Muse: The magazine of science, culture, and smart laughs for kids and children September 2015

Empty Threats I would like to write an ode to the humble uglytoad although there’s naught to write about. You see he’s ugly, in and out. While I was thinking of what to say next, my sister spilled drops of apple sauce (I hate it but she likes it. We’re triplets, and that proves that we are not all the same) on this letter, so I’ll close it. I don’t know why everyone threatens you. Obviously they are empty threats—Muse is still coming out—it has not been eaten or erased or disappeared. Anyway, if you don’t publish this, the only thing that will happen to you is that you will make one person slightly less happy. —THAT PERSON BEING A CERTAIN GRACE / age 13 Were they empty, come to…

On Surprises and Schisms Fans of this magazine—and even casual acquaintances who don’t really get all the fuss over pi—will have noticed that this issue of Muse looks different. Very different. We are excited about many of the changes, which include more pages, a new comic (hard to miss, unless pages 2 and 3 got stuck together), and new design choices. But we don’t blame you if it feels as surprising as a lemon chiffon in the face. One of the biggest differences is the departure of the New Muses, who inspired guffaws and great ideas—and remarkably few riots, all things considered—over nearly 20 years. With this small sample of reader art they inspired (above), we honor the New Muses and the generations of readers who…

KANGAROOS HOP pretty much everywhere. When they’re not hopping, they walk slowly on “all fives,” using the tail as a sort of fifth leg. But scientists studying the extinct giant kangaroo Procoptodon goliah have discovered that these big-boned animals (nearly three times the size of their modern cousins) might have walked upright and not hopped at all. Procoptodon goliah is a type of ancient kangaroo called a sthenurine, a name that means “strong-tailed.” Sthenurines spent most of their time upright, eating leaves off trees or bushes. So they used their front paws as hands, not feet. By studying their skeletons, researchers concluded that sthenurines could not support their weight on these front paws. And their lower backs were too stiff for hopping. Unlike their modern, non-giant cousins, however, they had…

TO CELEBRATE ITS 25th anniversary, the Hubble Space Telescope has retaken a super-high-definition version of one of its most famous pictures: the “Pillars of Creation.” First captured in 1995, this iconic view shows three enormous gas columns lit up by a cluster of young stars. It’s just one part of the Eagle Nebula, or Messier 16, a giant cloud of dust and gas where new stars are forming. This year’s picture is sharper and wider than the original, and reveals that even at 25 years old, Hubble can still amaze Earthlings.…

THE CINEREOUS MOURNER, a bird that lives in the rainforests of Peru, does a terrible job guarding its chicks. Luckily, the chicks don’t need their parents’ help. The young birds look like toxic caterpillars that live nearby—they’re about the same size and color, with spiky orange feathers that have white tips. Not only that, but they move like the caterpillars too. This is probably an example of Batesian mimicry, where a harmless animal evolves to look like a dangerous one. For example, the non-venomous king snake looks enough like the venomous coral snake that predators stay away. Frogs mimic each other, and so do many insects, but until now, no one has discovered a case of a bird mimicking an insect.…

Kids and adults alike have long enjoyed building virtual environments in computer games like SimCity and Minecraft. But what happens to those carefully constructed worlds after you log off ? A group of Internet conservationists are now working to save the worlds that gamers leave behind. The virtual archaeologists are extracting abandoned worlds and cities from the servers of Internet game companies, starting with the earliest version of SimCity in 1989. They say these game settings are important creations that should be saved for future generations. For now, the virtual worlds are being collected in an online museum—but they might be safest if we could print them all out on paper.…