#scientistssay

Echolocation (noun, “EK-oh-lo-KAY-shun”)

This word describes a process that some animals use to sense their environments with sound.

Many animals depend on sight to find food and survey their surroundings. But a handful of creatures — such as bats, dolphins and shrews — use sound to sense the world around them. Sound travels through the air or water in waves. When these sound waves bump into an object, they bounce off it.

To use echolocation, animals first make a sound. Then, they listen for the echoes from the sound waves bouncing off objects in their surroundings. The animal’s brain can make sense of the sounds and echoes to navigate or find prey.

With echolocation, bats can fly through dark caves and locate insects in the dark of night. Whales make clicks that help them find food in the deep, dark ocean. And even some humans echolocate. Some people who are blind click with their tongues to make sounds. They can make sense of the echoes to avoid bumping into an obstacle.

A few technologies mimic the way animals echolocate. For example, submarines use what’s called sonar to navigate. Sonar systems send out pulses of sound and detect the echoes. And ultrasound, a technology used in medicine, uses sound waves to take pictures inside of the body.

In a sentence

To stay submerged longer, whales recycle air that they’ve used to make echolocation clicks.  

Atom (noun, “AA-tom”)

An atom is the smallest possible piece of a chemical element. All matter is made of groups of atoms bonded, or connected, together into molecules.

The word atom comes from the Greek word “atomos,” which means “indivisible.”  Scientists used to think that atoms could not be broken up into smaller parts. But today, we know that they can. Atoms are made of smaller parts — protons, electrons and neutrons. Protons are particles with a tiny positive electrical charge. Neutrons have no electrical charge. And electrons have a tiny negative charge.

In an atom, the protons and neutrons hang out in the center, or nucleus. The electrons travel in a cloud around the nucleus. The cloud is split into layers called orbitals, where electrons are likely to be. Atoms of different elements have different numbers of protons, neutrons and electrons. The number of protons an atom has (its atomic number) determines which element it is.

The combination of protons, neutrons and electrons in an atom give each element its unique properties. For example, the four electrons in carbon’s outermost layer give this atom the ability to bond with up to four other atoms. This makes carbon an essential building block for every living thing on Earth. The 226 neutrons in radium-226 make this atom glow in the dark.

Because they are made of smaller particles, atoms can be broken up into pieces. Once that happens, though, the pieces are no longer a part of one chemical element. Break up a carbon atom, and you no longer have carbon. So a carbon atom is still the smallest possible piece of carbon.

In a sentence

Cut a grape in half, pop it in the microwave, and you’ll get a tiny fireball of electrons and electrically-charged atoms.

Quasar (noun, “KWAY-sar”)

This word describes the distant and superbright center of some galaxies.

Galaxies, like our own Milky Way, are huge collections of stars. All known galaxies that are bigger than a certain size have supermassive black holes near their center. Supermassive black holes are the most massive of black holes. These objects have a powerful gravitational pull. Quasars can be found at the cores of galaxies where one of these giants is sloppily slurping up matter. As the supermassive black hole sucks in mass, gas and dust swirl around it. This matter moves so quickly that it gives off a lot of energy.

Scientists Say: Black hole

Some of this energy is given off as radio waves. That’s why these objects were first called “quasi-stellar radio sources,” or quasars for short. But quasars emit all types of radiation, including X-rays and visible light. A quasar’s light outshines all the other stars in its galaxy. In fact, quasars are some of the brightest objects known. They can be trillions of times brighter than the sun.

Most quasars that astronomers and others have found are billions of light-years away from Earth. Because quasars are so far way, people need telescopes to see them.

In a sentence

Inside a distant quasar, two black holes may smash together in about a million years.

Spaghettification (noun, “spuh-GEH-tiff-ICK-cay-shun”)

This word describes how extreme gravity, like that of a black hole, stretches an object into a noodle-like strand.

Black holes are objects in space that contain a huge amount of mass crammed into a small area. As a result, they have intense gravity. Not even light can escape a black hole. An object nearing a black hole experiences much more gravity on the side nearest the black hole. This difference in gravity’s pull stretches the object into a thin string, like a piece of spaghetti. It’s what happens to stars near a black hole. And it’s what would happen if a spacecraft or person ventured too close as well. No need to worry, though. Even the closest black holes are thousands of light-years away.

Scientists Say: Black hole

When a star wanders too close to a black hole, it gets pulled into a long string of gas. Some of the star’s matter gets thrown back into space. The rest of the star’s leftovers orbit the black hole. This material, mostly gas, speeds around and crashes into itself. This orbiting gas forms what’s called an accretion disk. This glowing ring of gas spiraling around the black hole emits a lot of light. Scientists can observe that light to learn about the star-killing event and the black hole itself.

In a sentence

!n 2019, scientists got an early look at the spaghettification of a star.

Protein (noun, “PRO-TEAN”)

This word describes a type of molecule made up of building blocks called amino acids. Proteins are large molecules that perform many roles in living things. Some proteins are enzymes. These molecules speed up reactions important for life. Other proteins form structures in cells, such as channels that let molecules travel across the cell’s membrane. Proteins can also hold a group of cells together to form a tissue. Some proteins aid the immune system. Antibodies are one such protein. Antibodies allow the body to recognize and respond to invaders such as viruses or bacteria. And some proteins help in the process of making new molecules, including other proteins.    

Structures inside of cells, called ribosomes, build proteins. To make proteins, ribosomes follow instructions in an organism’s DNA. First, a type of molecule called RNA copies these instructions from the DNA. Then, the RNA brings these instructions to the ribosome, which “reads” them. These instructions direct the ribosome to string together amino acids to make a protein.

There are only about 20 amino acids. But different combinations of these building blocks produce a huge number of proteins. Scientists have identified tens of thousands of proteins in the human body. But people may contain hundreds of thousands of proteins.

People need to eat protein as part of a healthy diet. Foods that contain high amounts of protein include eggs, meat, nuts and some veggies. When we eat, our bodies break down the proteins in our food into smaller molecules. Then our cells can then use those molecules to build new proteins.

In a sentence

Insects pack a nutritional punch, in part because they’re full of protein.

Brainwaves (noun, “BRANE-WAVES”)

This word describes patterns of the brain’s electrical activity. This activity comes from the brain’s nerve cells, called neurons. When neurons communicate, they make tiny zaps of electricity. This is called “firing.” Some neurons fire when a person is thinking. Other neurons relate to vision, firing when a person looks at a face or detects an object. Still others coordinate motion. There are billions of neurons in the human brain. The combined electrical activity of all those neurons creates patterns that look like spikes or waves.

Explainer: How to read brain activity

Scientists can eavesdrop on brainwaves with sensors that detect electrical activity. Such sensors can be attached to a cap, helmet or headband. One technique that detects and records brainwaves is called EEG. That’s short for electroencephalograph (Ee-LEK-tro-en-SEF-uh-lo-graf). EEG recordings can help scientists connect what a person is doing with electrical activity in the brain.

For example, scientists snooped on the brains of children as they looked at words while learning to read. From the kids’ brainwaves, scientists could see the steps in reading unfold in the brain. Some signals related to when students identified letters. Other signals popped up when students grouped letters into sounds. Still others appeared when kids grasped the word’s meaning.

In a sentence

When students are paying attention together, their brainwaves sync up.

Photon (noun, “FOH-TAHN”)

This word describes a particle of light. A photon is a unit of light that cannot be broken into smaller pieces. This particle is the tiniest possible packet of electromagnetic radiation.

Explainer: Quantum is the world of the super small

Light’s motion is often described as a wave. But light also has some properties of a particle. One of those properties is that photons can be counted, like beads on a string.

Photons can have different energies. A photon of visible light, such as light that’s the color blue, has a lower energy than an X-ray photon. Scientists can use beams of high-energy X-ray photons to study the properties of matter and molecules.

In a sentence

Human eyes are sensitive enough to see a single photon.

Echolocation (noun, “EK-oh-lo-KAY-shun”)

This word describes a process that some animals use to sense their environments with sound.

Many animals depend on sight to find food and survey their surroundings. But a handful of creatures — such as bats, dolphins and shrews — use sound to sense the world around them. Sound travels through the air or water in waves. When these sound waves bump into an object, they bounce off it.

To use echolocation, animals first make a sound. Then, they listen for the echoes from the sound waves bouncing off objects in their surroundings. The animal’s brain can make sense of the sounds and echoes to navigate or find prey.

With echolocation, bats can fly through dark caves and locate insects in the dark of night. Whales make clicks that help them find food in the deep, dark ocean. And even some humans echolocate. Some people who are blind click with their tongues to make sounds. They can make sense of the echoes to avoid bumping into an obstacle.

A few technologies mimic the way animals echolocate. For example, submarines use what’s called sonar to navigate. Sonar systems send out pulses of sound and detect the echoes. And ultrasound, a technology used in medicine, uses sound waves to take pictures inside of the body.

In a sentence

To stay submerged longer, whales recycle air that they’ve used to make echolocation clicks.