Hello, all Nufer's noodlers! I hear you're studying evolution, and that's perfect timing - there's a news story today about the evolution of modern amphibians (frogs and salamanders). And since people who discover things get to name them, the scientists apparently decided a creature that was part frog, part salamander should be called - you guessed it - a frogamander! (I think salamog sounds good too.)

Kermit wasn't always green

You know how a family tree tells you the people you came from (your ancestors)? Well, animals aren't very good at drawing family trees so scientists have to figure it out using skeletons (fossils) buried in the ground, sometimes buried for hundreds or thousands of years.

Sorry, bad pun. But this is a pretty cool finding - on May 14 scientists announced that they had just found the youngest supernova known.

Astronomers at the Chandra X-ray Observatory (which is part of NASA) said that the last known supernova in our galaxy occurred around 1680 - that was called Cassiopeia A.

Astronomers regularly observe supernovae in other galaxies like ours. Based on those observations, researchers estimate about three explode every century in the Milky Way.

This supernova - called by the oh-so-descriptive name of G1.9+0.3 - is 25,000 light years away from us. It should have become visible to us on Earth about 140 years ago, but we didn't have the great instruments that we do now to observe things so far away.

They all relate to Cepheid variables! Before you tune out because it sounds like a hard concept to understand, bear with me. I’ll start with a story from Greek mythology. (Notice how a lot of the constellations have stories from myths?)

Here's a fun experiment, one you've probably done already a million times: stick your arm out in front of you. Stick up your left thumb, like you're giving the thumbs up. Close one eye - see where your thumb is? Okay, now switch eyes and close the other one. Did your thumb move? The next step - move your thumb a little closer. Now do it all over again. Did it seem like your thumb was moving even more than before?