Britannica Magazine Sample Issue

From Encyclopaedia Britannica comes the ultimate new monthly magazine for curious young minds!

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BRAIN-TINGLING

FACTS!

PO FRE ST E ER

MAGAZINE

AWESOME

ANIMALS!

LOTS TO READ : LOADS TO LOOK AT : ASK THE EXPERTS : QUIZ : JOKES : AND MORE! 1

!

A HUGE WELCOME TO

BRITANNICA MAGAZINE!

It gives me enormous pride to unveil this brand new non-fiction monthly magazine, designed for all curious young minds!

Prepare for your brain to be boggled with amazing facts, extraordinary feats and awe-inspiring true-life stories.

ant We wo say you t

I started writing non-fiction books after seeing my own two children explore the world through what interests them most. That’s why, in every issue of Britannica Magazine, you will find a huge range of fascinating topics.

!’

W O ‘W ge ry pa e v e with ou turn y

When will humans travel to Mars? What animals really rule the Earth?

How many kilograms of poo are pooped by people every second?

Find out in this introductory issue!

Then explore a timeline of Magnificent Machines, astonishing lists in Listified!, bizarrely connected facts in Factopia and our mind-bending BIG Britannica Quiz.

Sprinkle in some puzzles, a page of hilarious jokes and a recipe or two, and what have you got? – one gigantic sweetshop for the mind!

Britannica Magazine is the result of an exciting collaboration between What on Earth Magazines and Encyclopedia Britannica. It will be published 10 times a year – that’s once every month but with a bumper two-month issue for July and December. The first official issue comes out in April 2022 but don’t delay, you can sign up now.

We can’t wait to welcome you into our Britannica Magazine family!

Christopher Lloyd, CEO of What on Earth Magazines

ABOUT BRITANNICA Britannica first published the most reputable encyclopedia in the English language – Encyclopaedia Britannica – more than 25O years ago, with articles written or reviewed by expert editors and specialists in their fields. Today the tradition continues with www. britannica.com, one of the world’s most visited (and relied upon) websites for trustworthy information. Britannica’s partnership with What on Earth Books began in 2O2O, when they published the Britannica All New Children’s Encyclopedia under the newly launched Britannica Books imprint. So you know you can trust what you read in Britannica Magazine, where everything is fact-checked and verified according to Britannica’s standards.

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CONTENTS

A wild and wonderful world awaits you inside!

4 6 1O 12 14 16

22

FACTOPIA! Follow the trail of hilarious illustrations and crazily connected facts!

Page 8

Page 48

SNAP IT! Eye-popping photos to amuse and amaze.

EUREKA! Fascinating inventions and discoveries.

4O

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ROYAL ALBERT HALL! Let’s celebrate as the world-famous music venue turns 15O. LISTIFIED! Find out about unusual laws from around the world – and the chances of being injured by a toilet!

COVER FEATURE: YOUR MISSION TO MARS Could you be the first person to walk on Mars? Find out why humans are going and what we might find.

Plus, explore the James Webb Space Telescope.

MAZING ANIMALS A OF THE WORLD: #1 THE GRAND CANYON Featuring lizards, condors, mountain lions and more!

Page 32

44 24

EVERY SECOND Astonishing things that happen around the world each second.

25

IT’S UP TO US A new project to get the word out about climate change and what everyone can do to help.

26

36 38

FREE POSTER Pull out this colourful poster and add your own personal project to help save the planet.

29

NOBODY KNOWS! One of the universe’s unsolved mysteries.

3O 32

Romano Young’s fascinating book about the melting continent.

22 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT 2O22 From space stations to teddy bears.

INFOGRAPHIC: LIFE ON EARTH A fact-filled visual snapshot.

46 48

ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING! The first episode in our epic serialisation of the true history of the universe starts with a Big Bang.

MY BRITANNICA Our readers’ page, including your chance to test Britannica’s experts, our readers’ fact of the month and your latest letters and photos.

THE BIG BRITANNICA QUIZ Stretch your brain power with our deliciously tricky quiz.

DO IT YOURSELF Follow our simple recipe to make chocolate the way the ancient Olmecs did. Plus, puzzles and games, spot the difference, riddles and jokes. Don’t worry, be happy!

A TIMELINE OF MAGNIFICENT MACHINES! From early chariots to supersonic cars.

THE POWER OF PLANKTON FARTS Antarctic creatures big and small abound in our preview of Karen

Page 14 3

ZANY FACTS

The Parker Solar Probe is the fastest spacecraft ever built – eventually it should reach speeds of 692,OOO kilometres per hour, nearly 24 times faster than a space shuttle

oon

d ee sp

o

bic yc l e , it

26 7d

the

a ys t or ide

to

t Travelling a

fa

Follow the trail of crazily connected facts all the way from the Falcon Heavy rocket… to hard-boiled eggs!

eM th

st would ke at lea ta

By Kate Hale Illustrations by Andy Smith

The farthest star we’ve ever observed was about 9 billion light years away

Houston, we have lift

-off!

People have discovered diamonds on Earth that came from a planet that no longer exists in our solar system

Falcon Heavy, the world’s most powerful rocket, has 27 engines, which generate the same amount of thrust as about 18 aircraft engines

4

The space rock that hit Earth and brought about the extinction of most of the dinosaurs was an asteroid about 12 kilometres wide – that’s the same as 1,131 buses lined up end to end

Sc

ien

hav ed

tis t ove s dinos red aur fo ssils o n isc

every continent ica arct Ant n e – ev

Scientists think dinosaurs may have danced to attract mates like birds do today

A meteor is the bright streak of light that can be seen when a meteoroid enters Earth’s atmosphere.

A meteor that appears brighter than Venus is called a fireball

Light travels from the Sun to Earth in 8 minutes and 2O seconds The Moon has its own quakes, called moonquakes

A day on Jupiter is only about 1O hours

think Researchers ,OOO 44 more than s from ck ro kilograms of each h rt Ea t space hi re only day. Some a the size of a speck of dust

Temperatures on Venus can reach nearly 48O°C – that’s hot enough to melt lead We can go bigger

Egg-cellent!

Tampa, Florida, USA, is home to Recyclosaurus, a 7.6-metre-tall Tyrannosaurus rex sculpture made of recycled material.

Its skin is made of orange construction fencing

Most bird eggs start out white, but as they develop some turn shades of brown, green, blue and even black

The colour of a chicken’s earlobe often determines what colour its eggs will be

The winner of THE WORLD HARD-B OILED

EGG EATING CHAMPIONSHIP

downed 141 eggs in 8 minutes.

Some dinosaurs laid blue eggs.

5

Astonishing photos from around the world

!

A H C T O G

6

!

PHOTOS

TONGUE TWISTER

The veiled chameleon of Yemen and Saudi Arabia is a fearsome hunter, with a hollow sticky tongue as long as its body. As it leaves its mouth, a chameleon’s tongue can travel at 1OO kph. A flap at the end of the tongue then wraps its prey on impact. @GEOROCK888/AGORA

7

PHOTOS

O

!

W W

BALLOONS AND FAIRIES

One of the coolest things in the world is a hot-air balloon ride in Cappadocia in Turkey.

The rock ‘fairy chimneys’ there were created by millions of years of volcanic eruptions and erosion.

Then people came along and built rooms into the rock and caves underneath.

Now, the area is a World Heritage Site, so all of us can visit and be amazed.

8

!

S E K I Y

!

WH EEE E! SCHOOL TIME!

Like many other fish, barracuda swim in large groups called schools. To take this picture off the coast of Palau, in the Pacific Ocean, photographer Yung-Sen Wu swam as much as possible like a barracuda so the fish wouldn’t be afraid and would allow him to join their school.

OUR ORANGUTAN COUSINS

Photographer Ian Wood has been visiting the island of Borneo in the Pacific Ocean for over 2O years to photograph orangutans. These great apes share 97 per cent of their DNA with humans and seem to have as much fun as we do, too.

UP, UP AND AWAY!

The race is on to create the first flying taxi. This one, from Russia, is about the size of a small car.

It can carry two passengers and fly up to 2OO kph and for as far as 1OO kilometres.

Here it is being tested in a small sports arena. Ready to hop over traffic jams?

THE BARRACUDA IMAGE ORIGINALLY APPEARED ON THE ONLINE NATURE MAGAZINE BIOGRAPHIC, SPONSOR FOR THE CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES’ BIG PICTURE NATURAL WORLD PHOTOGRAPHY COMPETITION.

WHOA! 9

Eureka!

The latest astonishing discoveries, inventions and scientific breakthroughs

Sailing into the eye of the storm Ever wondered what it’s like in the middle of a hurricane?

Well, now you can see for yourself, thanks to scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the USA. They sent a sailing drone into the eye of Hurricane Sam as it barrelled across the Caribbean in September and October. Sailing on the sea, the drone was tossed around by 190 kph winds and 15-metre waves – that’s about the height of a five-storey building. It recorded some truly stomach-churning video footage and collected lots of data. The scientists believe this info will help them understand why hurricanes can suddenly get much stronger and also to predict when and where they will hit land.

NAME: SAILDRONE

Length: 7 metres Operated: By remote control Mission: The drone sailed to the centre of Hurricane Sam to measure the speed of the wind and the temperature of the ocean and air.

The flying microchip the size of a grain of sand

A big breakthrough in the fight against COVID-19

Engineers in Chicago, USA, have invented the smallestever human-made flying device. Known as a microflier, it is the size of a grain of sand and is designed to monitor air pollution and diseases that are carried through the air.

To do this job, a microflier is packed with all kinds of tiny tech – including sensors, antennas for wireless communication, and computer memory to store data.

However, one thing it doesn’t have is a motor or engine.

Instead, the engineers designed microfliers to catch flight on the wind, just like helicopterstyle maple seed pods!

Scientists have developed a new drug to help people suffering from COVID-19.

The drug is called molnupiravir and the company that makes it estimates that it will halve the chances of someone with COVID-19 dying or having to go to hospital.

A big benefit of the drug is that it can be taken at home in pill form, like an aspirin. Taking a pill at home means you don’t have to go to hospital and also that you can get the treatment you need without delay.

10

NEWS

Scientists discover an 8m-long dinosaur with shark-like teeth Who was the king of dinosaurs before Tyrannosaurus rex ruled the Earth? Scientists have recently found one of the contenders. It’s a gigantic meat-eating dinosaur that lived around 90 million years ago, about 22 million years before T.rex arrived on the scene. They’ve called this big beast Ulughbegsaurus uzbekistanensis, after Ulugh Beg, a sultan and astronomer who lived in the 15th century, and Uzbekistan, the country in Asia where he ruled and where the dinosaur was discovered.

The scientists only found one fossil of this carnivore – a 40 cm-long part of its upper jaw bone with teeth.

But from it, they can work out Ulughbegsaurus weighed over 1,000 kg and was slightly longer than an adult African elephant. From its sharp teeth, they also know it was a type of dinosaur called a carcharodontosaur, which means ‘shark-tooth lizard’.

Just like the sultan it was

named after, this dinosaur was probably the ruler of its time and place. It would have shared its world with a small tyrannosaur called Timurlengia, but Timmy would have been a mere pest to its giant cousin. It was only after the extinction of the

carcharodontosaurs that the tyrannosaurs got big enough to take over as top prehistoric predators.

The plant that secretly eats meat Scientists have known about the plant Triantha occidentalis since at least the 1800s. It has dainty white and yellow flowers, grows no more than 40 cm tall, and looks like it wouldn’t hurt a fly. But here’s the thing: Canadian scientists have recently figured out that flies are one of its favourite meals! Sticky hairs on its stem trap insects and produce a chemical that dissolves the prey so it can be digested. Yum!

Short and sweet – the life of the new Skittles wrappers Lots of us are avoiding singleuse plastics to keep the Earth healthy, and some sweet makers are trying to help. Mars Wrigley just announced they’ve developed a Skittles wrapper made of plant oils. That means when you’ve finished gobbling your favourite treat, you can add it to your compost. There bacteria, fungi and other microbes will turn it into soil!

An almost-Viking hoard Have you ever dreamed of finding a hoard of golden treasure? Well, a Danish man called Ole Ginnerup Schytz just did. He was trying out his brand-new metal detector

near a friend’s house in Vindelev in Denmark when it started to beep. He dug down into the ground and found 22 gold objects, weighing a total of almost 1 kg. Ole told

archaeologists who worked at a nearby museum, who found that the gold had probably been buried by a powerful chief who lived 1,500 years ago, in pre-Viking times!

11

MUSIC

Happy birthday, Royal This year, one of the world’s greatest music venues is celebrating its 15Oth birthday. Meet some Jimi Hendrix

David Bowie

Spice Girls

Jay-Z

CLARINET

TIMPANI

FRENCH HORNS

FLUTE

The orchestra

An orchestra is made up of a collection of players and instruments, from violins and violas to bassoons, trumpets and timpani. The loudest instruments are usually positioned at the back, with the strings at the front.

Some orchestras also include more unusual instruments such as a harp.

PERCUSSION

WOODWIND

STRINGS BRASS

12

BRASS

SECOND VIOLINS

FIRST VIOLINS

Albert Hall!

By Nicholas O’Neill and Susan Hayes Illustration by Ruby Taylor

musicians – including famous pop stars – who have played there!

Adele

Yo-Yo Ma

Beyoncé

Eric Clapton

Björk

Ravi Shankar

The Royal Albert Hall

TROMBONES

BASSOON

opened in 1871. Over 1.7 million people enjoy live experiences here every year. Home to the world’s largest classical festival, the BBC Proms, it also hosts some of the biggest names in all other musical genres, too.

TUBA DOUBLE BASSES OBOE

TRUMPETS

The conductor’s role

VIOLAS

CONDUCTOR

CELLOS

The conductor is the person who directs an orchestra, deciding how the music should be played and communicating this by moving their hands through the air to indicate what should happen.

Conductors use different patterns of hand movements to show the tempo – how many beats there are in a bar of the piece. They also use their face and the movement of their body to let players know what mood the music should have.

2 beats 3 beats

4 beats

6 beats

13

LISTS

UNUSUAL RULES Twenty-three unlikely laws from around the world

Most places around the world have sets of laws for residents to follow. Some of these rules were written centuries ago and are no longer relevant today, while others are not commonly known. Other laws may have been passed to tackle a problem unique to the place.

1

In the city of Gainesville, Georgia, USA, it has been illegal to eat fried chicken with anything but your hands since 1961. No knives, forks, or spoons are allowed.*

2 3

In Western Australia, you are not allowed to own more than 50 kilograms of potatoes.

In several Caribbean countries, including Barbados, Saint Vincent and Saint Lucia, you are not allowed to wear clothing featuring a camouflage print.

Prepare to be amazed (and amused!) by the unusual facts crammed into these irresistible lists.

4

In the UK, the Salmon Act of 1986 states that it is illegal to hold salmon ‘under suspicious circumstances’. This means that it is against the law for a person to receive a salmon that has been illegally fished.

The maximum penalty is two years in prison.

5

On the Spanish island of Majorca, anyone caught building an ‘unauthorized sandcastle’ faces a €100 (£85) fine.

6

In Thailand, it is forbidden to step on money. This is because it implies a lack of respect to

14

the king of Thailand, whose portrait appears on banknotes.

7 8 9 1O 11 12

In the UK, it is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament.

In Switzerland, it is forbidden to go hiking naked.

In Equatorial Guinea on the west coast of Africa, it is illegal to name a child ‘Monica’.

In the city of Milan, Italy, it is a legal requirement to smile at all times.

In South Africa, you are not allowed to wrestle a bear.

In Florida, USA, it is illegal to fart in a public place on Thursdays after 6 o’clock in the evening.

13 14 15

On the Pacific island of Samoa, it is illegal to forget your wife’s birthday.

In Germany, it is against the law to run out of petrol while driving on the motorway.

The city of Turin, Italy, passed a law in 2005 saying that dog owners must walk their pets at least three times a day – or face a €500 (£420) fine.

16

In the city of Mobile, Alabama, USA, it is against the law to throw confetti or spray silly string.

17

At least 35 per cent of all music played on radio stations in Canada must be by Canadian musicians.

18 19 2O 21

In Madagascar, pregnant women are not allowed to wear hats.

What are the chances?

The odds of fourteen improbable things ever happening to you*

In Scandinavia, car headlights must be switched on at all times – including in the day.

In Mexico, you’re not allowed to take your feet off the pedals while cycling.

In Portugal, peeing while swimming in the sea is banned.

(Though it would take a very clever detective to catch you.)

22

1 in...

23

3OO million

In Piazza San Marco, Venice, Italy, it is illegal to feed a pigeon.

In the state of Arizona, USA, it is against the law to let a donkey sleep in your bath after 7 o’clock in the evening.**

*The last person to fall ‘fowl’ of this law was Ginny Dietrick in 2009. As a joke set up by a friend, she was arrested

by Gainesville police chief Frank Hopper for eating fried chicken with a fork on her 91st birthday. Hopper told her not to get up from her table until she had mastered the art of eating the fried chicken without cutlery ‘down to and including the licking of the fingers’ afterwards. Dietrick was pardoned and released as soon as she’d finished her chicken. **This law, passed in 1924, was aimed at a local merchant in Kingman, Arizona, who did allow a donkey to sleep in his bath. When a local dam broke and the city was flooded, the donkey was washed a mile down the valley. The donkey (and bath) survived but the local people spent so much time rescuing it that they passed a law to stop the same thing from happening again.

Winning the lottery**

5O million

Being killed by a falling coconut

2O million Being made a saint

15 million

1,OOO

Cracking open an egg and finding two yolks inside

75O

Being born with one kidney

1O

Being left-handed

115,OOO

*This list contains estimated probabilities. In most cases, the specific probability of these things happening to you will also depend on other factors, such as where you live. For instance, if you live in a country where the plant clover doesn’t grow, it is very, very unlikely that you will be able to find a four-leaf clover!

12,OOO

**This depends on the number of tickets sold in the lottery.

Becoming a parent to identical quadruplets***

2.6 million Becoming a billionaire

662,OOO

Winning a gold medal at the Olympics

Going to hospital with a pogo-stick-related injury

Finding a pearl in an oyster

1O,OOO

Being injured by a toilet

5,O76

Finding a lucky four-leaf clover

1,O24

Tossing a coin ten times in a row and it landing heads-side up every time

***Quadruplets are four children who are all born to the same mother at the same time.

Listified!

by Andrew Pettie and illustrated by Andrés Lozano is out now.

15

SPACE

R U YO MISSION TO

MARS Find out about the latest plans for a crewed mission to Mars, what astronauts might discover there, and why you really could be the first person to set foot on the Red Planet.

By Chris Harrison

H

umans first landed on the Moon in 1969, more than 50 years ago. Yet we have still to set foot on another planet in our solar system. Mars will almost certainly be the first.

Various space agencies have already sent probes, orbiting satellites, surface rovers and even a miniature robot helicopter to investigate the mysteries of the Red Planet, and to prepare for a crewed mission to Mars in the future.

Meanwhile, the American space agency NASA has recently announced that it is looking for volunteers for a mission that will help us to understand what it will be like to live for months at a time on a distant planet. Once selected, the crew will live for a whole year in a specially

constructed building in Houston in the United States called Mars Dune Alpha.

Although Mars Dune Alpha will be built here on Earth, it will be designed inside to look and feel like a real Mars station. This will allow the crew to live, work and conduct scientific experiments as if they were living on the surface of Mars.

So, when are the first people likely to travel to Mars? NASA says it is aiming to send its first crewed mission in the 2030s, between 10 and 20 years from now. This means that some of the astronauts on that historic space mission are likely to still be schoolchildren today, perhaps dreaming of becoming astronauts in the future.

So it really could be you!

An artist’s impression of a Mars colony with SpaceX Starships

16

MARS: FACT FILE Named after: the ancient Roman god of war Nickname: the Red Planet Average distance from the Sun: 228.5 million km Average speed orbiting the Sun: 23.3 km per second Diameter: 6,791 km (about half the size of Earth) Length of year: 687 Earth days Length of day: 24 hours, 37 minutes Gravity: less than half the strength of Earth’s Average temperature: -62.8°C Number of moons: 2 (Phobos and Deimos, pictured below)

Mars has the largest volcano in the entire solar system. It is called Olympus Mons.

WE HAVE LIFT-OFF! There is ice at both poles of Mars – which is formed from a mix of frozen water and frozen carbon dioxide.

Light winds lift dust into Mars’s thin atmosphere, to such an extent that dust storms sometimes cover the entire planet.

Mars has a series of interconnected canyons called Valles Marineris; it’s 4,OOO km long, about four times the distance from Land’s End to John O’Groats.

CURIOSITY ROVER ON MARS NASA’s Curiosity rover landed on Mars in 2O12. It has been trundling across the planet’s surface ever since, looking for signs of ancient life. The rover discovered that its landing site, Gale Crater, once hosted a lake.

It also found pebbles, evidence of Martian streams that existed billions of years ago.

A timeline of space events building up to the first crewed mission to Mars.

B 2O2O – NASA lands a car-sized rover called Perseverance (its nickname is ‘Percy’) that is also carrying a mini-helicopter called Ingenuity. They are collecting rock and soil samples, looking for environments capable of supporting life, and trying to make oxygen from ingredients in the Martian atmosphere.

B 2O21 – The Chinese Tianwen-1 mission lands its Zhurong rover. It is using radar to look for signs of water beneath the planet’s surface, recording what being on Mars sounds like and has a camera that can take selfies of the rover at work.

B 2O22 – The Indian Space Research Organisation plans to send its second orbiter to circle Mars and study it from above.

B 2O22 – The European Space Agency and the Russian space agency Roscosmos plan to land the Rosalind Franklin rover on Mars to search for evidence of microscopic life.

B 2O24 – The company SpaceX aims to send its first uncrewed Starship to Mars by the middle of this decade.

B 2O3Os – NASA is aiming to launch its first crewed mission to Mars at some point between 2O3O and 2O4O.

17

YOU WILL GET BACK 4 HOW

SPACE

R YOUMISSION TO

MARS

8 THINGS TO KNOW BEFORE TAKE-OFF!

YOU WILL LOOK FOR ON MARS 1 WHAT

Scientists think that Mars used to be like Earth. Billions of years ago, it may have had oceans and seas on its surface. At some point, its thick atmosphere was stripped away by the solar wind. All that’s left now is a dead rocky world, coloured red by iron rusting in the ground. However, scientists think there might still be water – and even life – hidden beneath the planet’s surface. An important task on the first human-crewed mission to Mars will be to collect samples of dust and rocks for scientists to study back on Earth. Another part of your mission will be to search for evidence of life itself.

2 HOW LONG YOU WILL STAY

It is hard to say exactly so far in advance, but scientists estimate that the first astronauts on Mars will stay for two to three months before returning to Earth. If humans want to stay longer – and even live on Mars – they will need plenty of food and water. NASA has already developed a machine (pictured below) that grows vegetables in space. The astronauts would also be able to extract water to drink from the Martian soil.

YOU WILL TRAIN FOR ZERO GRAVITY 3 HOW

Because there is very little gravity in space, astronauts feel a sensation of weightlessness, as if they are floating in midair. One way to prepare for this strange sensation on Earth is by flying in a specially modified aeroplane. As the plane flies steeply downwards, everyone inside feels weightless. The astronauts have given the plane a nickname: the ‘Vomit Comet’.

Can you guess why?

18

We have launched rockets from the surface of Earth and the Moon for decades, but we have never launched one from another planet. A NASA mission is already underway to collect and bring back the first rocks from Mars to Earth in 2031. Eventually, scientists want to design rockets that will bring back the first planetary explorers, too.

YOU WILL PREPARE FOR YOUR 5FIRSTHOW SPACE WALK Before astronauts take off for space, they train for the experience of moving and working in zero gravity at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory in Houston in the United States. The Laboratory’s main facility is a huge diving tank that contains 28 million litres of water – that’s enough to fill nine Olympic-sized swimming pools! While working underwater, the astronauts wear spacesuits that are weighted down so that they are neutrally buoyant, which means that they neither rise to the surface nor sink to the bottom. Along the bottom of the diving tank are full-size models of real spacecraft such as the International Space Station and SpaceX Dragon.

The astronauts move around and perform tasks on these models to practise what it will feel like doing the same thing when they are floating around the real spacecraft in space.

YOU WILL EAT YOUR LUNCH 6 HOW

In space, where gravity is much weaker, everything floats around, including your food.

Because of this, astronauts use pouches instead of plates, and salt and pepper only come in liquid form. There aren’t any refrigerators in space, so all food must be heat-treated or freeze-dried to stop it going off. Luckily, familiar foods such as pizza, peanut butter and brownies are still on the menu.

7 HOW LONG IT WILL TAKE YOU TO GET THERE (AND BACK AGAIN)

Mars is a long way from Earth. In fact, it is roughly 140 times further away from the Earth than the Moon is. So if you were driving a car through space at 100 kph, it would take you 62 years to get there! Thankfully, travelling by spacecraft is faster: scientists estimate the voyage to Mars would take between six and nine months, depending on the amount of fuel the rocket used.

Moon 384,4OO km from Earth Earth

Mars 54.6 million km from Earth

YOU WILL GO TO THE TOILET 8 HOW

Going to the toilet in microgravity could be a messy business. To avoid creating a major space incident, astronauts first clamp themselves on the toilet seat using special leg straps. The toilet then works like a vacuum cleaner, sucking all the air, poo and wee away and into a waste tank. Amazingly, a space toilet can cost as much as £17 million to build and install!

19

SPACE

R YOUMISSION TO

MARS

KEEPING AN EYE ON MARS… AND MORE!

This secondary mirror focuses infrared light from the primary mirror into the telescope. From there, it will be transmitted back to Earth as data.

Welcome to the James Webb Telescope!

Here’s how it will help us to see the universe in a thrilling new way.

W

hat secrets do the stars and planets hold? Today, thanks to the latest telescope technology, we can study the universe in great detail. The best-known space telescope is NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (HST), which launched in 1990.

Now a new generation of super space telescopes is set to probe even further into the universe.

The first of these, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), will launch into space on 18th December, carried on board the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Ariane 5 rocket. The telescope has a giant gold-coated mirror and will look at the universe in infrared – that is, by detecting the heat that objects give off.

Once the JWST has reached space, it will travel to a location one million miles from Earth. From there, it will help astronomers to understand how stars and galaxies form, and to study different planets, including those within our own solar system such as Mars.

20

A 5-layered shield allows the JWST to observe the universe without being blinded by the Sun or getting too hot.

The JWST’s creators hope it will detect the heat given off by the first galaxies born after the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago.

How did the James Webb Space Telescope get its name?

James Webb was in charge of NASA between 1961 and 1968.

He played an important role in the Apollo space missions, which put the first person on the Moon in July 1969.

Now the telescope named after him will be helping us to explore outer space too.

This antenna sends the JWST’s data back to Earth.

JWST IN NUMBERS

7.2 billion

The primary mirror collects infrared light (also known as heat) from whatever the JWST is looking at.

The estimated total cost of the project in pounds.

1 million

The mirror is made of gold-coated hexagonal segments and collects six times more infrared light than the HST. The JWST will be able to look further into the universe than the HST and see smaller things.

Above: Engineers practise ‘snow cleaning’ on a test telescope mirror. The process involves shooting snowlike crystals of frozen carbon dioxide at the reflective surface. The fast-moving ‘snow’ knocks off any tiny bits of dirt without scratching the mirror.

The sun protection factor, or SPF, given by the JWST’s sun shield, which protects the telescope’s sensitive instruments. The sunscreen people put on their skin typically has an SPF of between 8 and 5O.

6,35O

The JWST’s weight in kilograms, which is roughly the same as an African elephant.

1OO

The number of times more powerful the JWST will be than the Hubble Space Telescope.

21

The telescope uses solar panels that capture energy from the Sun.

The length of the sun shield in metres. It is 14 metres wide and has roughly the same surface area as a tennis court.

18

The number of gold-coated hexagonal segments on its mirror.

14

The number of different countries collaborating on the project.

6.5

The width in metres of JWST’s primary mirror.

The ‘bus’ section houses the telescope’s computer and control system.

–223

The approximate temperature in °C that the telescope has to be kept at for its instruments to work properly.

21

ANIMALS

Amazing Animals of the World #1 The Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon in the United States is one of the world’s deepest canyons and a famous natural wonder. It is also home to a wonderful variety of fierce and fascinating wildlife. If you are lucky enough to visit the Grand Canyon, here are some of the awesome animals to look out for…

Coyote

When the sun sets in the evening and the moon rises, you can sometimes hear coyotes’ howls echoing off the Canyon’s sides. Coyotes’ sandy coats make them tricky to spot but look out for their blacktipped tails.

California condor

Condors are among the rarest birds in the world but in the summer they can be seen soaring high above the Grand Canyon on rising currents of hot air. From a distance it can be hard to tell the difference between condors and vultures. A useful clue is that condors have white patches on the underside of their wings.

The Colorado River looks small from the top of the Canyon but on average it is around 9O metres wide – which is the length of a football pitch.

Giant hairy scorpion

Three types of scorpion are found in the Canyon: the bark scorpion, devil scorpion and giant hairy scorpion (pictured right). All three have a stinging venom in their tails but only the bark scorpion is dangerous to people.

22

THE GRAND CANYON

Bald eagle

These magnificent birds spend their winters in the Canyon. A great place to spot bald eagles is Nankoweap Creek where they fish for trout.

Little brown bat

The Grand Canyon is a giant gorge located in the state of Arizona in the United States. It is 446 km long, up to 3O km wide and 1.6 km deep.

Scientists estimate that the canyon was formed between 5 and 6 million years ago as the Colorado River cut a channel down through the layers of rock.

One of 22 species of bat living at the Grand Canyon, little brown bats can eat up to 1,2OO mosquito-sized insects in an hour.

Black bear

Black bears prefer to live in wooded areas and make their homes among the conifer trees near the Canyon’s northern rim. Although visitors sometimes do spot them, black bear sightings are rare.

3OO miles

Nevada Grand Canyon

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Bighorn sheep are very nimblefooted, which allows them to climb the Canyon’s steep, rocky slopes. Though the sandy colour of their coats can make them tricky to spot!

Mountain lion

Mountain lions are common in the region but you’d be lucky to see one because they blend in with their surroundings and rarely approach humans. You’re most likely to spot one near the banks of the Colorado River. They are the Canyon’s largest predators.

Desert spiny lizard

There are 41 reptile species living here, including desert spiny lizards, iguanas, Gila monsters and geckos. Look out too for the six species of rattlesnake! The Grand Canyon pink rattlesnake is the most common.

23

STATS

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EVERY SECOND

8,OOO

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Somewhere on the planet this very second, one aeroplane is taking off, four babies are being born, 1OO lightning bolts are striking the Earth and…

7,OOO litres of milk are taken from cows

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kilograms of beef are devoured

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2,O5O chicks hatch from their eggs

EXCERPTED FROM EVERY SECOND, WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED BY BRUNO GIBERT

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CLIMATE CHANGE

It’s Up to Us!

Climate change. Global warming.

Storms. Floods. Droughts. Fires.

People are part of the natural world, so when we damage it, we make life worse for ourselves as well as for lots of other living things. It can be scary to think about.

Above: Estelí Meza of Mexico celebrates our living planet in her contribution to the book.

T

he good news is that people all over the world are working to turn things around. As this magazine goes to press, representatives of 200 countries are meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, to make plans. More than 400 corporate leaders have signed up to a plan called the Terra Carta, developed by HRH The Prince of Wales.

We regular people can play our part, too.

We can reduce, reuse and recycle. We can fill our gardens with plants that are native to our area. We can learn the carbon footprints of the things we buy and make choices that slow global warming.

And we can make sure our politicians and the companies we buy products from know

In his contribution, illustrator Nick Sharratt of the UK shows how the carbon cycle works and how human activities are causing global warming.

that we want them to make climate change their top priority.

Some 33 artists from all over the world contributed illustrations to a new children’s book, It’s Up to Us, so they could stand up as a group and demand change.

Asked why he wanted to be part of the project, illustrator Nick Sharratt said, ‘It’s really important to spread the message to everyone, young and old, so that we can all play our part and make sure that we take the right actions.’

What are you doing to help save the planet? Before you hang up the pull-out poster on the next page, draw or paste a photo of your own contribution in the white box.

25

It’s Up to Us

Draw a picture or stick a photograph of you environment in the white square below and

ur personal project to help save the d hang your completed poster proudly!

Illustration by Owen Davey

Reader offer

‘Children have a unique curiosity for Nature and for this amazing planet we call home.’

HRH The Prince of Wales

OUT NOW! Ages 6+ RRP £16.99 Special Reader Offer

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Discover what makes planet Earth so amazing on this exciting and beautiful journey through the harmony of nature, how humans have thrown it out of balance, and what we can do to fix it!

By author Christopher Lloyd, a foreword by HRH The Prince of Wales and with illustrations from 33 artists from around the world.

Scan the QR code to buy your discounted copy, or use the website below www.whatonearthbooks.com/product/its-up-to-us-reader-offer/ 28

2

MYSTERIES

u p 27 p e r c kes en t ma o c e a b u f s e er t w ists e h ex e c a t n stars n a o n d m ty ga at k m t e r ac lax t ar u a

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29

A timeline of mag Join us on an incredible journey through some of the most extraordinary inventions in history…

c25O CE Chinese engineer Ma Jun is believed to have invented the first two-wheeled south-pointing chariot. The chariot acts like a compass and is used to help direct troops at night.

5O CE Roman engineers develop the polyspastos, a giant human-powered crane. It can lift more than five tonnes and is used for building amphitheatres and aqueducts.

12O6 Kurdish engineer Al-Jazari creates an elaborate elephant water-clock incorporating the first ever moving time-telling figures. At each half hour, a ball rolls from the top of the clock and triggers an elephant driver’s mallet to hit a cymbal.

1452–1519 Italian artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci jots down a series of inventions in his notebooks, including designs for a helicopter, a tank, an aeroplane, a car and a parachute.

1882 Thomas Edison opens the first urban electricity system, connecting 1O,164 lamps to 5O8 customers in New York by 1884.

1876 Nikolaus Otto’s stationary internal-combustion engine uses a crankshaft to generate a circular mechanical motion.

Ten years later, Karl Benz makes the world’s first three-wheeled motorwagon, which was famously driven for 1OO kilometres by his wife Bertha (above) on the first long-distance journey by car.

19O3 Bicycle shop owners Orville and Wilbur Wright make the first powered, heavier-than-air human flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, USA, in the Flyer – a homebuilt aircraft with a light aluminium internal-combustion engine built by mechanic Charlie Taylor.

30

1863 The world’s first underground railway, the Metropolitan Line, is opened in London, running from Paddington to Farringdon.

1912 RMS Titanic, one of the world’s largest and most luxurious ships, sinks on her maiden voyage after striking an iceberg. More than 1,5OO people die because there are not enough lifeboats on board.

nificent machines!

1691 Edmond Halley designs and builds a diving bell, complete with an external window for underwater exploration.

He plunges into the River Thames and remains inside (with four friends) 18 metres below the surface.

1578 William Bourne from England designs the first navigable submarine. The boat sinks when a pair of leather pads are screwed inwards to let water flood in. Turn the screws the other way and the boat rises.

182O George Stephenson, a mechanical engineer from Northumberland, builds the world’s first railway powered without animals.

1843 Isambard Kingdom Brunel launches the SS Great Britain, the first ocean-going iron steamship to use a screw propeller.

1937 In the 193Os, it looks as if airships will become a popular way to travel. Then German airship LZ129 Hindenburg catches fire when landing in New Jersey, USA, and is destroyed, along with 36 passengers. The airship craze comes to an end.

1769 Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot demonstrates a ‘steam wagon’, a precursor to the first automobile.

1926 American rocket scientist Robert Goddard launches the world’s first liquid-fuelled rocket.

Over the next 15 years, he launches dozens more, pioneering multistage rocket design and steerable thrust.

1961 US President John F. Kennedy sets a goal of ‘landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth’ before the end of the decade, sparking the rapid development of rockets that do just that.

1783 Engineers JosephMichel and JacquesÉtienne Montgolfier build a hot-air balloon and send a sheep, a duck and a rooster up in it to see if they can survive at high altitude. The flight reaches 6OO metres and lasts 8 minutes. The animals survive, proving that air travel is safe.

2O2O Richard Noble designs a new supersonic car, Bloodhound SSC, that aims to be the first to break the 1,OOO mph barrier.

31

ANTARCTICA

The author in an inflatable boat called a zodiac off the shore of Antarctica. She’s the farthest right, waving. Turn the page to see what she’s wearing to stay warm.

p o w e e h r of T

You know humans are changing Earth’s climate, and you probably know trees can slow that change. But did you know itty bitty plankton are involved? Check out this sneak peek at the book Antarctica: The Melting Planet by Karen Romano Young and illustrated by Angela Hsieh, which is out in April.

32

M

y job in Antarctica was to help my team of scientists: Peter ‘Pete’ Countway, Patricia ‘Paty’ Matrai, and Carlton Rauschenberg, from the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Science in the US. This team was at the bottom of the world to track down invisible, microscopic beings in the rollicking sea off the Antarctic Peninsula. You might not realise it – I sure hadn’t! – but plankton (algae, protozoa, microbes and even tiny animals) living at the surface of the sea play a big role in the way clouds are formed above it.

From our small inflatable boat lurching in waves that tossed up icy spray, I helped launch a rosette of

tubes that would sink below the surface, then suck in water samples chock full of plankton.

These microscopic floating plankton live near the shore at the edge of the ice. They hold secrets to how Antarctica changes, and its future.

Like plants, some plankton photosynthesise sunlight to create food. This means they use the sun’s energy to transform simple materials into the food and energy they need.

One type of plankton called Phaeocystis produce tiny airborne gases that get churned up and spewed higher by the waves. Some scientists call them plankton farts, others call them seeds for clouds.

Water molecules

Continued on next page 

Gentoo penguins on an iceberg.

Penguins are a lot smellier than plankton farts – they like to slide on their poo!

What are penguins’ favourite type of food?

Iceberg-ers!

33

GIANT ANIMALS OF ANTARCTICA

ANTARCTICA

MADAGASCAR

AUSTRALIA

SOUTHERN OCEAN Antarctic Circle

TASMANIA

East

NEW ZEALAND

ANTARC TIC A South Pole

West

South Atlantic Ocean SOUTH AMERICA

SOUTH PACIFIC OCEAN

SEABIRDS  Wilson’s storm-petrel The smallest bird to breed in Antarctica, measuring 16–18.5 cm long.

 Continued from previous page stick onto these gassy ‘cloud seeds’ and ride them high into the sky. This is what helps make Antarctica so cloudy – a phenomenon that impacts the weather patterns of the rest of the world, as clouds contribute to the cooling or warming of Earth’s surface.

This all leads to Pete and Paty asking: as the ice retreats and Antarctica warms, what will happen to these clouds? And what will happen to the rest of the Antarctic food chain, the living things found here in surprising abundance? The research I helped with aims to answer those questions.

On the rest of these pages, you can find out about some of the biggest animals in Antarctica, whose lives are all tied so closely to the tiniest farting plankton. At the bottom, you can see how many layers of clothes I had to wear to stay warm while working in freezing temperatures on the polar ice.

Antarctica: The Melting Continent, written by Karen Romano Young and illustrated by Angela Hsieh, is out in April

 Skua 56 cm long. Preys on baby penguins, among other things.

There are 18 species of penguin worldwide, but only 7 live in Antarctica.

PENGUINS

 Macaroni penguin 7O cm tall. Lives, along with the chinstrap and gentoo, in the subAntarctic islands and northern Antarctica.

 Gentoo penguin 78 cm tall. The gentoo penguin won’t breed on the ice; it requires a rocky shore.  King penguin 98 cm tall.

Lives only in the sub-Antarctic region.  Emperor penguin 122 cm tall. One of two penguin species that live only in Antarctica.

 Chinstrap penguin 72 cm tall. More chinstraps live in Antarctica than any other penguin – an estimated 8 million.

 Adélie penguin 68 cm tall. One of the two penguin species that live only in Antarctica.

 The elusive colossal squid Estimated at 14 metres and weighing up to 5OO kg – guesswork is involved, since a completely intact adult colossal squid has not yet been found.

DRESSING UP Surviving while working in Antarctica requires all kinds of special clothes and equipment, from thermal boots to a balaclava helmet. Follow this step-by-step guide to getting ready for a day on the polar ice.

34

 Giant petrel The only petrel of close to 6O species with legs strong enough to walk steadily on land.

Its wingspan is 15O–21O cm.

 Arctic tern These birds migrate between the poles to stay as much as possible in summer light, travelling up to 2.4 million kilometres during their lifetimes.

33–36 cm long.

Sun lotion and sunglasses Long underwear and a couple of pairs of socks

Jumper or fleece

Insulating fleece layer

Snowpants

WHALES  Orca (killer whale) 7–9.4 metres long. The largest of the dolphins.

 Wandering albatross At 3.5 metres, the wingspan of these birds is the biggest of any bird on Earth.

 Minke whale 9–11 metres long. One of the smallest baleen whales.

 Southern right whale 13.4–16 metres long. Called the ‘right whale’ to hunt by whalers because they float when killed.

 Humpback whale 12–15 metres long.

These whales have the longest appendage (or projecting body part) in the world: their flippers, which may reach 5 metres.

 Fin whale 2O–26 metres long. The second largest of the whales.  Sperm whale 16–2O metres long. The largest of the toothed whales.

 Rockhopper penguin 55 cm tall.

Lives in the sub-Antarctic (areas bordering the Southern Ocean) including New Zealand.

 Blue whale 27–33.5 metres long.

The largest animal on Earth.

SEALS

 Antarctic fur seal 1.8 metres long, 15O kg.

Among the smallest seals.

Layers of lightweight jackets and tops

Hand warmers in gloves

 Weddell seal 3 metres long, 45O kg. They have the southernmost range of any seal.

 Leopard seal 3.5 metres long, up to 5OO kg. The only seal that will fight an orca.

 Crabeater seal 2.5 metres long, 25O kg.

When early explorers were hunting them, they thought the contents of their stomachs were crab, not krill.

 Ross seal 2.5 metres long, 2OO kg. They have the shortest fur of any seal.

Parka Balaclava helmet that covers your face

 Southern elephant seal 5 metres long, 4,OOO kg.

Fur mitts sometimes called ‘bear paws’ Thermal boots

Flotation jacket (if you’re boating)

Foot warmers in boots 35

China finishes building its Tiangong space station.

India’s population grows bigger than China’s, so it has the most people of any country in the world.

71Oth anniversary of Mansa Musa, the richest person in history, becoming the ruler of the Mali Empire.

22 things to know about 2O22

First official issue of Britannica Magazine is sent to subscribers’ homes! April MAGAZINE

9O years since Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly alone across the Atlantic, May 21st.

The book Dracula,

by Bram Stoker, is 125 years old, 26th May.

2OO years since Charles Babbage proposed an idea for ‘the application of machinery to the computation of astronomical and mathematical tables’, something that would eventually become the computer, 14th June.

MATARIKI ARTWORK: IRA MITCHELL, AOTEAROA, NEW ZEALAND ARTIST, WWW.ARTBYIRA.NET

8Oth anniversary of the first successful use of penicillin, an antibiotic made from mould, 14th March.

36

Beijing hosts the Winter Olympics, 4th to 2Oth February.

In New Zealand, a new public holiday, called Matariki, is celebrated for the first time. It marks the day the constellation the Pleiades rises and is the traditional New Year of the Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand, 24th June.

7Oth anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II’s accession to the throne, 6th February.

?

The Quadrantids meteor shower puts on a show. If you look into a clear night sky from a dark location on the 3rd or 4th of January, you may see shooting stars thought to be produced by dust grains left behind by an extinct comet known as 2OO3 EH1.

Jamaica marks 6O years of independence from the UK, 6th August.

1OOth anniversary of archaeologist Howard Carter and his British and Egyptian team entering King Tut’s Tomb, the first people to be there in 3,OOO years, 26th November.

6OO years since Henry VI became King of England as a 9-month-old baby. At 8, he was also crowned King of France, 1st September.

Partial eclipse of the Sun visible from the UK, 25th October.

ESA and NASA try to nudge an asteroid moon called Didymoon out of its orbit by smacking a spacecraft into it. The idea is to see if we could push an asteroid headed toward Earth out of the way, September.

The BBC’s 1OOth birthday, 18th October.

3Oth anniversary of Tanni Grey-Thompson winning her first 4 of 11 gold medals in wheelchair racing at the Paralympic Games, September.

8O years since WWII British seamen boarded a German U-boat and found the clue to cracking the German Enigma code so the Allies could understand their enemies’ messages, 3Oth October.

12Oth anniversary of the first Teddy Bear, 14th November.

15Oth anniversary of the first international football match, held in Glasgow between Scotland and England, 3Oth November.

37

INFOGRAPHIC

LIFE ON EARTH

Our planet is home to a magnificent array of creatures in unimaginable numbers.

Here are just a few…

Small Bodies, Big Numbers With around 12,000 known species, ants can be found in a wide range of habitats on Earth. While getting an exact count is impossible, estimates for the total range from trillions to possibly 1 quadrillion (that’s 1,000,000,000,000,000) individuals! There are only 7.9 billion (7,900,000,000) people.

Living Fossils Some living things have survived even the worst mass extinction events. These life forms are sometimes called living fossils because they have changed so little in such a long time.

Alive today

Fossils

Horseshoe crab One of the oldest life forms on the planet is the horseshoe crab. They have a thick protective shell and live on the seafloor. Their relatives first developed in the Ordovician period 485 million years ago.

Sharks Sharks are a diverse group of fish that first developed over 4OO million years ago. Because of habitat destruction, some sharks are now in danger of extinction.

Cockroaches Cockroaches are some of Earth’s most adaptive animals. They have been present on the planet for at least 3OO million years.

38

Bacteria In Your Body Scientists estimate that an adult human can have more than 38,OOO,OOO,OOO,OOO (38 trillion) individual bacteria living in their body.

Life In The Water The oceans of the world are teeming with different life forms.

Krill Looking like tiny shrimp, krill are an important part of the ocean food chain and a favourite food of many whales. Current estimates say that there are about 5OO trillion krill living in the world’s oceans.

Fish All together, scientists estimate that there are about 3.5 trillion (3,5OO,OOO,OOO,OOO) individual fish living in the oceans of the world.

Tardigrades Among the most resilient – and strangest looking – animals on the planet are tardigrades. These microscopic creatures live in wet habitats and can survive in sub-zero temperatures, in searing hot deserts – even in outer space!

Life With Feathers

Red-Billed Quelea Native to sub-Saharan Africa, the red-billed quelea is thought to have the largest total number of individuals among wild birds.

Estimates put their numbers at close to 1O billion birds.

Birds can be found in almost every environment on Earth.

Scientists believe that there are at least 18,000 different species of them. It is estimated that there are between 100 and 400 billion individual birds on the planet.

Chickens When it comes to total numbers, there’s one bird that stands tail and feather above the rest. Its scientific name is Gallus domesticus – but most of us call them ‘chickens’!

Estimates say that there are more than 25 billion on Earth.

EXCERPTED FROM EARTH IS BIG, WRITTEN BY STEVE TOMECEK AND ILLUSTRATED BY MARCOS FARINA

Mass Extinctions Over the last 600 million years or so there have been at least five major mass extinction events in which more than three-quarters of the life forms on Earth have suddenly died out.

Many scientists believe that we are currently in the middle of a sixth mass extinction, and humans are to blame because of the way we treat the planet. They believe that all of the animals pictured here went extinct at least in part because of human hunting.

Today, a bigger danger for other species is humans polluting the air and destroying the natural habitats that plants and animals depend on. The burning of fossil fuels has had a big impact on Earth’s climate too. The changing climate is making it impossible for some of our fellow Earthlings to survive.

Passenger pigeon

Dodo Mamo

Columbian mammoth

Tasmanian wolf

39

THE BIG READ

YOU ARE HERE

CHAPTER 1.

NOTHING TO SOMETHING

13.8 billion–45O million years ago

2. LAND AHOY! 47O mya– 252 mya

3. DINOSAURS 252 mya– 5 mya

4. HANDS FREE 5 mya–65,OOO years ago

5. YOU AND ME 2OO,OOO years ago–5OOO BCE

6. CIVILISATION BEGINS 5OOO BCE– 15OO BCE

7. MEANWHILE, IN ASIA 3OOO–2OO BCE

Absolutely Everything!

A serialisation of the bestselling history book by Christopher Lloyd, illustrations by Andy Forshaw

Chapter 1: Nothing to Something

T

ake a good look around.

Put everything you can see inside an imaginary but super-powerful crushing machine. Plants, animals, buildings, your entire house, your home town, even the country where you live. See it all get mashed into a tiny ball.

Now put the rest of the world in there too. Add the other planets in our solar system, and the Sun. Now put in our galaxy, the Milky Way, which includes between 100 and 400 billion other suns. Finally, add all the other galaxies in the universe.

See all this stuff squeezed together to the size of a tennis ball. See it crushed even smaller than the dot on top of this letter i, until you can’t see it at all. All those stars, moons and planets in a speck of nothing. That was it.

The universe began as a dot too small to see. This dot was so hot and under such pressure from all the energy trapped inside it that something big was bound to happen.

8. RISE AND FALL 14OO BCE– 476 CE

9. MEANWHILE, IN THE AMERICAS 15OO BCE– 153O CE

1O. INVENTION CONNECTION 57O–1279 CE

11. MEDIEVAL MISERY 476–1526 CE

12. GOING GLOBAL 1415–1621

About 13.8 billion years ago it did. It burst.

You’ve probably heard of the Big Bang – the theory that tries to explain the beginning of the universe. But hang on a minute – the beginning? That’s what’s so hard to understand. If the universe had a beginning, what happened before the beginning?

No one really knows. As you’ll see, there are plenty of mysteries that even modern science hasn’t solved yet.

An unimaginably big blast of energy was released when the Big Bang happened. Next came the basic forces of the universe.

Gravity is one of those forces.

It is one of the most important because it makes all the stuff in the universe pull together. Next came countless too-tiny-tosee building bricks called subatomic particles. Think of them as miniature bits of LEGO ready to build a whole wide universe. It’s amazing to think that everything in the world is made out of billions of these subatomic particles created by the Big Bang. And that includes the furniture in your home and

Focus the camera of a smartphone or tablet on this QR code to listen to an audio recording of the author reading this book extract.

Continued on next page 

13. REVOLUTIONS ALL AROUND 1543–19O5

14. WORLD AT WAR 1845–1945

15. TO BE CONTINUED...

1945–Present

THE BIG READ

 Continued from previous page the hair on your head.

About 380,000 years after the Big Bang, the universe had cooled down enough so that the subatomic particles stuck together to make larger (but still too-tiny-to-see) structures that we call atoms.

First, there was only one kind of atom – hydrogen – gathered into giant clouds of very hot dust. Then, after a long pause known as the Dark Ages, the hydrogen atoms crushed together and lit up as the first stars. That’s what stars are.

They are fiery balls full of atoms and energy left over from the Big Bang.

S

tars gathered together into galaxies of many shapes and sizes. Stars were born and stars died. More stars were born. More stars died. Then, about 4.6 billion years ago, about two-thirds of the way through the history of the universe, the leftover gas and dust cloud from an old burned-out star crushed together and lit up to form a new star. We care about this one the most. It’s the one closest to our home: the Sun. And our planet, along with several others, was formed at about the same time as the Sun, from a mixture of leftover dust and rock. This was our solar system.

Our solar system is part of the great assembly of stars called the Milky Way. We are in one of the Milky Way galaxy’s arms, spinning around the centre of the galaxy at about 800,000 kilometres per hour. You can’t feel how fast you’re going because our whole solar system is travelling with us

Timeline

at the same speed.

The early solar system was totally unsuited to life.

You couldn’t have survived there for an instant. An invisible rain of deadly particles poured out of the Sun like a storm of razorsharp daggers.

As for the planet Earth, a thick, melty crust of boiling hot, sticky lava oozed across its surface. To begin with, there was no solid ground and definitely no life. The early Earth spun so fast on its axis that each day was only about four hours long.

What happened next was a total freak. Experts believe that two young planets were on the same orbit around the Sun but moving at different speeds. One was the Earth. The other was a smaller planet known as Theia.

You can guess what happened next. Incredible as it sounds, about 4.5 billion years ago, so 100 million years after the Earth was formed, these two newborn planets smashed into each other.

Just think of the force of two planets crashing together. Theia’s outer layers instantly broke up into billions of tiny particles. They covered the Earth with a thick blanket of hot dust and rock.

Volcanoes erupted over all the Earth. Countless tonnes of gas that had been trapped inside the Earth’s core blew out into the sky, making our planet’s early atmosphere.

A

ctually, it’s just as well for life on Earth that this great collision happened. Remember those tiny deadly particles that

13.8 billion years ago The Big Bang 13.6 billion years ago The Milky Way forms.

42

An atom is made up of subatomic particles called electrons (which zip around the centre, or nucleus, of the atom) and protons and neutrons (which make up the nucleus).

Electrons

Protons and neutrons

poured out of our Sun? Well, the storm has never stopped.

Even today about 20 billion tonnes spew out of the Sun in just twenty-four hours. This scary stuff is known as the solar wind. It can even go through the toughest space suits and hardest helmets worn by astronauts.

But the solar wind doesn’t hurt us on Earth. When Theia and the Earth smashed into each other, the huge shockwave fused the two planets’ cores into one hot metallic ball. Ever since, this core has produced a magnetic shield that keeps the lethal solar wind away from our planet’s surface. The shield also keeps the world from losing its precious supplies of water, which otherwise would have been blown into

4.6 billion years ago The solar system forms.

Moon and the sky is always black and speckled with stars.

S

Above: The Earth and Theia colliding.

space. No liquid, no life. It’s as simple as that.

Today there is no visible evidence on Earth of this dramatic collision. There is no crater because the force of the impact made all the outer material vaporise into space as dust. That dust wrapped itself around the Earth in a great cloud, which eventually stuck together again thanks to gravity.

Can you guess what this enormous cloud of dust turned into? Of course! It became our beautiful luminous companion – the Moon. The Moon has no metallic core, which means it’s not protected from the solar wind. So there’s no liquid there. It also has no atmosphere, which means no sound can be heard on the

cientists are still unsure about lots of things to do with the early history of our planet Earth. That’s because the Earth has changed so much over time that there’s nothing much left of that early time for us to study. But they can look at how the world works today and come up with some good guesses.

Of all the planets in our solar system, Earth is the only one with such a large amount of liquid water.

Why does our world contain so much water? Where did it all come from? Without water, life as we know it could not have developed, so these questions are important.

Some experts think water came from deep inside the early Earth. Others have a much more other-worldly idea. They think that more than half of the world’s water may have arrived on a giant storm of icy comets or asteroids about 4 billion years ago.

Just imagine thousands of giant objects, some more than 160 kilometres wide, smashing into the early Earth. As they scorched through the atmosphere, the ice on them melted, producing vast amounts of water. All that water still exists today. It’s mostly in our giant global oceans. That’s something to think about next time you take a bath. More than half the water in your tub possibly came from outer space.

How and where did life begin? This is another important question that scientists don’t quite agree on.

Hooked?

We hope so.

Look for the next instalment of our story in the April issue of Britannica Magazine!

To be continued...

4.5 billion years ago Earth and Theia collide, forming the Moon.

43

NICA

AN

SEND IT IN!

M Y B RI T

YOUR fact of the month!

Send your favourite fact to: facts@britannicamagazine.com When the first tricycles were invented, Queen Victoria bought two! We don’t know whether she rode one herself, though.

Submitted by Iqbal, age 1O. Illustrated by Adam Allsuch Boardman

Your photos Where does your curiosity take you? Tell us by sending your photos and letters to: photos@britannicamagazine.com Cat sandwich!

‘I like cats, and I thought the sandwich needed to be cuter. The paws are holding a fish that the cat has just pulled out of the tank.’

Lucy, age 8

Paneer Tikka!

Dinosaur sleepover!

‘When I went to the Natural History Museum it was awesome! We went to bed under a big woolly mammoth with the tusks above me.’ Tilly, age 11 44

‘Paneer Tikka is a dish that is made of Indian cottage cheese. I love cooking and eating Indian food because I find it really fun to explore different kinds of spices.’

Nidhi, age 9

Ask the experts

Readers ask. Experts answer. Send your questions to: experts@britannicamagazine.com

MIRANDA LOWE

CLAIRE SMITH

Marine zoologist

Professor of Anatomy

Question: Are jellyfish made of jelly?

Question: Why do we have snot?

From Isla, age 1O

From Harry, age 11

Answer

Answer Jellyfish are not made of jelly at all, not the kind you’d have with your ice cream. A jellyfish is an animal with a three-layer body that is

SALIMA IKRAM Egyptologist

Question: Is it true that animals were mummified in ancient Egypt?

From Jaden, age 12

Answer The ancient Egyptians mummified animals as well as humans. There are four different types of animal mummy: pet, food, sacred, and votive. The ancient Egyptians loved their pets, so when they died they were mummified and buried later in their owner’s tomb. If they died after their

95 per cent water.

The outer layer is the skin that keeps the jellyfish in one piece. The middle layer of water, muscles, and nerves allows it to smell and respond to light

and also works like a skeleton to help the jellyfish keep its shape.

The inner layer is a bit like a stomach lining and helps digest food. Jellyfish eat and poo through

the same hole.

A jellyfish has no blood, heart, or brain. But like corals and sea anemones, which are also found in the ocean, they need water to survive.

owner, they were buried in the tomb’s courtyard.

Food mummies (beef ribs, steak, roasted ducks and geese) were buried with humans, so the dead people would not be hungry in the afterworld.

Sacred animals were worshipped during their lifetimes because parts of a god’s spirit lived in the animal. After the

animal’s death, the spirit of the god would move to the body of another similarly marked animal, and the first animal would be mummified and buried in a big tomb. The most common type of

animal mummy is a votive mummy.

These mummified animals were given as offerings to gods instead of statues or other gifts. Most of these animals were killed specially for the gods, and would go straight to live with the gods.

In the photo, I am holding a bronze shrew from a shrew mummy coffin found in Egypt.

Snot is actually called ‘nasal secretions’, and it does three important jobs: B Snot carries smells from the air to nerves inside your nose so the nerves can tell your brain what you’re smelling.

B Snot helps trap dust that you breathe in so it doesn’t go into your lungs.

B The antibodies in snot defend the body against disease.

The ingredients of snot are: water, proteins (including antibodies) and salt.

You make snot all the time, even when you’re asleep, swallowing as much as a litre a day. If you are making more snot than usual, you might have a cold (also known as a rhinovirus) or an allergy.

45

QUIZ

SHOW WHAT YOU KNOW (if you read the whole magazine, these should be a breeze!)

1

Birds’ eggs come in all of these colours except… a. White b. Black c. Green d. Bright yellow

2

The veiled chameleon grabs its prey with its… a. Tongue b. Claws c. Jaws d. All of the above

3

A newly invented Skittles wrapper is… a. Recyclable b. Compostable c. Flushable d. Edible

BIG Britan The

Stretch your brain power with our tricky quiz. Some questions are answered in the magazine, but others aren’t. Don’t worry if you don’t know them all. Just check out the answers bottom right and test your grown-ups, too!

4

a. Castle b. Toilet c. Desert d. Pool

A flying taxi being developed in Russia is as big as… a. An elephant b. A lorry c. A car d. A moped

1O

5

The instruments of an orchestra include… a. Violins b. French horns c. Flutes d. All of the above

6

The ancient Olmecs were the first to eat… a. Curry b. Pizza c. Ice cream d. Chocolate

7

In the state of Arizona, USA, it is against the law to let a donkey… a. Ride a motorcycle before noon b. Eat carrots before 10am c. Build a sandcastle under a full moon d. Sleep in a bath after 7pm

8

The mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope is coated with… a. Diamonds b. Rubies c. Gold d. All of the above

9 46

Astronauts practise for zero gravity in a giant…

The little brown bat can eat how many insects in an hour? a. 12 b. 120 c. 1,200 d. 12,000

11

There are more _______ than people in the world. a. Ants b. Fish c. Chickens d. All of the above

12

Plankton farts help make… a. Smells b. Clouds c. Wind d. Plastic

13

Antarctic explorers wear all of the following except…

a. Extra socks b. Balaclava c. Ballet shoes d. Snowpants

14

Bertha Benz is famous for… a. Inventing a new type of yoga b. Being the first person to drive a car for a long distance c. Founding a giant tech company d. Winning a pasty-eating contest

15

When the universe began it was smaller than… a. A star b. A breadbox c. A full stop d. All of the above

16

Early in the Earth’s history, it collided

with… a. A planet called Theia b. The Sun c. Mars d. Saturn

17

The planet Mars is named after the Roman god of…

a. War b. Love c. Hunting d. Space

18

A jellyfish is made mostly of…

a. Jelly b. Ice cream c. Water d. Salt

BONUS ROUND (now challenge yourself with questions NOT answered in the magazine!)

a. Cumulus b. Cirrus c. Stratus d. Fluffus

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24

All of these animals live ONLY in Australia, except… a. Kangaroo b. Rabbit c. Wallaby d. Koala

The first set of a centipede’s legs aren’t legs at all. They are… a. Venomous fangs b. Sensitive feelers c. Super long eyes d. Floppy tentacles

nnica Quiz 2O

What children’s toy helped scientists to understand the flow of ocean currents around the world? a. LEGO b. Rubber ducks c. Slinkies d. Rubik’s Cubes

The Wood Wide Web is a communication system used by… a. Whales and fish b. Trees and fungi c. Bacteria and viruses d. Humans and chimps

22

The four main foods that make up more than half of everything humans eat are… a. Beef, pork, chicken and fish b. Apples, tomatoes, oranges and bananas c. Chocolate, sweets, cake and ice cream d. Rice, wheat, corn and soy

23

The scientific name for fluffy white clouds is…

25

There’s a part of a shark’s body that they are amazing at replacing. In fact, sharks have 20,000 of them stored up just waiting to be useful. What body part is it? a. Their eyes b. Their fins c. Their hearts d. Their teeth

Answers: 1.d, 2.a, 3.b, 4.c, 5.d, 6.d, 7.d, 8.c, 9.d, 10.c, 11.d, 12.b, 13.c, 14.b, 15.d, 16.a, 17.a, 18.c, 19.b, 20.b, 21.b, 22.d, 23.a, 24.a, 25.d.

21

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How to make chocolate like the ancient Olmecs!

Follow our recipe to taste this extraordinary chocolate drink When you think of chocolate, you might imagine unwrapping a chocolate bar or licking an ice cream fast before it melts. But the first people to eat chocolate didn’t have sweet treats or ice cream or sugar or milk.

Those very first chocolate eaters were the Olmec of what is now southern Mexico in about 1500 BCE – during the time of Ancient Egypt.

The Olmec somehow figured out an amazing thing: if you 1) save the seeds embedded in the white flesh of the cacao fruit, 2) ferment them for four to ten days to allow the alcohols in them to change to lactic or acetic acid, 3) dry them in the sun, 4) roast them over a fire, 5) remove their shells and 6) grind them up, you get a fantastic-smelling grit. You can use that grit to make a drink that gives you a delightful feeling of calm alertness.

We know the Olmec drank chocolate because archaeologists have found pottery in their

Ingredients

Jokes editor May in the kitchen graves with traces of the chemical theobromine, which (along with some caffeine) causes that lovely feeling.

The Olmec, and the Maya and Aztec civilisations that came after them, prized chocolate. They drank it at weddings and to treat illnesses. According to Mayan mythology, humans were created partly from chocolate. The Aztecs even used the seeds as money.

But what did the stuff taste like?

Not at all like Cadbury! Why don’t you make some so you can taste it yourself?

Illustrated by Susanna Rumiz

B 2 tablespoons of roasted cocoa nibs* (they have already gone through steps 1-5 of the process described) B 1/2 litre boiling water B Optional: a pinch of cayenne pepper (Ask an adult for help when handling boiling water and using appliances.)

Instructions

1

Use a pestle and mortar to grind the cocoa nibs to about the size of ground coffee. (If you don’t have a pestle and mortar, use a coffee grinder or small food processor.)

2

Put the ground-up cocoa nibs in a litre measuring jug or other container with a pour spout. Add the cayenne pepper, but only if you like spicy food!

3 4 5

Boil the kettle. Pour the boiling water over the ground cocoa nibs and stir.

Wait 1O minutes, stirring once halfway through.

Gently pour the liquid into a cup, letting the cocoa sludge stay at the bottom of the measuring jug.

6

Set the cup in the fridge until cool, give your drink a stir, and drink it. (Once you’ve tried it, you might want to cheat a little. Go ahead and add sugar or honey and milk or a plantbased substitute. The Olmec will never know!)

48

WORD MORPHS Change the word DOG to CAT in 3 moves by changing one letter at a time. Each new word you create by changing a letter must be a proper word. Then try changing MOVE to LIFT in 4 moves. And LOAD to HERO in 4 moves.

DOG ——— ——— CAT

& games

MOVE ———— ———— ———— LIFT

LOAD ———— ———— ———— HERO

WORD OF THE MONTH

WORD SEARCH Can you spot the 25 animals hiding somewhere in our word search puzzle?

Here’s a tip to get you started: all 25 animals can be found somewhere on the pages of this magazine. Good luck!

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PONDER

(PON-duh) to think about or consider (something) carefully (verb) ‘What is the meaning of life?’ is a question that has been pondered by philosophers, theologians, scientists and probably everyone who has ever lived. In Douglas Adams’s series of comic science-fiction books, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a supercomputer called Deep Thought ponders this question for 7.5 million years, and finally comes up with the answer ‘42’.

SPACE-DOKU! E

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E M A H C B K P D O N R A A B C R Z I

E D K D F N B E N S

F C N S E O T Y D Q A E T A

C E D C C G Q P A R P D H U L L G A E X

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Fill all the empty squares so that every row, column and 2x2 box contains a picture of an astronaut, a rocket, a dog and a Mars vehicle.

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1. DOG, DOT, COT, CAT 2. MOVE, LOVE, LIVE, LIFE, LIFT 3. LOAD, LEAD, HEAD, HERD, HERO

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Illustrated by Emily Cox

49

BRITANNICA MAGAZINE Editor Andrew Pettie Design Mark Hickling, Susanna Hickling Production Sarah Epton, Abi Luscombe Contributors Kate Hale, Andy Smith (including cover illustration), Christopher Lloyd, Andy Forshaw, Matt Rake, Nicholas O’Neill, Susan Hayes, Ruby Taylor, Andrés Lozano, Chris Harrison, Bruno Gibert, Estelí Meza, Nick Sharratt, Owen Davey, Karen Romano Young, Angela Hsieh, Steve Tomecek, Marcos Farina, Adam Allsuch Boardman, Miranda Lowe, Claire Smith, Salima Ikram, Susanna Rumiz, Emily Cox With thanks to Andy Forshaw, Natalie Bellos, Casey Neumann, Katy Lennon, Meg Osborne, Nell Wood, Helen Thewlis, Helen Jones and the whole team at What on Earth Publishing Editorial Consultant Nancy Feresten Business Development David Falzani CEO Christopher Lloyd For Encyclopaedia Britannica Alison Eldrige, Managing Editor Published by What on Earth Magazines Ltd, The Black Barn, Wickhurst Farm, Leigh, Tonbridge, Kent, TN11 8PS

Spot he differ nce

Can you spot all 2O differences between these two zany illustrations?

Printing and distribution Warners Midlands PLC, The Maltings, Manor Lane, Bourne, Lincolnshire, PE1O 9PH Digital marketing Gareth Owen, Jamie French Editorial enquiries editor@britannicamagazine.com Subscriptions O1778 392479 britannicamagazine.com Picture credits Alamy: cover, pages 9, 1O, 11, 16, 18, 22, 23, 36, 37, 47.

Getty Images: cover, 8, 22, 23, 33, 34, 37. Shutterstock: pages 22, 23, 36, 37, 46, 47. iStock: 8, 2O, 22, 23, 36, 37, 45, 46, 47. NASA: 16, 17, 18, 19, 2O, 21. Saildrone & NOAA: 1O. Northwestern University: 1O. Julius Csotonyi: 11. Steve Matson: 11. Conservation Centre Vejle: 11. Lisa Harding: 33. Science Photo Library: 4O. Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions Western Australia: 43.

Natalie Walter: 48.

Copyright 2O21 What on Earth Magazines Ltd. All rights reserved.

No part of this magazine may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publishers.

50

To see the solution, go to: britannicamagazine.com/spot

k es J&oriddles Tickle your ribs and tease your brain with our favourite gags and riddles, hand-picked by our jokes editor May Q What is found in the middle of dinosaurs?

Q Where do astronauts park their space ships?

A The letter S.

A At parking meteors.

Q Why can’t skeletons play church music?

Q How do you make an octopus laugh?

A Because they have no organs.

A With ten-tickles.

Q Where does a magazine hide when it’s scared?

Q What did the road say to the earthquake?

A Between its covers.

A You crack me up!

How did the Vikings send secret messages?

Norse code!

Q How do you cut the sea in half?

Q How does the Moon cut its hair?

A With a sea saw.

A Eclipse it.

Q What gives you the power to walk through walls?

Q What’s the best thing about Switzerland?

A Doors.

Where can you go to learn more about eggs?

A I don’t know. But the flag is a big plus.

The hen-cyclopedia.

What do you say to make a Tyrannosaurus feel welcome?

‘Tea, Rex?’

A Short.

Q Why are fish so smart?

A Because they spend all their time in schools.

Q What question can you never answer ‘yes’ to?

Q How do you organise a party on Mars?

A Are you asleep yet?

A You planet.

Q I’m tall when I’m young and short when I’m old. What am I?

Q Why don’t scientists trust atoms?

A A candle.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ANDRÉS LOZANO AND ANDY SMITH

Q Which word becomes shorter when you add two letters to it?

A Because they make up everything.

51

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52

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