took the beatles into a planetarium where she could control the type of star fields that the beatles would see overhead she put the beatles in a container with a blacked out wall and ceiling to be sure that the beatles were not using information from landmarks of the horizon which in the wild could mean trees or rocks the beatles were still able to go about their normal business when a perfect starry night sky was projected on to the planetarium dome. but performed just as well when they were shown only the diffuse bar of light that is the plane of our milky way galaxy and while it appears the dung beetles do indeed look to the milky way for guidance it's still not known how they accomplish this feat dr jack he points out the dung beetles like crabs have compound eyes and crabs have the ability to see some of the brightest stars in the sky so it's possible the dung beetles have that same ability although it's not certain but when dung beetles are shown just a few bright stars they get quickly lost so it's not just the compound i says it's helping the beatles orient themselves now the

attention thus you know simply not having enough funds even this group of people works out of a planetarium in staten island instead of having a lab maybe where they could really look into things more closely so that's one of the things they're saying is you know there are serious reasons for not being being able to investigate this more but they're saying it's interesting enough and they have a viable enough evidence according to them to believe that there's there's quite a lot to explore. i know that you know a lot of people are critical of u.f.o.'s and aliens and extraterrestrial life how are these people actually received among the astronomers in the scientific community. well you know in the scientific community of course there's serious doubt in terms of the existence of the of these u.f.o.'s anywhere out there but it's really people are split i mean these this particular group of. other people of course that work on this they believe it's a science they believe it's a science that really under explored they believe it's definitely worth pursuing and you know in the years to come cons

there are certain things you can see every week you can go to the museum, visit the planetarium, andbring in bars and a deejay or band. it is a different feel from during the day, something different every week. tonight , we have beer and music. -- tonight we have great beer and music. it is beer week. we have a dozen local brewers in african hall. we have a deejays to set up throughout the museum and a live performance at 9:00 p.m. tonight. >> what has been your favorite part as a participant or as an observer? >> my favorite part is to walk around the aquarium in to see people with a drink in their hands, getting to know maybe somebody new, may be looking for a day, or chatting with friends. there jellyfish. i mean, they are beautiful. >> the culmination of the animals. >> it is very impressive. we do not have this at home. >> tell us a little about some of the spider's we see here on display. >> at the california academy of sciences, there is a very large collection of preserved and live specimens, which are the evidence about evolution. we have the assassin spiders, which are spi

it not only tells the time, it serves as a sort of planetarium.shows the positions of the sun and moon, the month, sunrise and sunset, and much more. every hour, people gather to watch a mechanical show that has been running for hundreds of years. it begins with "the walk of the apostles" and ends with death tolling the hour. there's certainly not enough time in one report to show you all the sights. this is just a taste of a city i love. as they say in prague, na shledanou. that means "goodbye." for "teen kids news," i'm lauren. >> that's all for this week. thanks for joining us. >> we'll see you next time with more "teen kids news." >> write to us at info@teenkidsnews.com 

took the beatles into a planetarium where she could control the type of star fields that the beatleswould see overhead she put the beatles in a container with a blacked out wall and ceiling to be sure that the beatles were not using information from the landmarks of the rise and which in the wild could mean trees or rocks the beatles were still able to go about their normal business when a perfect starry night sky was projected on to the planetarium dome. but performed just as well when they were shown only the diffuse bar of light that is the plane of our milky way galaxy and while it appears the dung beetles do indeed look to the milky way for guidance it's still not known how they accomplish this feat dr jack he points out the dung beetles like crabs have compound and crabs have the ability to see some of the brightest stars in the sky so it's possible the dung beetles have that same ability although it's not certain but when dung beetles are shown just a few bright stars they get quickly lost so it's not just the compound i was it's helping the beatles orient themselves now the q

. >> neil de grasse tyson is an astro physicist and director of the haden planetarium. good to have you here. you're a man in demand today. >> thanks for having me on. yeah, apparently. >> we all have a lot of questions about this. what we saw in russia, first off. >> extraordinary. >> this is a big planet, mostly water. is this something that happens more often than we know? >> these blasts of that magnitude, there was one in the '90s that was an air blast above india and pakistan, right when they were negotiating nuclear control. and so that's a little worrisome, because one of them might have accused the other of a first strike. if you fill in the blanks with places these might have fallen where no one would have taken notice, like the middle of the pacific or over antarctica or the north pole or northern canada, i'm imaging you would get impacts of that magnitude anywhere between one, every five to ten years. >> and we should note, a lot of people have dashboard cameras. so those pictures we saw. let me ask you about this astroid that had the near miss today. 17,000

it is the planetarium part of new york's museum of natural history.ow excited they are. >> reporter: oh, you know, i mean this is one of those rare events. i do want to bring something up, though. we talk about this type of event happening, you know, it actually did happen before, back in 1908. the outcome was much different. that in that case, the asteroid and/or comet struck the planet. it was in, of all places, siberia, happened in 1908. it apparently exploded above the surface of the planet. but still, even though it did that, it wiped out 825 square miles of forest. so think about that. in terms of danger, i mean, i think that's why scientists are watching this event so very closely. i'll bring in one scientist right now, dr. denton abel, curator of meteorites like the one you see behind me here. you've been looking at this situation very closely. at least for the past year. >> well, really only for the past week because we actually -- it was discovered as a thing that was near the earth in february of 2012. but it was only in the last few weeks

i talked with the assistant director of the planetarium in san francisco and he says meteors enter thenot often over populated areas. breaking the glass and being caught on the camera all over russia...this is exciting. it doesn't happen very often. it is for some a once-in-a-lifetime happening. >> 20,000 troops are on alert in russia and there are three aircraft doing surveys from above. the search groups have been set up to look for the remains of the meteorite. nasa can track objects if they are big enough but the agency did not know this was coming there is so much stuff out there scientists are working to change that by building and launching a satellite that would track what is called "near earth objects." >> nasa is emphasizing that there is no connection between the meteor over russia and a huge asteroid making a close trip across earth. nasa says it will be the best opportunity ever to monitor a near miss by something so large. it is half 9 size of a football field. oakland space and science there is has a telescope viewing party at 7:00 tonight and nasa is broadcasting it on

the director of the planetarium the astrophysicist, neil degrass tyson is with us. >> thanks for havinghow. >> first of all, should we be worried or is this just a complete coincidence that these two things happened? >> yes. first, it was a coincidence that they happened on the same day, just to clarify for those who might not have remembered, early morning there was an asteroid that enter ed earth's atmosphere in russia and exploded in mid-air about 20 miles up. it shattered windows and the blast was brighter than multiple suns. in fact, subsequent measurements of how much energy it contained rivaled 30 times that of the hiroshima bomb. the reason why everything wasn't just pancaked flattened from it because it exploded so high up in the atmosphere. all that was left was the energy that remained after it diluted into the space in which it exploded. later in the day, another asteroid that had a close approach, which we have known for about a year knowing the laws of physics and trajectory, you can see where it was going to come. that was of interest because it not only became between us

tell us about both events is astrophysicist and author neil degrasse tyson, director of the hayden planetarium in new york city. let's start with what happened in russia. how unusual was that in terms of size and impact? >> well, we couldn't know precisely how common that would be. all we can do is sort of look back at other sort of reported such events. for example, there was an air blast that happened in the airspace over india and pakistan back in 1990s. which happened to occur while they were in intense conversations about their nuclear buildup of arm ament. and so such a blast mimics greatly what would happened with the nuclear blast. it is an instant deposit of energy in the atmosphere. and so forth nationally we were able to tell them, we, i mean people, my scientific brethren who study this, were able to tell them no, that was not somebody's first strike it was actually a cosmic event. so that was in the 1990s. and if this had happened over the pas civic, nobody would have noticed. >> is it, in fact happening all the time? this kind of thing. >> yes, so something of this magnitude we m

derek pitts is the chief astronomer at the franklin institute planetarium in philadelphia and joins usnow. derek, are these two things related? kind of ironic you have a meteor blasting over russia just as this other one makes such a close pass. >> it really is coincidental this happened this way, jon. the two are not related to each other. thank goodness the two are not related to each other. it is interesting the two would happen at the same time. although meteors can stream into the earth's atmosphere at any time this happened to be a rather large one. jon: this big one this will make a fly-by later on today, that they have known about, they have charted it, they have seen it coming. the one that blew up over russia was probably too small for anybody to pick up on any kind of radar or anything, huh? the. >> that is really the way we can look at this. these asteroids we see coming into the earth's atmosphere today has been tracked more more than a year so we could know and understand the trajectory, how close it would come to the either, things like that. meteors come streaking throu