A Formica ant suspends a drop of aphid honeydew between her mandibles (which bristle with 7 or more teeth), as she drinks it. 
		Photo courtesy of Alex Wild, copyright, used with permission.WonderQuest:  On the web since 1997...      

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Petroglyphs from Bushmen of South Africa illustrating an early hunt with dogs. Picture used with permission from Pietermaritzberg: University of Natal Press.

Did humans and dogs become domesticated together?

There’s conjecture of how man and man’s best friend have influenced each other’s development


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Why do birds sitting on a power line all face the same direction?

Deadline is 1 July. We will publish the best answers on 12 July.

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The Sun--a diamond in the sky

[Imagine the Universe, NASA] Sun’s evolution: now to red giant to white dwarfQ: When our Sun turns into a white dwarf, what will it look like from Earth? --William H., Albuquerque, New Mexico

A: Soon after the Sun becomes a white dwarf star, about five billion years from now, a creature would see, in the daytime sky, a shimmering white star of a Sun shining about as brightly as the Moon does now.

[Imagine the Universe, NASA] Sun's evolution: now to red giant to white dwarf

The Sun will have collapsed a million fold to an Earth-size body. Earth's daylight then will be a little brighter than a Full Moon's light is now--an eerie light with harsh black shadows.

"While the weak light from our almost-dead Sun will permit a human to read a newspaper, it won't provide much energy to our planet," says Harry Shipman, astronomy professor at the University of Delaware in Newark.

The light will illuminate a totally frozen, oceanless, airless landscape. Slowly, as the Sun cools still more, the brightness will dim and the color of the white-dwarf dot will change from white to yellow, red, and finally black when it is as cold as space.

A couple of billion years before that, our Sun will expand into a red giant star whose fiery surface will engulf all planets out to maybe Earth. If Earth hangs in, her atmosphere and oceans will surely boil away and her rocks will melt into red-hot lava. All life dies as she cools with the shrinking Sun.

(Answered Aug. 2, 2002)

Further Surfing:

Shipman, U of Delaware: Our Sun's demise

Harvard U, The Sun

Royal Observatory Greenwich, White dwarfs

 

 

 

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