creation of the Dino-chicken: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.17507

Video explanation of the Jehol cell discovery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzzFsxUrYMs

Full article on the recent discovery of the Jehol cells: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8463611/

Here at HTHT, we teach a LOT of science, and the best part about it is feeding young scientists’ curiosity about this amazing world we live in!  Although our programs are jam packed with experiments, we make time to let our young scientists ask us whatever questions they’ve always wanted to ask a scientist. 

In the coming weeks, we will be sharing a special series of articles answering some of the most frequent questions that come up from our young partners in science.  Our question this week is:

HOW ARE SEASHELLS MADE?

They can be spiky, and sharp like a knife!  They can shine in every color of the rainbow!  Some are so big you could hide in them.  Some are so tiny you need a microscope to see them.  Lots of them are older than the dinosaurs.  You can even play them like a trumpet.  And, mermaids love them!  Get your flip flops and a towel, science friends, this week we’re going to the beach to check out SEASHELLS!

Even if you have never been up close to the ocean before, you’ve probably seen some seashells in movies or art.  Maybe you’ve put one up to your ear and heard the wild ocean waves calling to you (it’s actually the shape of the shell amplifying the sound of your own heartbeat, which is also pretty cool).  Because seashells are so beautiful and there are so many incredible kinds to see, it’s easy to admire the shell, but forget about the awesome animals that make them: an ancient, diverse, worldwide group of animals with the excellent name of MOLLUSKS.  Isn’t that a great word?  It’s fun to say and the animals in what scientists officially call the Phylum Mollusca are even more awesome than their name. 

Mollusks are a HUGE group that includes squid, octopus, snails, clams, and even slugs.  There may be as many as 200,000 different species of mollusks, while there are only 6,500 species of mammals.  They are one of the most successful types of animals in the ENTIRE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.  Look up!  Mollusks in the trees.  Look down!  Mollusks all the way to the deepest part of the sea.  Look back in time, before there were even dinosaurs.  Who was there?  That’s right, MOLLUSKS!  The only place you will never find one is flying in the air. 

So, why do these ancient, world-wide powerhouses make so many beautiful shells?  It starts with the fact that their bodies are very soft, just like a slug’s.  Mollusks are invertebrates, which means they don’t have a spine or any bones in their body. Some mollusks, like squid and octopus, do have a radula, a powerful scraping beak that helps them eat.  The rock-scraping radulas of the mollusks known as limpets are thought be the strongest, toughest biological material ever found in any animal in the WHOLE WORLD.  So, even though mollusks are soft, they are still mighty! To be strong and soft at the same time, many mollusks create a hard outer covering for themselves, which is where seashells come from.  How can they make so many beautiful, different kinds of shells?  Well, mollusks have been mastering the art of making shells for at least 400 million years!

Every seashell you see was made by one mollusk, to be its home for all its life.  Their shells start small and grow, little by little, as long as the mollusk lives and grows.  Many of our mollusk friends are actually born with a tiny, soft, colorless shell.  This tiny shell, called the protoconch, is a miniature blueprint of the shell it will grow during its life. 

How does something hard like a shell GROW?  There’s more to the mollusk’s magic.  A mollusk takes nutrients and minerals into its body from the things it eats and from the water around it.  These nutrients and minerals then feed into the shell gland, a part of the mollusk’s body that mixes up just the right formula to make a shell.  A mollusk’s shell is mostly made of a mineral called calcium carbonate and also a little protein called chitin.  The shell mixture is released through the mantle, the soft body of the mollusk.  The shell mixture crystallizes, hardens and basically becomes a form of rock!

A mollusk’s shell grows only from the edge of the shell.  This means that the tiny center point of a shell is the oldest part, the protoconch, that was there when the mollusk was born.  The rest has grown over time.  If you look closely at a seashell, you can see the “growth rings” where the mollusk has added another layer of growth. When you see a big shell with many rings, it means the mollusk was growing for a long time!

Aren’t we lucky to live in a world that has beautiful things like seashells in it? Although shells are formed by completely natural processes, they are as beautiful as anything an artist could create. So now you know, science friend, that shells take a mollusk a long time to grow, and the shell is their only home. If you go to the beach this summer, have fun looking for shells! But if you pick up a shell with an animal at home in it, please put it back and let the animal enjoy its home — they built it themselves, after all!

SOURCES AND FURTHER INFORMATION:

The delightful Dr. Helen Scales introducing everything wonderful about mollusks and shells:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n796FoQjOHI

A quick introduction to shell formation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVNllt_2BiE

A deep introduction to shell formation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C07VIb0vhaM

Ammonites and Ammonite fossils: https://natmus.humboldt.edu/exhibits/fossil-focus-exhibits/what-ammonite

The deepest-dwelling mollusk: https://www.livescience.com/worlds-deepest-squid-philippine-trench

Just beautiful shells and shell facts for you to look at:

Here at High Touch High Tech, we teach a LOT of science, and the best part about it is feeding young scientists’ curiosity about this amazing world we live in!  Although our programs are jam packed with experiments, we make time to let our young scientists ask us whatever questions they’ve always wanted to ask a scientist.   

In the coming weeks, we will be sharing a special series of articles answering some of the most frequent questions that come up from our young partners in science.  Our question this week is:

WHERE DID THE AIR COME FROM?

Science is awesome for so many reasons, but one thing we love about learning science is how it helps you to think differently about things you don’t usually notice in your day-to-day life.  Like air.  Air is the source of our life, carrying oxygen to our cells so they can function.  We take about 20,000 breaths of air every day and if we’re lucky, we hardly ever have to think about it.  It’s easy to think of air as just, well…boring.  It’s just there, softly surrounding us and sometimes making cool breezes or big storms.   In fact, the layer of air around the earth, called the atmosphere, is such a rare, unique, unbelievably lucky mixture that we’ve never seen its equal anywhere else in the known universe. The story of how the air came to be is actually one of the most EPIC, amazing stories in all of science.  So what is this air we breathe?  Buckle up science friends, because the story of our air is a truly wild ride –it’s a story of ice ages, deep-sea volcanoes, mass extinctions, comets and no less than the beginning of all of LIFE! 

It’s a story SO epic, we had to tell it in two parts.  At the conclusion of our tale this week, you’ll never see the stuff in your lungs the same way again.

WHERE DID THE AIR COME FROM PART TWO: FROM DEATH TO LIFE

In our last episode, we left our dear young Earth cooling out after a mega-crash with another planet.   At the same time, a few million light years away, earth’s neighbors in the solar system were also forming.  Many of the planets in our solar system cooled and formed an atmosphere, which is a layer of gas that gravity pushes close to the planet.  Earth is not the only planet with an atmosphere. The atmosphere of Pluto is deadly carbon monoxide and methane.  The atmosphere of Venus is mostly poisonous carbon dioxide.  Jupiter’s is hydrogen and helium.

Only on Earth are we lucky enough to have an atmosphere that is the right mix of oxygen and nitrogen.  Nitrogen actually makes up the most of our atmosphere today, about 78%.  Scientists think a lot of nitrogen came from comets and from volcanoes when the earth was forming.  The rest of our atmosphere is our good friend oxygen, just a little bit of carbon dioxide, and a few other gases like argon.  When you put oxygen and nitrogen together like we have on Earth, the oxygen is able to provide energy for living things, instead of being poisonous. 

Whew! Take  a deep breath! So …. the Earth’s formation was pretty wild, full of crashes and smashes and volcanoes and stuff — but now it’s ready with oxygen and nitrogen to support an epic variety of living things, right?  NOOOOPE!  The story of our atmosphere is even wilder than that!  About 4 billion years ago, as our Earth began to cool, the atmosphere was mostly carbon dioxide and a lot of water vapor.  Not great for life!  But then came the rain.  For a very long time, maybe as much as TWO MILLION YEARS STRAIGHT, the water vapor in the atmosphere cooled and fell to earth as rain.  Can you imagine a rainy day that lasted two million years? All that rain billions of years ago still makes up every lake, every ocean, and every stream on earth today. Water was there when Earth was very new and has been here on Earth ever since.

Because comet strikes and a whole planet strike brought so much water to Earth when it first formed, the Earth became a water planet.  Earth’s water became key to creating the atmosphere you are breathing right now.  After Earth’s water settled into the oceans, rivers, and lakes, our beautiful Earth was cool and quiet… too quiet!  There was nothing alive on the planet.  Over another billion years, carbon in the atmosphere began to dissolve into the ocean, and mix with things like nitrogen.  Somehow, all of those different chemicals and elements that made up the early earth began to mix and clump together in the water, and over a long time, out popped the first living things!  Maybe it was a bolt of lightning that helped all of those compounds come to life?  Or perhaps, just like a lot of Earth’s nitrogen and water, microscopic life came to earth from space?

How life began on Earth is still one of the biggest questions in all of science.  We do know that Earth’s water was essential the beginning of life, and we do know that the earliest life were single-celled organisms called anaerobic bacteria.  Anaerobic bacteria were the first things to grow and reproduce.  It’s thought that Anaerobic bacteria began very deep in the ocean at hydrothermal vents, a type of underwater volcano, and got their energy from the minerals and chemicals in the water around the vents.  Anaerobic bacteria are still around today, closer than you think – lots of them are living around your teeth right now!  Anaerobic bacteria does NOT need oxygen to live. Oxygen is actually deadly to this bacteria.  At this time there was hardly any oxygen on the planet, so there was no problem! 

Anaerobic life covered the planet until another life form, called cyanobacteria, emerged on the scene, and this little green friend has a lot to do with why you are breathing oxygen, and why you, or anything alive, are even here at all.  Basically, cyanobacteria murdered pretty much everything on the planet by making that oxygen you are enjoying right now. The tiny cyanobacteria did not need deep-sea chemicals for energy.  They used sunlight.  Sound familiar?  The reason we have lovely, life supporting oxygen for everyone is photosynthesis.  Photosynthesis is the amazing process still used by plants and bacteria today that takes the energy from sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water and turns it into sugars and oxygen.  Because cyanobacteria could use sunlight to feed and grow, soon they were everywhere on the planet.  That meant more and more oxygen was pouring into the atmosphere.  Oxygen, which is great for us…but DOOM for anaerobic life on earth at that time.  Mega-doom. According to some scientists, it was even-worse-than-the-extinction-of-the-Dinosaurs-mega-doom.

By 2.4 billion years ago, there was so much oxygen in the atmosphere, it caused a catastrophic extinction that scientists call The Great Oxidation Event.  It’s amazing enough that so much of our atmosphere came from awesome things like comets, planetary collisions, and huge volcanoes.  But the truth is, what’s in your lungs right now is also the byproduct of an absolutely deadly extinction event that changed the Earth forever.  At the time of the Great Oxidation Event, oxygen had spread through the atmosphere and into the ocean.  There was so much of it, it reacted with Earth’s iron and covered the ocean and land in rust.  It wiped out most of the anaerobic bacteria, and even a lot of the cyanobacteria too. Even worse, it changed the climate so much that Earth went into a massive ice age that froze the entire Earth like a giant snowball.  Nearly everything on Earth died – 90% of all life!  The 10% of tiny organisms that survived became the ancestors of all living things, even humans.  These little survivors adapted to the new oxygen-rich atmosphere, and were able to use the energy in it to grow from tiny bacteria into everything now alive on earth.  Including YOU: a person who now knows the epic truth of where the air came from!

Sources and Further Information:

That time it rained for two million years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1LdMWlNYS4

How life might have begun on our water planet:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZCeOUSYb4g

How cyanobacteria evolved and took over the world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps2GlGs8oso&list=RDCMUCBbnbBWJtwsf0jLGUwX5Q3g&index=1

How cyanobacteria almost wiped out all of life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO2xx-aeZ4w

A deep dive on the Great Oxidation Event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H476c8UjLXY

Here at High Touch High Tech, we teach a LOT of science, and the best part about it is feeding young scientists’ curiosity about this amazing world we live in!  Although our programs are jam packed with experiments, we make time to let our young scientists ask us whatever questions they’ve always wanted to ask a scientist.   

In the coming weeks, we will be sharing a special series of articles answering some of the most frequent questions that come up from our young partners in science.  Our question this week is:

WHERE DID THE AIR COME FROM?

Science is awesome for so many reasons, but one thing we love about learning science is how it helps you to think differently about things you don’t usually notice in your day-to-day life.  Like air.  Air is the source of our life, carrying oxygen to our cells so they can function.  We take about 20,000 breaths of air every day and if we’re lucky, we hardly ever have to think about it.  It’s easy to think of air as just, well…boring.  It’s just there, softly surrounding us and sometimes making cool breezes or big storms.   In fact, the layer of air around the earth, called the atmosphere, is such a rare, unbelievably lucky mixture that we’ve never seen its equal anywhere else in the known universe. The story of how the air came to be is actually one of the most EPIC, amazing stories in all of science.  So what is this air we breathe?  Buckle up science friends, because the story of our air is a truly wild ride –it’s a story of burning stars, mega-asteroids, monster volcanoes, comets, and no less than the beginning of all of LIFE! 

It’s a story SO epic, we’re going to tell it in two parts. Come back next time for the sequel, and you’ll never see the stuff in your lungs right now the same way again.

WHERE DID THE AIR COME FROM PART ONE: 

A WHOLE LOT OF CRASHING AND SMASHING AND EXPLODING IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM

About 4.6 Billion years ago, before our solar system and planets even existed, a small star went supernova.  The mighty shockwave of that explosion compressed a huge – like light-years-across-huge — cloud of gas and dust hanging out nearby.  Over time this mega-cloud pushed in closer, and closer, and closer, until there was enough hydrogen and helium being pressed together, and then … BOOM!

Sol, our sun, IGNITED into its massive, burning existence.  This explosive beginning used a lot of hydrogen and helium from the cloud, and left a lot of other stuff, like gases, elements, and chemical compounds it didn’t need.  The energy and heat of the newly ignited sun somehow ZAPPED all of the stuff hanging out into big drops of molten rock and metal called chondrules.  Over time these became… you guessed it… THE PLANETS! 

So, here in the middle of this massive, churning, stormy cloud of molten rock and metal, you might ask: “Hey! Why do we have to go back this far to understand the air?”  Because, science friends, the ingredients in the air you’re breathing right now have been around since the BEGINNING OF OUR SOLAR SYSTEM.  The stuff you’re breathing is really, really old and has been through a LOT to get to you.  All of the stuff that formed the planets is made from elements and compounds that were made in space, and those elements and compounds then gradually formed our atmosphere.  So, what you are breathing is VERY old, and a lot of it was made in SPACE (but not all of it, there’s a Part 2 after all).

Slowly gravity began to push the chondrules together into the planets of our solar system.  The early earth was a ball of space-rock and space-metal, and it resembled a super-hot ball of lava, with melted rock and metal just oozing from the center to the surface and churning all around in an ocean of lava.  Over time, MILLIONS of comets and asteroids also smashed into the early earth, adding more chemicals and elements into the hot, melty mix.  So not only is that nice fresh air very old and made in space, some of it, especially elements like nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon, were delivered to your lungs by massive comet impact.  Oh yeah – and another very important player in this epic tale, water, was ALSO made in space and delivered to this planet by comets billions of years ago.  Yeah.  That water. That you’re drinking!

This is an artist’s drawing of an asteroid that collided with Earth later in earth’s formation. The one that hit the early Earth was MUCH bigger.

All those comet impacts were tiny pipsqueaks compared to the moment that another whole PLANET, called Theia, hit the earth and broke apart, in an unimaginably massive smash!  This interplanetary mash-up was 100 MILLION TIMES BIGGER than the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs!  When Theia hit the earth, some scientists believe that Theia may have also brought another huge amount of  water to the still-hot ball of earth.  The extra chunks of Theia left over eventually came together and became our own wonderful moon.  Our beautiful moon will go on to play a big part in the air you enjoy, but for now let’s leave the earth and moon to re-form and chill out a bit after their mega-mega-MEGA-crash. 

See, we told you the story of air was wild!  And the air hasn’t even been made yet!  But out of all these crashes and smashes and explosions in our early solar system, the ingredients are coming together to make our earth, our air, and a little thing called LIFE ITSELF.

Take a deep breath, and we’ll see you for Part 2 next time. 

Sources and Further Reading:

The Supernova that Kickstarted the Sun: https://www.space.com/35151-supernova-trigger-solar-system-formation.html

The Formation of our Solar System: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1QTc5YeO6w

Theia Hits the Earth: https://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/questions/question38.html

The Moon and its Connection to Water: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190521101505.htm

Comets and the Amazing Things they Deliver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDPPCoUUqY4

Here at High Touch High Tech, we teach a LOT of science, and the best part about it is feeding young scientists’ curiosity about this amazing world we live in!  Although our programs are jam packed with experiments, we always make time to let our young scientists ask us whatever questions they’ve always wanted to ask a scientist.   

In the coming weeks, we will be sharing a special series of articles answering some of the most frequent questions that come up from our young partners in science.  Our question this week is:

WHAT WILL HAPPEN WHEN THE SUN DIES?

Here at High Touch High Tech, we love talking about all the cool stuff that happens on our beautiful blue planet Earth, but we also love talking about SPACE!  From giant planets to fiery stars to mysterious black holes, space is a subject that always inspires wonder.  Our young astronomers love learning about the “life cycles” of stars, and how stars coalesce from giant, dusty nebulas, ignite, and eventually burn through all of their fuel, “dying” in a supernova full of the elements that make up our very own bodies!  It’s a wonderful thing to know that we are all made of stars, but when we teach about stars, there’s always a quiet moment of realization that our own sun, Sol, is a star too, and one day will come to the end of its “life” as the star that we see. That’s when someone usually asks the kinda-scary question: what will happen when our sun dies?

Well, science friends, there’s GOOD NEWS and there’s BAD NEWS.  Bad news first? OK: Sol will eventually run out of hydrogen and helium fuel, as all stars do.  When that happens, the results will be catastrophic and will probably destroy the earth.  Now the good news!  Scientists are sure that that time will be very, very far in the future, like several BILLIONS of years far.  So, it will not be a problem in our lifetimes.  We also believe by the time the sun does go out, with science on our side, humans, animals, and plants from the earth will be safely living on other planets. So even when the sun dies, the good things we love about earth will be able to go on, even if they are in a different place.  It’s OK to feel sad or scared about the idea that earth will come to an end. All scientists know that even though it’s a little scary, it’s also true that our universe is always changing, and nothing stays the same forever.  That’s just the way the universe works. The end of our sun is a normal, natural thing that is probably happening to several other stars right now, out there in space.  We hope it helps to know that it’s a scientific fact that the whole universe is always changing, but nothing is ever really lost forever. It just changes shape and becomes something new.

So, what will happen?  Astrophysicists, the awesome scientists who study stars, have observed many different kinds of stars going through many different kinds of changes.  When Astrophysicists observe stars, the color and size of the star can tell them about how old a star is, and how much fuel it still has.  There are many types of stars, with cool names like “Yellow Dwarf,” which are small and common, and “Red Supergiant,” which are huge, old, and very hot.  Our friend Sol is a Yellow Dwarf star, and is now about 4.5 billion years old.  Sol is currently halfway through its life as a star, which means that it still has plenty of hydrogen and helium fuel to keep shining for another 4.5 billion years.  But when that hydrogen and helium start to run out, Sol is going to change from a Yellow Dwarf into a Red Giant, and that’s when the trouble starts for Earth!

When a star becomes a Red Giant, it means the star is running out of hydrogen and helium fuel in its center, and starts to collapse in on itself, getting smaller at first.  But, as the star collapses in, it actually pushes more fuel together and the star gets a kind of “second wind,” burning even hotter and puffing up to HUGE size.  When Sol becomes a super-hot Red Giant, it will become so big that it will probably swallow up the Inner Planets closest to the sun, our neighbors Mercury and Venus, and then… yup, you guessed it.  It’s coming for Earth.  Scientists are not sure whether the Earth will be completely swallowed up by the Red Giant Sol, or if it will be just burned so hot that nothing can live there anymore.  The Outer Planets that are further away, like Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune, will be pushed even further away by all of this and will probably be OK.  Astrophysicists believe that some moons of Saturn, like Titan, actually hold water and could support life, so let’s imagine humans far in the future watching all of this happen from there!  Maybe there will even be Red Giant-Watching Parties all across the galaxies of space!

Finally, after another long, long time, when all of its energy is burned up, Astrophysicists believe that Sol will probably shrink down and become a White Dwarf Star, a dense, heavy, star with very little fuel left, mostly made of all of the heavy elements like gold, zinc, and iron that are the byproducts of stars burning their hydrogen and helium.  A White Dwarf is sometimes called a “ghost star.” They have a dusty appearance because their gravity is so heavy, they pull in and disintegrate any asteroid or comet that comes near.  White Dwarf Sol won’t be very bright and any humans on Titan probably won’t be able to see it anymore, but hopefully, no matter where we humans go, we will always remember our old friend Sol.

Sources and Further Information:

An Astrophysicist explains Sol’s changes clearly for you, short version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaOPDk8Xbgw

Sol’s changes by an Astronomer, longer version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pcwcsfy2FDc

Detailed explanation of the changes Sol will go through: https://www.universetoday.com/25669/the-sun-as-a-white-dwarf-star/

An excellent examination of mysterious White Dwarf Stars: https://astroengine.com/2009/03/19/what-will-happen-when-the-sun-turns-into-a-white-dwarf/

A WHOLE IMAX MOVIE about Sol and how its going out could affect earth! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUwA610rnZg

Here at High Touch High Tech, we teach a LOT of science, and the best part of our work is feeding young scientists’ curiosity about this amazing world we live in!  Although our programs are jam-packed with experiments, we make time to let our young scientists ask us whatever questions they’ve always wanted to ask a scientist.   

In the coming weeks, we will be sharing a special series of articles answering some of the most frequent questions that come up from our young partners in science.  Our question this week is:

HOW DO YOU FIND FOSSILS?

Now this is a truth all our science friends, young and old, can agree on: fossils are really, really, REALLY cool!  Whether it’s a giant Megalodon tooth bigger than your hand or a towering T-Rex,  fossils show us a whole world that existed before humans were ever here.  It’s amazing to think that once upon a time, here on this same earth, there were animals like stegosauruses, triceratops, and pterodactyls.  It’s amazing to look at a fossil and realize that this earth is actually very, very old, and our lives are just one little part in the long and beautiful story of life on earth! 

It’s no wonder that our young scientists want to know where to find fossils, and we at High Touch High Tech are happy to tell you more.  When you watch a movie or TV show, you often see Paleontologists (a.k.a. the awesome scientists who get to find and study fossils for a living), carefully brushing dirt away from a huge skeleton emerging from the ground.  Paleontologists really do find huge skeletons from time to time, but the truth is they are pretty rare.  So, bad news first: if you go hunting for fossils you probably won’t find a whole Brontosaurus.  Now for the good news: there are MANY other kinds of fossils you can find, and they are more common than you might think! 

Here’s the real secret of fossil hunting: it’s all about WHERE you look.  Paleontologists and Fossil Fans all follow the same rule of thumb: look for fossils where fossils have been found before.  Usually people find fossils in certain locations because those places had the best conditions for ancient animals and plants to turn into fossils.  For example, there’s a place in England called “Jurassic Beach” where some of the first fossils known to science were found hundreds of years ago, and people still go to find awesome fossils today.  Jurassic Beach is a great place for fossil hunting because a long time ago it was a warm ocean, full of many kinds of life AND the right kind of mud in the ocean to fossilize the bodies of ancient animals and plants.  Before you start your fossil hunt, remember that fossils are only found in places with sedimentary rocks, such as  limestone, sandstone, or shale.  Sedimentary rocks mean that once upon a time a place was full of the kind of mud and sand that makes fossils.

One way YOU can start finding fossils is to google “best places to find fossils in (your state or country).”  You will see lots of information about the best places to go, and you might even find a few fossil-hunting clubs and organizations that lead trips to those places.  Going with a fossil club will help you learn quickly how to spot fossils, as you go on the hunt with other Fossil Fans.  If you can’t travel, that’s OK too – there might be some fine fossil-hunting spots right in your own backyard!  A great place to find fossils might be what’s called a “road cut,” where construction has cut through a hill or mountain.  If you look at the sides of the road cut and see many layers of different rock, you might be on the road to a fossil find! Another great place can be on steep riverbanks with many layers in the sides.  Just be sure to hunt with an adult science friend so they can help keep you safe, and make sure you are on public land, not in someone’s private backyard. 

The first rule of fossil hunting is: it’s all about WHERE you look.  The second is: it’s all about WHAT you look for.  You might be thinking of big T-Rex skulls or Velociraptor claws when you think of fossils, but there are a lot more fossils out there than that.  They’re just very small, and you have to learn how to look for small clues, not big ones.  Many Paleontologists recommend taking along a special book called a field guide to help you identify what you see.  The vast majority of fossils come from animals called invertebrates, animals like today’s mollusks, snails, and insects.  There are also many types of fossilized plants to keep an eye out for.  When you are out fossil hunting, you will be looking at every rock you see, just like a detective looks for clues.  Look for rocks with shell or leaf shapes in them.  Those shapes are usually fossils!  If your adult science friend has a special tool called a rock hammer, you can even try to split rocks open to see what’s inside.  Look for round rocks called nodules, which often form around a fossil.  

Because we know our young scientists are such big Fossil Fans, we’ve included lots of resources below to help you get started.  There are lists of the best places to hunt, a link to a real fossil hunting club, and many videos of experts fossil hunting to show you more.  Happy hunting, science friends!

SOURCES AND FURTHER INFORMATION:

Best public sites to find fossils: https://www.rockseeker.com/fossil-dig-sites/

More about the best places to look and what to look for (very helpful website!): https://www.rockseeker.com/category/fossils/

The North Carolina Fossil Club: https://ncfossilclub.org/ 

A Paleontologist talking about how he finds fossils: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG_p3CPFJmY

An awesome explanation of the different types of fossils you can find: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdP4_7f0vmo

How to tell a fossilized bone from a rock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erUBB8h-qsY

An excellent explanation of how and where YOU can find fossils (with a good recommendation for books and guides that can help you): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plf3wZI8GOQ

Splitting open nodules on Jurassic Beach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x6ua5RkERw

Here at HTHT, we teach a LOT of science, and the best part about it is feeding young scientists’ curiosity about this amazing world we live in!  Although our programs are jam packed with experiments, we make time to let our young scientists ask us whatever questions they’ve always wanted to ask a scientist.   

In the coming weeks, we will be sharing a special series of articles answering some of the most frequent questions that come up from our young partners in science.  Our question this week is:

What Would Happen if You Fell in a Volcano?

If you’ve seen Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, you know that the ending involves a very famous, and very deadly volcano (if you haven’t seen it, we won’t spoil it for you).  In movies, games, and TV, fighting around volcanoes and even falling into them seem to happen a lot.  Fortunately, we know from volcano scientists, who have the very cool title of “Volcanologists,” that actually falling into an active volcano or lava flow does not happen very often.  This is partly because a Volcanologist studies when and where volcanoes are erupting to help keep people safe, and help them get out of the way of any volcanoes that might be dangerous.  However, it is a scientific fact that volcanoes are so hot and powerful that they can kill you very quickly, just not in the way that we see in movies.

You might be surprised to know that Volcanologists, who are specially trained after years of school, actually CAN walk right up to lava flows and even reach in with tools to take samples of super-hot lava!  Lava fresh from the eruption can be anywhere from a scorching 1,600 to 2,200 degrees F.  Volcanologists sometimes have to wear special helmets made with gold and special suits made with aluminum to reflect the heat, but even then they cannot stay near an active eruption for more than a few minutes.  However, there have been enough brave Volcanologists who have done enough awesome volcano science to be able to tell us exactly what would happen if you fell in to the caldera, or cone, of a volcano right into the lava there.

Movies and TV give us an idea that lava is like water, and can swallow you up just like when you go off a diving board into a pool.  That’s not really true.  Water is a liquid with high viscosity, which means it’s not very dense and it flows easily.  Lava is thick, gooey, melted rock, not water.  Its molecules are totally different than water.  It has what’s called low viscosity, which means it’s very dense and heavy, and flows pretty slowly.  This means that if you landed on most kinds of lava, you’d more likely just hit the surface and sink in a little bit, not go under completely.  But that doesn’t mean you could just walk across the surface and climb out! 

Volcanologists want people to know that the atmosphere AROUND a volcano can be just as deadly as the lava itself.  Although lava is scary looking, the invisible gases volcanoes can give off can be much worse for you. Because a volcano is bringing up all kinds of elements and compounds from deep in the earth, it means that there are many toxic gases around it, such as Carbon Dioxide and Carbon Sulfide , which can asphyxiate you, stop you from breathing, before you even get close to the lava itself.  Plus, the air right around and above the lava in a volcano is very, very hot.  It can be just as hot as the lava itself.  So, the scientific answer to this burning question is a little gross, but it’s true: if you did fall in a volcano, you would probably asphyxiate immediately from all the toxic gases in there, and at the same time, your whole body would burst into flames from the heat.  A volcano is SO hot that if you fell in, even if you fell for just a few seconds, only your bones and ashes would remain to actually land on the lava!

Volcanoes are very, very powerful natural phenomenon that have been shaping the earth and affecting human lives since the beginning of time.  They are an important part of the world we live in and if you are ever near an active volcano,  be sure to go with an expert guide and follow all of their directions carefully.  Most people don’t know that the gases and heat around a volcano can be dangerous too, but now you do.  So, thanks to science, you are now fully volcano-safe! 

Sources and Further Information:

How Volcanologists Study Lava: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j54K0pv3w7k

A Volcanologist in the Field: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egEGaBXG3Kg

What Really Happens When You Fall into Lava: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHdRFUJuptU

More about Lava and Human Bodies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeSet41brAA

What Really Happened in Pompeii: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rduUDoy3dYE

Here at High Touch High Tech, we get to do a lot of science with a lot of amazing young scientists. We love feeding young scientists’ curiosity about this amazing world we live in!  Although our programs are jam packed with experiments, we make time to let our young scientists ask us whatever questions they’ve always wanted to ask about science.   

In the coming weeks, we will be sharing a special series of articles answering some of the most frequent questions that come up from our young partners in science.  First up is:

COULD MEGALODON STILL BE ALIVE IN THE DEEP SEA?

This most excellent question is on the minds of shark fans all over the world!  Why?  Because, clocking in at almost 60 feet, the mighty Megalodon was the largest shark that ever lived!  There are several species of big, scary sharks today to capture your attention, but Megalodon was the undisputed BIGGEST and SCARIEST of all.  We know about Megalodon because its huge teeth are still found all over the world, and we know that teeth that big were designed to eat WHALES.  That’s right – imagine an enormous shark big enough to take a lethal bite out of a whale and you’ve got Megalodon.

Thankfully, no Megalodon is going to come up and swallow you whole while you are enjoying a nice day in the ocean, as depicted in the recent movie, The Meg.  Megalodon IS extinct, disappearing from the fossil record about 2.6 million years ago, at the end of the Pleistocene age.  Although our oceans are enormous and there are definitely huge sharks living even in very deep parts of the oceans, a shark as big as Megalodon could not survive in the deep ocean for many reasons, most especially: FOOD!

Not getting enough food was one of the reasons Megalodon died out in the first place.  A shark that big requires lots and lots of food to function and maintain its huge body.  Scientists think it needed the equivalent of a couple of cows every day to survive!  When Megalodon died out about 2.6 million years ago, paleontologists believe it had to do with the fact that its main food source, whales, were also diminishing.  As whale populations diminished, not only did the Meg lose food, it also had to deal with another competitor in the oceans – the GREAT WHITE SHARK.  Great White Sharks emerged around the same time as Megalodon was dying out, and the new Great Whites were strong but small.  Great Whites could attack the same prey as the Megalodon, but required a lot less food to survive.

But could a couple of rogue Megs have escaped to survive deep in the ocean?  The deep ocean is big, and there is a surprising amount of life way down there, even a few gigantic, non-megalodon sharks.  However, a big dude like the Meg would have some serious problems living there.  Food is very hard to find because the deep sea is almost totally dark.  No light means no plankton, no plankton means no other food.  Most animals that live in the deep sea are scavengers that eat scraps fallen from the upper ocean, and they are adapted to be able to go long, long times between meals.  A huge shark like the Megalodon needs a huge amount of food, and that just isn’t available in the deep sea.

There is also the crushing pressure of all that water.  Living under high pressure would cause a lot of problems for a big toothy creature like Megalodon.  Such high pressure actually dissolves things like teeth and bones, which is why the deepest known fish, such as the Mariana Snailfish, have skeletons of cartilage.  Deep sea animals also have special molecules in their bodies called piezolytes, which help keep their bodies strong and intact under all that pressure.  PLUS, the deep sea is so cold and dark, just to live there would require the Meg to become bioluminescent and expand its eyes to a much bigger size.

All in all, those are just too many challenges for a huge shark designed to expend lots of energy eating whales.  So science friends, the Megalodon is definitely extinct.  BUT, there are some incredible, huge, well-adapted deep sea sharks that do exist that are also really, really cool.  We’ve included some links to videos below so you can see what’s REALLY in the deep sea.

Sources and Further Information:

Incredible Real Deep Sea Shark Videos:

More about the Megalodon: