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

Hello, all! I wish I could say that I am yet another dragon, or an alien, or any other awesome being. Alas, I am a plain ol’ Homo sapiens. I’ve been subscribed to Muse since January 2016, so I’m somewhat of a veteran. (I mean no offense towards those

NASA is planning to send two robotic spacecraft to an exciting destination: Venus. Several robots have gone to Mars, and some are exploring its surface now. But Venus, Earth’s other closest neighbor, is harder to visit. That’s because it’s extremely

WHAT’S BETTER THAN A BEAR HUG? How about a whale hug? In February, a drone flying over the Atlantic Ocean near Massachusetts took a video of two right whales. The whales were touching their bellies together and wrapping their flippers around each oth

PABLO PICASSO WAS A WELL-KNOWN SPANISH PAINTER IN THE FIRST PART OF THE 20TH CENTURY. HE HELPED CREATE A STYLE CALLED CUBISM, IN WHICH PEOPLE AND SCENES ARE MADE OF JUMBLED-UP GEOMETRIC SHAPES. Earlier in his life, Picasso went through what art histo

SCIENTISTS HAVE CREATED A WAY FOR PEOPLE TO WRITE USING ONLY THEIR BRAINS. They were working with a man whose hand is paralyzed from a spinal injury. That means he can’t move his hand at all. The scientists implanted a small sensor inside his brain,

BELIEVE IT OR NOT, THIS BROWN BLOB — ABOUT THE SIZE OF AN ADULT’S SLIPPER — IS AN ANIMAL. It’s called a gumboot chiton. Some people call it a wandering meatloaf. The gumboot chiton scoots around the shorelines of the northern Pacific Ocean, scraping

IF YOU LIVE IN CERTAIN PARTS OF THE EASTERN UNITED STATES, YOU MAY HAVE HEARD A LOT OF SCREECHING THIS SUMMER, AND NOT JUST FROM YOUR YOUNGER SIBLING. The noise was a very special group of bugs crawling up out of the ground and into our lives. They’r

“Why grass is green or why our blood is red are mysteries which none have reached unto,” wrote the English poet John Donne in 1612. He wasn’t quite right, because the fourth-century BCE Greek philosopher Aristotle had figured out that olors have some

It transformed the way people in the West dressed. It helped to advance the science of chemistry. It simplified the process of serious medical research. And it was discovered by a teenager completely by accident. Welcome to the unlikely and colorful

What color is the sky? Most kids who speak English answer without hesitation—it’s blue. Isn’t that obvious? Maybe not. Forget that the sky sometimes appears gray during a storm, or white with clouds, or even pink and orange at sunrise or sunset. Pict

Scientists and artists love to experiment with different ways to lay out the color spectrum. One of the most popular arrangements is the color wheel, which places different shades of color next to one another in a continuous flow. Artists and designe

Nothing could be grayer, more predictable, or less surprising than the endless sequence of whole numbers. Right? That’s why people count to calm down and count to put themselves to sleep. Whole numbers define booooooooooring. Not so fast. Many mathem

You’ve seen rainbows. Maybe you even know what causes them. Light from the Sun (which must be behind you) shines on water droplets in the air (which must be in front of you). Sunlight enters the front edge of the water droplets then reflects off he f

You’ve seen them in museums and science books. You think you know how dinosaurs looked. They were big and scary and colored grey, brown, and dull green, like today’s crocodiles or elephants. But wait: What if dinosaurs were brightly colored, like tro

We’ve all been transported by the famous space telescope’s images of glowing blue star clusters, nebulas billowing with pink gases, and our own vivid yellow sun. Looking at these pictures, we almost feel like we’re there. But these shots actually owe

Early human artists painted with what they could make from plants, animals, or minerals in the natural world. They dried and ground ingredients into a powder and blended this with water, animal fat, egg whites, or oil to make paints. At its heart, ev

We perceive color as a result of activities in our eyes and minds, so it makes sense to suppose that color affects our moods. After all, most of us have favorite colors, while other colors or combinations of colors may repulse us. Artists obviously u

The case of the baffling black bloom starte with one question: Is there such a thing as a black flower? Not one bred to be black, but one that is black by nature. The question so intrigued Rob Nicholson, conservatory manager of the Smith College Bota

Q: How can one person be good at singing and another not? Everyone has vocal cords!!! —Princess Mary Lynn W., Illinois A: Confession: I’m terrified of singing. I refuse to do karaoke and sometimes even mouth the words to “Happy Birthday.” When I abs

What’s your favorite color? Can you find it in your favorite places? We’re talking indoors or outdoors, of an object that’s natural or made. It might a red flower or a blue shadow, a purple afghan or an orange umbrella. Is your object from a differen

AT AN ART AUCTION IN 2018, SOMEONE PAID $432,500 FOR A FRAMED PORTRAIT OF EDMOND DE BELAMY. A close look at the artwork reveals something unusual. A complicated mathematical formula takes the place of an artist’s signature. A human didn’t make this p

JOSEF ALBERS was a German-American artist obsessed with color. From about 1950 until his death in 1976, he painted more than a thousand overlapping squares of color, a collection he called Homage to the Square. But Albers said, “I’m not paying homage