Summer School Blog

An Animal that can survive even up until the sun quits shinning? No... that can't be true. But it is. Tardigrades, also known as water bears, are tiny water-dwelling creatures that are famed for their resiliency. They can survive for up to 30 years without food or water and can endure extreme temperature changes. WHAT?! No, not okay. They can even survive astrophysical events, like supernovas and asteroid strikes. I'm sorry but no way is that even possible! If they can survive all that, does that mean they can survive someone stepping on them? Are they completely impossible to kill? I'm only asking because tiny, eight-legged things resemble spiders, and I hate spiders.

"#Cleanup on Aisle 101" happened to be the statement of the day in Oregon yesterday. A truck carrying 7500 pounds of slithering fish in 13 different containers over turned on US Route 101 after the 59-year-old driver was unable to stop the truck for construction work. There were no major injuries to humans but many of the creatures were lost. Initially the authorities thought that they were eels, but they are actually Hagfish, which are commonly know as slime eels. The road was closed for a few hours but reopened by 4pm. Honestly this is slightly terrifying. There are so many different things about this that just give me the creeps, a lot of them not even mentioned in the article. For instance, a truck carrying 13 containers cannot stop and spills HAGFISH all over the highway, that was traveling to Korea for consumption... 13, the most unlucky number that almost every culture has superstitions on, is the number of containers being carried. Who ever loaded this truck, you&#

Prince William, AKA the Duke of Cambridge, hosted a send off for the English women's soccer team. The whole thing mostly consisted of him playing soccer with a lot of young children and it is "Royally Adorable" says Allison Wild of BuzzFeed News. This really is quite adorable and it makes me so happy to see members of the Royal family getting out there and doing things like this with their community. In many on the pictures posted of the event, Prince William looks more like a coach than a prince and it is so amazing to see. Its on very rare occasions that you see important people doing things that put them in the position of a middle class person. It makes them so much more relatable to in the publics eye.

For the first time in 99 years will the sun undergo a full solar eclipse that can be seen from all across the continental US. NASA is in full motion preparing for this event to show the eclipse from at least 65 different cameras; each giving a different and unique vantage point of the rare celestial event. NASA also plans on airing a multi-hour broadcast called Eclipse Across America: Through the Eyes of NASA that will be showing the eclipse live and giving information and coverage on activities in parks, libraries, stadiums, festivals and museums across the nation. I'm pretty excited for this event. Mostly because it is a once in a life time thing and I get to experience it with my family. We are actually going camping in Casper WY for it then coming back the next day to go to a Trace Adkins Concert at the fair.

CASPAR (Compact Accelerator System for Performing Astrophysical Research), was assembled 4,850 feet underground in the Lead, South Dakota Sanford Underground Research Facility after being transferred from Notre Dome, its original home. Being so far under the earth, the Compact Accelerator System is protected from cosmic radiation that could interfere with the experiments being tested. CASPAR "is a 50-foot-long, low-energy particle accelerator that will begin data collection this fall" collecting the answers to questions like How do stars run? How do they produce energy? and, How are elements made?. I find this very exciting because I love learning about space and where things actually came form. This experiment will being finally answering some of the questions I've always had and I'm very excited to start finally getting some answers.

After 20 years of 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone', Colleges are taking full advantage of the popularity and major interest in the Harry Potter series. Creating courses similar to those of Hogwarts, colleges gain the interest in many young adults and use this to look deeper into the Harry Potter world and compare it to our own world. They take the ideas that J.K. Rowling came up and study deeper into them, such as determining why she used a certain social culture in the magic world compared to our own. I find this so cool and creative of these colleges. It brings something that has such a huge fan base into education to take closer looks at the ideas, morals, and cultural choices of J.K. Rowling.