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

Digging Dig Into History I know you just joined Odyssey , and you’re trying your best to divide the magazine equally between Muse and Odyssey , but I feel like your magazine isn’t anything like Odyssey. I think your magazine should be more like Dig Into History (which is Calliope and Dig) and have half of the magazine devoted to Odyssey and the other half devoted to Muse. —VINI H.A. / age 9 / Massachusetts Dear Odyssey I love your magazine. The Odyssey subscription I have was a Christmas present from my grandmother.›The last issue I got was mixed in with Muse, and I did not like it›as much. I don’t feel like it had the…

Creative Argument Would you please explain the importance of distractions? My parents think that my distractions are keeping me from getting things done. How does THAT work? I say that distractions let kids think about something other than (shudder) HOMEWORK. Homework kills the brain and rots the creativity right out of you. Ever met a kid who wasn’t creative? The reason is homework. So, distractions let kids get that boring out of their system! My parents might understand if you explain it to them. If you do not publish this letter, I shall send my parents’ army of Boring, Beige, Fun-Be-Gone Demons to attack the Muse Headquarters and suck up all the color, creativity, and fun. —ANGI O. / age 12 / Narnia (Colorado) Our color, creativity, and fun are…

UP IN SPACE Philae Wakes Up THIS JUNE, scientists at the European Space Agency got an exciting message from space. Philae, the probe that successfully landed on a comet in November 2014, had woken up from a long nap. When Philae first arrived at the comet called 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, it didn’t exactly stick the landing. The little robot tumbled into a shadowy crevice, where its solar-powered batteries quickly ran down. After sending some information about the comet back to Earth, Philae went into hibernation. Months later, as the comet traveled closer to the sun, the robot was able to recharge its batteries. Its first 85-second transmission to Earth thrilled scientists. Since then, it’s been sending readings and measurements in short bursts from its home comet. To scientists, that information is the…

PICTURE THIS: At the entrance to a hospital a drone descends. It deposits a large box on wheels. Hospital personnel rush out. They wheel the box into the building and down the hall to an operating room. There, doctors, gowned and scrubbed for surgery, open the box. Inside is a beating human heart with blood flowing in and out through transparent tubes. Traveling Tell-Tale Heart Sounds like fiction, doesn’t it? But the real heart pumping real blood is fact. A machine called the Organ Care System makes this possible. It sends warm blood through a heart while it travels from a newly dead donor to an ailing recipient. Organ transplant isn’t new. During the first successful one, in 1954, doctors took a kidney from a living 23-year-old and gave it…

“On the Origin of iPods” just didn’t have the same ring to it. A lot has happened for modern humans to get to this point. We lost most of our hair, learned how to make tools, established civilizations, sent a person to the moon, and invented the iPod. Whew! With all of these changes, our bodies have changed too. It’s only taken us about six million years. It all comes back to one key idea: evolution. In 1859, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, in which he explained his theory of evolution. He described the process of “descent with modification” where physical parts—and even behaviors—of animals may change over multiple generations due to natural selection. If certain traits—such as sharp teeth or thick fur—helped the animal survive in…

You know what stinks? You do! Although thanks to the modern miracle of showering, you likely smell a lot better than our unbathed early-human ancestors ever did. Humans stink because we sweat. In fact, we sweat pretty much everywhere on our bodies except our lips and our ear canals. That’s because we have sweat glands nestled under the surface of our skin—a lot of sweat glands. “Some estimates say two million glands, some say as high as four million,” says Dr. Kate Puttgen, director of the Division of Pediatric Dermatology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. “It depends who’s doing the counting.” Not All Sweat Is Smelly The most multitudinous of our glands are called eccrine glands—“E for everywhere,” says Puttgen. Each one is about.05 millimeters wide…