Who the Mayans were

With so much interest shown in the Mayans last year many of you would have been curious as to who these people were.

An ancient tribe of Central American Indians called the Olmecs settled in the rainforests of the Yucatan Peninsula of Central America around 2500 BCE. About two thousand years later, around 400 BCE, a new people called the Maya suddenly appeared.No one knows where they came from, but they arrived with amazing skills. They were an advanced civilization. They soon took over the Yucatan Peninsula of Central America.

The Maya were very clever people. Their system of mathematics was among the most sophisticated in the ancient world. They were also good astronomers and they predicted many things. It was their calendar that caused panic about the end of the world.

Around 900 CE, the Maya cities were abandoned.

A few people continued to live in the cities, but mostly, the cities were empty. The people had, for the most part, disappeared, gone somewhere else. Those who remained were unable or unwilling to repair the magnificent roads and buildings. The great Maya cities fell into ruin.

To this day, nobody knows where the Maya people came from before they arrived in the Yucatan Peninsula, and nobody knows why they left or where they went when most of the Maya people abandoned their cities and disappeared from the Yucatan Peninsula. That's why the Mayans are sometimes referred to as "the mysterious Mayas".

Like the ancient Romans, the Mayans were master builders.During the 1500 years or so that the Maya Indians made their home in Central America, they build hundreds of religious centres, each filled with huge pyramids and elaborate temples. Machu Picchu is declared one of the wonders of the world.

Today, archaeologists remain very curious about these ancient people.

There are not many, but there are some Maya people still living in Central America, descendants of the ancient Mayans who remained behind in the nearly deserted cities. Still today, their crafts are amongs the most beautiful in the world.

What lady birds are

They are a kind of beetle which belong to the family of insects. They have three parts to their bodies: head, thorax and abdomen. They have wings. The front part of the wings is hard and covers both the delicate back part of the wings and the abdomen when the beetles are not flying. They have six legs which are joined to the thorax (the middle part) of their bodies.

The legs are short and are usually hidden under their bodies. They have antennae with a little knob on the end. This kind of antennae is called clubbed antennae.

Ladybirds are called by different names, such as ladybug, ladybird beetles and lady beetles.

There are about 4,500 different species, or kinds, of ladybird in the world. They are different sizes, colours and patterns. Sizes are from 1 to 10mm, depending on the kind of ladybird. Females are often larger than males.Most kinds of ladybird are useful to humans because they eat tiny insect pests. A few species are pests themselves however, and eat plants. Adult ladybirds are oval and domed in shape, and most kinds are brightly coloured to warn predators that lthey do not taste nice, and may even be rather poisonous to eat. Ladybirds can ooze a bad smelling fluid from their leg joints as a further warning to birds and animals that try to eat them.

What meteor showers are

A meteor shower is a celestial event in which a number of meteors are observed to radiate from one point in the night sky.

These meteors are caused by streams of cosmic debris called meteoroids entering Earth's atmosphere at extremely high speeds on parallel trajectories.

Most meteors are smaller than a grain of sand, so almost all of them disintegrate and never hit the Earth's surface. Intense or unusual meteor showers are known as meteor outbursts and meteor storms, which may produce greater than 1,000 meteors an hour.

Recently a meteor shower was experienced in Sri Lanka and people were asked to refrain from touching any particles that fell from the skies. Did anyone of you see it?As meteor shower particles are all travelling in parallel paths, and at the same velocity, they will all appear to radiate away from a single point in the sky to an observer below . Meteor showers are almost always named after the constellation from which the meteors appear to originate.

This "fixed point" slowly moves across the sky during the night due to the Earth turning on its axis, the same reason the stars appear to slowly march across the sky.
 

What asteroids are

Asteroids are large rocks in outer space. In fact they are left over materials from the formation of the Solar System. These materials were never incorporated into a planet because of their proximity to Jupiter's strong gravity.

Some asteroids can be large like Ceres,while others can be as small as a grain of sand. Due to their smaller size, asteroids do not have enough gravity to pull themselves into the shape of a ball.

Astronomers group asteroids into different categories based on the way they reflect sunlight.

The asteroid belt is divided into an inner belt and an outer belt. The inner belt, which is made up of asteroids that are within 250 million miles (402 million km) of the Sun, contains asteroids that are made of metals. The outer belt, which includes asteroids 250 million miles (402 million km) beyond the Sun, consists of rocky asteroids. These asteroids appear darker than the asteroids of the inner belt, and are rich in carbon.

Why there is a magnetic field around Earth

Scientists think that movements of metal, like currents in the oceans, create the magnetic field that surrounds the Earth. This magnetic field extends out from the Earth for thousands of kilometres, and redirects the solar wind blowing from the Sun.

Without this magnetic field, the solar wind would blow away the lightest parts of our atmosphere, and make our environment more like cold, dead Mars.