Kids News - Articles for Grades 6-8

While astronomers have discovered evidence of thousands of exoplanets, obtaining direct images of the distant worlds has always been a challenge. That's because the planets tend to huddle close to the star they orbit and often get concealed by their star's dazzling light. Of the handful of images captured, most are of a single planet orbiting a Sun-like star. The only two multi-planet systems photographed feature brown dwarfs, or "failed stars," which are radically different in nature from the Sun. Now, an international team of scientists may have finally captured a young, Sun-like star with two giant Jupiter and Saturn-like planets in orbit....

The San Francisco Zoo's annual "March of the Penguins," to celebrate the graduation of their Magellanic penguin chicks from "fish school," is usually attended by hundreds of cheering fans. Unfortunately, COVID-19 restrictions forced this year's ceremony, held on August 8, 2020, to be limited to a handful of lucky guests and officials. However, the lack of fanfare did not appear to bother the six adorable graduates proudly waddling over to their permanent home on Penguin Island....

On August 11, 2020, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden made history by announcing California Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate for the upcoming election. Harris, who is the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, is the first African American woman on a major party ticket and only the fourth woman in US history to run for vice president. She is also the first person of Asian descent to appear on a presidential ticket....

Stephen Wamukota, a nine-year-old from Mukwa village in Western Kenya, is making headlines worldwide for his ingenious hand washing machine. The young boy came up with the idea after watching village residents, who do not have easy access to running water, struggle to find an effective way to wash their hands to avoid spreading and contracting COVID-19....

SpaceX's first-ever passenger flight to the International Space Station (ISS) ended successfully on August 2, 2020, when Crew Dragon Endeavour splashed into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola, Florida. After a series of safety checks, the recovery teams unlocked the capsule's hatch and quickly whisked the spacecraft's precious cargo — NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley — to shore. During their total 64 days in space, the astronaut duo completed 1,024 orbits around Earth and traveled 27,147,284 miles....

The lack of clues left behind by ancient Americans has made it difficult for researchers to pinpoint precisely when humans first arrived on the continent. However, it has always been believed to be about 13,000 years ago, just as the world was thawing from the last ice age. Now, evidence from the Chiquihuite Cave in Zacatecas, Central Mexico, seems to suggest that prehistoric humans may have been living in North America as early as 30,000 years ago....

Male birds typically sing the same tunes as the rest of their species because an unrecognizable song defeats the two primary reasons for their crooning — to establish and defend their territory and to attract mates. While the songs, which are passed down from generation to generation, may vary slightly by region, any new compositions are typically limited to the local environment. However, for reasons unknown to scientists, white-throated sparrows across Canada are abandoning their classic song for a catchy new tune "written" by their peers in British Columbia....

Scattered across the ocean bed, and often hidden from the human eye, are hundreds, or perhaps even thousands, of "blue holes." The massive underwater sinkholes, which host a diverse biological community — ranging from coral to sponges to sharks to sea turtles — were formed thousands of years ago when groundwater dissolved karst, a type of porous limestone rock found on ocean floors....

American civil rights leader and U.S. Representative John Lewis (D-GA) passed away on July 17, 2020, following a seven-month battle with pancreatic cancer. The 80-year-old dedicated his life to building what he called "The Beloved Community" in America — first as a civil rights leader and then as a lawmaker advocating, for reforms on issues from gun control to health care....