Kids News - Science Articles

Self-driving cars are all the rage today, Companies ranging from car manufacturers like General Motors and Toyota to private-hire companies like Uber and even Internet search giant Google are all scrambling to be the first to bring them to market. The efforts are so intense that the University of Michigan has established an entire city to help the cause. Dubbed Mcity, it allows manufacturers to safely test their autonomous cars using human props....

The next time your brain refuses to recall a simple fact or name, be thankful. That’s because according to University of Toronto professors Blake Richards and Paul Frankland, could be a sign that your brain is getting rid of unnecessary information so that it can operate more efficiently, and help you make better decisions....

With their thick white-gray fur and black rings, snow leopards are often hard to see against the rugged mountains that they call home. However, a team of photographers that included Mike Birkhead, has managed to capture amazing footage of this elusive cat walking away unscathed, after tumbling off a steep cliff....

Pedestrian etiquette – things like not walking into oncoming traffic or keeping to the right of the sidewalk – comes naturally to humans. However, while robots have been programmed to accomplish many things, teaching them to navigate among crowds has proved a challenge because it is hard to accurately predict each person’s path. Now, a team of MIT engineers, led by Steven Chen, have overcome the hurdle with a knee-high autonomous machine that can seamlessly weave itself through pedestrians, paving the way for errand-running and pizza delivering robots....

Harvey, Irma, Jose, and Maria — these seemingly innocuous names all belong to powerful hurricanes that have devastated small islands and major US cities in the past few weeks. Maria, a Category 5 storm began its path of destruction by pummeling the Commonwealth of Dominica, a tiny sovereign island country in the Caribbean, on Tuesday, September 18. Two days later, on September 20, the slightly weakened Category 4 hurricane unleashed its wrath on Puerto Rico, which was still reeling from the impacts of Irma....

Given that sharks have been around for millions of years and can live for as long as 400 years, it is evident that the formidable species has developed an arsenal of survival mechanisms. However, a lemon shark’s two-year quest to rid itself of a piece of ingested stainless steel through its skin, and self-heal Wolverine style, has impressed even the most jaded scientists....

Every year on September 19, residents of Mexico City conduct an emergency evacuation drill to mark the anniversary of an 8.0 magnitude earthquake that killed about 10,000 residents in 1985. Yesterday was no exception. At 11:00 am, thousands of people left their homes, offices, and shops and made their way to the predesignated safe zones. Little did they know that within just two hours, the evacuation warning bells would ring again. Only this time, they were instantly followed by the violent shaking of a 7.1 magnitude earthquake....

On September 6, the sun let its presence be felt by unleashing two massive solar flares. The first eruption, classified as an X2.2 flare, the strongest since 2008, occurred at 5:10 a.m. ET. Shortly after, at about 8:02 a.m ET, the star spewed out a bigger, and more spectacular, X9.3 flare — the most powerful on record since December 2006....

A team of astronomers, led by Alexander Boetticher of the University of Cambridge have stumbled upon what is being touted as our galaxy’s smallest known star. According to experts, EBLM J0555-57Ab, (57-Ab), which is slightly larger than Saturn, is the smallest possible size for a star. Boetticher says, “Had this star formed with only a slightly lower mass, the fusion reaction of hydrogen in its core could not be sustained, and the star would instead have transformed into a brown dwarf."...