Science for Kids — September 3: Penguins from space, Saturn's ten-sided storm, and a riverside dinosaur

Professor Pip adjusted his slightly crooked spectacles and stamped his fluffy little boots in the snow. "Brrrrr! Ah! Just what I need." He patted the bulging pockets of his forest-green lab coat and pulled out a small brass telescope, a rubber ball, and a big flat sheet of black paper.

Mia and Leo huddled beside him in puffy coats, breath puffing white in the twilight air. Far below on the flat white ice, tiny dark shapes shuffled and swayed — emperor penguins, hundreds of them, keeping warm in a huddle.

"Today," Pip announced, tail swishing, "we're learning how scientists can watch these penguins even when the sun goes away for MONTHS!"

"Months?!" gasped Leo. "How can you see anything in the dark?"

"Precisely the question!" said Pip. He held up the black paper in front of Mia's eyes. "Can you find the penguins now?"

"I can't see a thing," Mia laughed.

"Then try THIS." Pip bounced the rubber ball off the paper. It sprang right back into his paw. "The ball doesn't need light! It just bounces off whatever it touches, and I feel it return. If it comes back FAST, the thing is close. If it comes back SLOW, the thing is far."

Mia tilted her head. "Ohhhh… so you use the BOUNCING to find stuff?"

"Exactly right! That is called radar. Scientists send tiny invisible waves — kind of like our ball — down from a satellite way up in space. The waves bounce off the penguins, off the ice, off everything, and zoom back up. A computer measures how long each bounce takes and draws a picture."

Leo's mouth fell open. "So the satellite is basically… throwing invisible balls at penguins?"

"Oh my whiskers, what a lovely way to put it!" Pip beamed. "And because the penguins stand four feet tall, they poke UP from the flat ice — so the bounces come back a wee bit different, and a scientist named Dr. Macdonald can actually spot them, in the deepest dark of winter."

Pip peered up at the indigo sky, where a lone satellite drew a slow silver line among the stars. "Somewhere up there, a tiny robot is watching over these families all winter long, keeping them safe."

He handed Mia and Leo the rubber ball. "Now YOU try. Close your eyes, bounce it off a tree, and tell me where the tree is. Congratulations, my fellow scientists — you're doing radar!"

Up on the hilltop observatory, Professor Pip's tail swished wildly. "Come, come, my fellow scientists — you must see this!" He patted his pockets: pencil, notebook, tape measure, and a shiny brass compass. All present. All ready.

On a wooden easel stood a big painting of the ringed planet Saturn, with a strange, glowing shape around its south pole.

Mia counted on her paws. "One… two… three… four, five, six, seven, eight, nine… TEN sides!"

"Precisely! It's called a decagon," said Pip. "The Hubble telescope just found it swirling around Saturn's south pole. TEN perfectly straight sides — on a planet made of nothing but clouds and wind."

Leo scrunched up his nose. "But how does a windy planet make a shape? Wind is squiggly!"

"Ah! Watch." Pip pulled a wide, flat bowl of water from his coat (his pockets are quite roomy). He set it on the wooden rail, then began stirring the water in a circle with the eraser end of his pencil. WHOOSH-WHOOSH-WHOOSH. Bits of glitter he'd sprinkled in began to spin.

At first the glitter just chased itself. But as Pip kept stirring at exactly the same speed, something odd happened: the swirl started to look… edgy. Like a lumpy circle. Almost like a shape.

"Whoa!" said Leo. "It's got corners now!"

"Curiouser and curiouser, isn't it?" said Pip. "When a fluid — water or air — spins around and around at just the right speed, and there's a fast river of wind next to it going the OTHER way, ripples form along the edge. If the speeds match up perfectly, the ripples space themselves out into a shape with straight sides. This is called a jet stream wave. Saturn's is enormous — bigger than three Earths across."

"Ohhh!" said Mia. "Like when I stir soup and it makes patterns on the top!"

"Exactly right, my dear! The north pole makes a hexagon — six sides. The south pole is trying to make a decagon — ten sides. Different speeds, different shapes. And the wildest part?" He lowered his voice. "This ten-sided storm just APPEARED. Scientists have been looking for one at Saturn's south pole since 1990, and only NOW is it forming."

He looked up at the stars for a quiet moment. "Somewhere out there, right now, a wind is drawing a giant shape in the clouds — and we get to watch."

He handed Mia the pencil. "Your turn to stir. See what shape YOU can grow."

The sun was orange and low over Lake Kariba. Professor Pip crouched on a rocky shore, humming to himself, tail twitching. From one pocket he pulled a small, soft brush. From another, a magnifying glass. From a THIRD pocket he pulled — a sandwich. "Oh! Not that one." He tucked it back.

"Whoa!" Mia whispered, pointing. "Is that…?"

Peeking out of the dirt was a long, curved bone the size of Leo's whole leg. Old. Very, very old.

"Precisely!" murmured Pip. "That, my fellow scientists, is a piece of a dinosaur nobody had ever met until this year. Its name is Musango matusadonaensis."

"That's a big name for a bone," Leo giggled.

"It's a lovely name," Pip said. "'Musango' means 'living in the bush' in ChiShona, and 'matusadonaensis' means 'from Matusadona' — the park just over there. Two hundred and ten million years ago, this fellow walked on two legs like a very tall, very hungry chicken, ate leafy plants by the riverside, and weighed about as much as a small pony."

Mia peered at the bone. "How do you find something SO old?"

"Ah! Watch." Pip took his brush and — swish, swish, plip — brushed away the loose sand around the bone. He was gentle as a whisper. "Bones this old are not really bones anymore. Bit by bit, over millions of years, water carried tiny bits of rock into the bone and turned it INTO stone. This is called a fossil. If I dig too hard, I'll break the story. If I brush too soft, I'll never find it. Just right, and — plop! — history comes out."

Behind them, a hippo yawned in the shallows. Leo froze.

"Don't worry," Pip whispered. "The scientists who found Musango did their work from a little floating boat, RIGHT past hippos and crocodiles. They said the bones were more precious than the danger. Curiouser and curiouser, isn't it? A whole new dinosaur, hidden right where the water rises and falls."

"Oh!" said Mia. "So the dinosaurs are like buried treasure — but treasure that tells us stories!"

"Exactly right, my dear scientist. Every fossil is a letter written 210 million years ago… waiting for someone kind enough to open it." He handed each child a soft brush. "Now. Very, very gently — YOU try."