ScienceShot: Early Bird-Like Dinosaur Was a Fish Eater - ScienceNOW

While I was looking through the science magazine website, an article caught my eye. I have always been fascinated by dinosaurs so the article ScienceShot: Early Bird-Like Dinosaur Was a Fish Eater -  easily caught my eye. It was not an in depth article but it was a fun one to read and the picture was very nice to look at.

Credit: University of Alberta

The article discusses how this "hawk-like" bird consumed fish. The fossil was discovered in China and believed to have fish bones in it's gut. This was surprising in a sense to scientists because it was believed that this animal only consumed small mammals. This may not seem like a big deal but it is. Every little piece of evidence a scientist can get their hands on allows knowledge for the future and can help figure out the many mysteries that this world still holds.

Author of the article: Ian Randall

Interesting!

Today I received an update on my phone from CNN explaining that "3 new planets could host life". Immediately this caught my attention so, I decided to read the article and share it through my blog. Today, April 18th 2013, scientists believe to have discovered three planets outside of our own solar system that may be habitable to life. The author of the article, Elizabeth Landau, discusses how researchers believe that water can exist on these planets.

The Kepler satellite as named through NASA, scans space in hopes of finding earth-like planets. Kepler 62 happens to be the host star which would be equivalent to our host star, the sun. The Kepler satellite has discovered Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f which are two of the three planets found. The third planet is Kepler-69c but the focus appears to mostly be on Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f. Although these planets appear to be "super earth" size, if life were to be on them, it would be like nothing we have experienced before.

Caption: This diagram lines up planets recently discovered by Kepler in terms of their sizes, compared to Earth. Kepler-22b was announced in December 2011; the three Super-Earths were announced April 18, 2013. All of them could potentially host life, but we do not yet know anything definitive about their compositions or atmosphere. Photo taken from CNN.com, "3 new planets could host life" article.

Author of article: Elizabeth Landau

• To read the whole article you can visit: http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/18/us/planet-discovery/index.html?iref=allsearch

The article to the Kepler experiment can be found on sciencemag.org in the science journal.

• Title: KEPLER-62: A FIVE-PLANET SYSTEM WITH PLANETS OF 1.4 AND 1.6 EARTH RADII IN THE HABITABLE ZONE
• DOI: 10:1126. I believe you must be a member or purchase the article for further reading other than the abstract reported by William J. Borucki etc.

To learn more about the Kepler project you can also visit: http://kepler.nasa.gov/

"Color-Changing Hare Can't Keep Up With Climate Change - ScienceNOW"

In today's blog, I'd like to talk about an article I read on www.sciencemag.com. I never knew that hares changed the color of their coat in the different seasons, so right away the story, simply by the title, attracted my interest. Apparently, hares are not changing the color of their coats and are sticking out like a sore thumb to predators. This can be very bad for the hare population. Their race can die out or even become extinct. After an experiment ran by L. Scott Mills, him and his team were able to figure out exactly what was going on by placing radio tags on the hares. Because of the shorter winters coming, it is harder for certain animals to adjust their camouflage. Mills hopes that evolutionary change can take place and possibly preserve he species but if not they will die out. For more information on this story and the actual experiment both links are included below.
 Color-Changing Hare Can't Keep Up With Climate Change - ScienceNOW
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/04/10/1222724110


story credit: Elizabeth Pennisi
photo credit: L. Scott Mills et al., PNAS Early Edition (2013)
story source: www.sciencemag.org