Category Kids Queries

Tourists flock to see this geyser blow its top – launching superheated water vapor up to 185 feet (56 m) high – every 92 minutes in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, U.S.A. Geysers are rare geological features, and Old Faithful is doubly rare for its regularity. Researchers were baffled by the punctuality of its eruption until recently, when they managed to chart its subterranean plumbing. It turns out that a large chamber beneath Old Faithful fills with steam bubbles boiled by the molten magma below. Those bubbles become trapped in a tube that leads to the geyser’s mouth. The tube gradually fills with water, the pressure builds, and – whoosh – Old Faithful erupts right on schedule.

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You’ll find it 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from shore in the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean midway between Hawaii and California. Bleach bottles and old garbage bins bob amid fishing nets tangled with rotting sea creatures. Scientists call this swirling mass of trash the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch. Twice the size of Texas by some estimates, it’s the world’s largest dump.

The seafloor beneath the Great Pacific Garbage Patch may also be an underwater trash heap. Oceanographers and ecologists recently discovered that about 70% of marine debris actually sinks to the bottom of the ocean.

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Soda bottles tumble into the surf. Garbage cans fall off ships. Grocery bags blow out to sea. About 260 million tons (235.9 mt) of plastic are produced each year worldwide, and as much as 10 percent of it ends up in the ocean. Unlike food and other organic garbage, plastic doesn’t dissolve; it just breaks into smaller and smaller pieces that can stick around for centuries. Twine, toothbrushes, discarded toys, to-go bags, and less identifiable pieces of plastic drift around and around in an enormous ocean vortex created by currents, sort of like a slowly flushing toilet that never drains.

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Dolphins, seals, whales, sea lions, manatees – these aquatic creatures live in world of water, but their drinking habits are more in line with those of camels and other animals of the desert. Salty seawater is as toxic to marine mammals as it is to us. When they need a drink, marine mammals grab a bite to eat, sucking the moisture from fish, squid, and other aquatic entrees. Seabirds such as terns and albatrosses, meanwhile, have special glands near their eyes that absorb the salt from seawater and flush it out their beaks.

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Yes, but different rates and, in some cases, directions. Venus spins so slowly that its year (roughly 225 Earth days) is shorter than its day (the equivalent of 243 Earth days). It also rotates in the opposite direction: The sun rises in the west and sets in the east!

In our solar system, the giant gas planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) spin more rapidly on their axes than the inner planets do and possess most of the system’s angular momentum. The sun itself rotates slowly, only once a month. The planets all revolve around the sun in the same direction and in virtually the same plane. In addition, they all rotate in the same general direction, with the exceptions of Venus and Uranus. These differences are believed to stem from collisions that occurred late in the planets’ formation. (A similar collision is believed to have led to the formation of our moon.)

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Astronomers believe these rings formed from bits of asteroids and comets that were captured by the powerful gravity of these ‘’gas giants.’’ Saturn’s rings are the easiest to spot. More than 170,000 miles (270,000 km) wide, dappled with spokes that rotate at different rates, Saturn’s awe- inspiring ring system is actually a glittering shower of ice and rock that orbits the planet. And although the rings stretch about three-fourths of the distance between the Earth and the moon, they’re incredibly thin – about 30 feet (9 m) wide in places.

Picture Credit : Google