Churchill Science

More great questions from the Great Wall…

This great question was asked on a school overnight recently…

How do sleep-walking and sleep-talking work? - Ben S.

Here’s a short article explaining sleepwalking to kids: Sleepwalking

Want to learn more about sleep in general? Try Sleep for Kids.

Is it hard to breathe in the desert? by Saskia

This question was asked during a discussion of how trees produce oxygen, so that people can breathe. Saskia wanted to know if places without many trees, such as deserts, would be harder to breathe in. Great thinking!

Science in progress… This is how Lisa spent a little of her summer vacation.

Pretty amazing. It seems that everywhere we look in the solar system, there are things to surprise us. The speaker in this video is a little hard to understand, but he said something very interesting – that the salt in the water, plus other discoveries they made, mean that there are the right chemicals for possibly creating life. Forget life on other planets – we should be looking for life on other moons!

Most of the Earth is covered by water. But what would it look like if you took all the water away? National Geographic’s special, Drain the Ocean, shows us!

This excerpt from the program is about one of my favorite places, the Big Island of Hawaii. When I was in Volcanoes National Park, I had no idea that I was standing near the tallest mountain on Earth!

Back from Iceland!

Watch this space for future photos & video montages from my Earthwatch project in Iceland, as well as crashing waterfalls and shooting geysers and maybe even a puffin or two.

I am leaving for Iceland tonight for a weeklong expedition with Earthwatch called Icelandic Glaciers. You can click on the picture to learn more about the expedition.

After I’m done being a volunteer scientist, I’ll be spending a few days visiting some really neat places in Iceland. I’ll try to take as many photos and videos as I can!

Happy 40th Anniversary to Apollo 11. Forty years ago today, we landed humans on the Moon for the very first time.

It’s the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon. Click on the picture to visit wechoosethemoon.org, an interactive website that is tracking the mission as though it were happening right now. It features audio, photos, and videos.

After June 20th, the site will stay up and you will be able to click through the entire mission from start to finish.

During yesterday’s launch, the space shuttle suffered some damage. Some foam tiles, which protect the shuttle from burning up when it enters Earth’s atmosphere, have fallen off or were scuffed. So far, as this news report says, NASA doesn’t know how much damage there is. There are also different options for fixing the damage if it turns out to be a big problem.

Try rubbing your hands together very fast – you can feel the heat building up. This is what happens when a flying object like a spaceship lands on a planet or moon with an atmosphere. The ship rubs against the air in the atmosphere and a LOT of heat is built up. This is because of a force called friction. It’s super-important to have a heat shield so that the ship won’t burn up. A few years ago, the space shuttle Columbia was destroyed because of damage to its heat shield.

After a month of delays, the space shuttle is on its way to the International Space Station. First there were technical problems, then weather delays, including lightning strikes on the launch pad. The shuttle is delivering a module for the station.

Free Spirit! Video from JPL
For the past two months, one of the Mars rovers has been stuck in some loose sand. This video shows scientists testing out different ways that they could try to get the rover out and moving again. It’s really important for them to test things out before actually trying it, or they could end up getting the rover stuck for good! It’s hard to drive, especially when you’re millions of miles away!