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Saturn can be seen with a naked eye,although its rings are only visible with a microscope.The rings span up to 175,000 miles.The the ting is really thin. Saturn's rings is made of tiny particles.Although it id proven that the rings are not static.

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Ever since 2008 Greece has been in financial trouble and they keep slipping deeper.Greece was supposed to pay back a big loan on June 30, but the prime minister said the country was unable to do so.Greece has had help from other banks witch led to a bailout fund of 240 billion euros but Greece had to make a big change. The loan helped pay off other countries but did not stretch the countries economy.The country is also struggling with high unemployment rates 25% of the population is out of work.

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In this article NASA has put pictures about pluto from Boulder,CO. The pictures show that pluto is dark, cold ,and icy. The next target they said to reach is to look one billion mile beyond pluto. How the got the pictures is they used Jupiter's orbit to fling the space craft towards Pluto. But right now they can only see 44 miles beyond pluto. This reminds me of when they put Neil Armstrong on the moon.

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Morgan Geyer Who was the boss before dinosaurs 

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Morgan Geyer Who was the boss before dinosaurs 

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Scientists found dinosaur bones that have been there for 200,000. That means 200,000 years ago several dinosaurs roamed the earth. One of the dinosaurs was a large hippo like herbivore. The other dinosaur was crocodile like. Those were some of the rulers before dinosaurs.

Connection: I know that scientists recently found new Mammoth (and other dinosaur) bones but these prehistoric bones were even older.

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Lauren Livengood-- The President Visits Africa

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Lauren Livengood-- The President Visits Africa

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On July 24 President Obama visited Kenya and Ethiopia to address human rights, trade and politics with the African leaders. He went to Kenya and Ethiopia not only to discuss these topics but to also strengthen the U.S. and African relationship. While the president was there he gave a speech at Global Entrepreneurship Summit, something he deeply cares about. He discussed "the importance of innovation," to a country that has been struggling economically. In the part of the article where it says that Obama discussed human rights and politics with African leaders, it made me think of all the refugees and migrants fleeing to Europe because of wars in Africa.

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During the second part of the Republican debate, there is a fierce argument between the favored republicans. most people are surprised that there are so many candidates this early to the election. Some of the candidates, such as Donald Trump, are going to help enforce the immigration problem. Then during the end they are remembearing Ronald Reagon , one of the best US presidents. This reminds me of the one edition of the CNN student news where they went over the first part of the debate

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Donald Trump says that if he is elected president he will deport 11-12 million undocumented immigrants. He also will be sending them back and will make a wall between Mexico and the United States. That is a lot of people but it could help us with keeping terrorists out of the country. I agree with Trump because they could be dangerous to us. This reminded me of some time when we watched CNN Student News about the time when we saw parts of the republican debate.

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The second round of the republican debate took place on September sixteenth. The debate focused on the economy, imagrtion, and national security. The eleven top republican candidates, including the republican front runner Donald Trump, talked about these topics and more. They also touched on honoring Ronald Regain for his actions as president. A connection is that other countries vote for their presidents often.

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Lexi Scarborough- Who was boss before the Dinos

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Lexi Scarborough- Who was boss before the Dinos

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We all know about the Jurassic period, but not a lot of people know about the Triassic period. During the Triassic period crocodile like reptiles were the main predators. Paleontologists learned that 200,000,000 years ago, something big happened. It changed life on land and in the ocean. The thing that happened was big that it made half of all the living things on Earth die. The crocodile like reptiles died, so then the dinos became boss.

CONNECTION:

This reminds me of how we discovered a new human species, it made me believe in dinosaurs and cavemen more.

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Lauren Livengoood: The President Visits Africa

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Lauren Livengoood: The President Visits Africa

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On July 24 President Obama visited Kenya and Ethiopia to discuss human rights, trade and politics with the African leaders. He went to Kenya and Ethiopia not only to discuss these topics but to also strengthen the U.S. and African relationship. While the president was there he gave a speech at Global Entepreneurship SummitGlobal Entrepreneurship Summit,

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Iran and the USA were some of the countries to make a pact when we found out they were building a nuclear bomb.The U.S. Found out they had the material in 2002.I used to study how they were made and hitler had the material.

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During the Triassic period a crocodile like animal were the top predictors. These animals were meat eaters. These animals were really important because these animals killed off half of the dinosaurs population. Then one mysterious event caused all of the animals to be eliminated. My connection with this article was erlier in the year on CNN student news we watch something about reamanes of something in a cave in South Africa that could be a dinosaur. My article the boss of dinosaurs.

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Jason Rino Big Clock Fixed with a Few Small Pennies

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Jason Rino Big Clock Fixed with a Few Small Pennies

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The famous Britain clock, Big Ben, was noticed to be about six seconds behind. The famous landmark had been said was "a little temperamental with age". The timing was fixed by officials, stacking pennies on the pendulum one by one to fine tune the clock within normal speed. The problem was noticed by the staff at BBC Radio, who broadcasts live at 6 pm.

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Some scientists say dinosaurs used to rule everything until they found a fossil that dates back to 230 million years ago. Scientists say that dinosaurs originally date back to 200 million years ago. They also say that the Placerias species changed the earth before people and dinosaurs came. Then they became extinct.

I think this relates to rhinos becoming extinct.

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Every year thousands of people send records to Guinness world records. On September 11 Guinness Realesed the 2015 version with 40,000 records. The latest record was largest feet size,26. They also had the fastest Tortice going 0.6 mph.

My connection was me and my friends tried to make the longest text message of 2015 but we never submitted it.

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Ethan Martin Who Was the Boss Before the Dinosaurs?

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Ethan Martin Who Was the Boss Before the Dinosaurs?

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The animal that was the boss before the dinosaurs is large crocodile-like reptiles. They hunted the herbivores (plant eaters).These animals were at the top of the food chain. They were the total boss, nothing would want to go near this monster- like creature. This story reminded me of when I read about people starting to hunt crocodiles.

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Bodie Lutz: who was the boss before dinosaurs?

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Bodie Lutz: who was the boss before dinosaurs?

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A long time ago during the Jurassic period, dinosaurs were the most prominent animals. Before the Jurassic period, there was the Triassic period. Paleontologists discovered that during the Triassic period, the most dominant animal was crocodile-like creatures. Paleontologists also discovered that something happened 200 million years ago that caused the crocodile-like creatures to go extinct.

I can relate this text to the situation where the white rhinos are going extinct in Africa.

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What's wrong with Saturn's rings

Saturn's rings are big but some are only 30 feet tall. Saturn's rings are made of trillions of particles. The rings of Saturn can't be seen with the naked eye. The rings of Saturn were discover by a scientist looking through a teliscope.

Sautern's rings are like earth

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Saturn's rings are gigantic, but they are thin, and some are only 30 feet high. They are made up of billions of particles, from dust sized frozen grains to much larger pieces of water ice and rocky particles in ice. Because of that, they are not visible unless used with a telescope. One thing we do know is that their formation is a continuous process. I can relate to this story, because my older sister did a project on Saturn's rings.

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Lexi W - Who was the Boss before Dinosaurs

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Lexi W - Who was the Boss before Dinosaurs

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Dinosaurs were said to be the very first on earth but they found otherwise. Before the dinosaurs there was many mammal forerunners and some crocodile like reptiles. What happened to them was that they dominated the landscape but after they did that they were extinct. This discovery was proven to be why half the animals on earth got here.

I have read a little bit about who dinosaurs weren't the first ones.

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President Obama visited Kenya and Ethiopia on July 26 to address human rights, trade and politics with the African leaders. Obama is now the only seated president to visit Africa

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Kasey Fox - Nepal: Finally a Constitution

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Kasey Fox - Nepal: Finally a Constitution

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Nepal has been under the reign of the Shas, a Hindu family that took over the government of Nepal in 1768, but now the government of Nepal has been dramatically changed. After the Shas were assassinated a close relative took over. Rebels have taken over since the assassination of the Shas in 2001 and with their unstable government they have made an executive decision to form a constitution for the country of Nepal. Their government will soon be similar to that of the United Kingdom, but for now Nepal is taking baby steps in the right direction to democracy. This story of Nepal going through the process of becoming a democracy has reminded myself of the Republic debates and how candidates are presenting their next steps for the government of the United States of America.

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Bodie Lutz: who was the boss before dinosaurs?

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Bodie Lutz: who was the boss before dinosaurs?

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A long time ago during the Jurassic period, the dinosaurs were the most prominent creatures. But before the Jurassic period there was a period

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Saturn's rings were discovered on the year 1610 by Galileo. Saturn's rings are gigantic having a span of 175,000 miles around the planet. They are also very thin but the rings can get to be 30 feet wide. even though you can see Saturn with the naked eye you can't see its rings without a telescope. My connection is that in 5th grade I learned about Galileo and his interest in the stars and planets.

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What's up with Saturn's rings? - Maloree Robertson

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What's up with Saturn's rings? - Maloree Robertson

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In the article, it talks about how Saturn's rings, how they are made, and how they look the way they do. Even though they look continuous, they are actually made of tiny particles of dust, and rocky and icy particles wrapped on ice. Nobody knows how or when the rings were made, but we do know that they are a continuous process and not static. Thanks to tech like probes that land on Saturn, we are able to continue studying these rings.

Connection: The rings are kind of like Earth, where Earth looks like a giant marble from far away, but close up, there are valleys, mountains, houses, lakes, seas, and a lot of other things.

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Every year there are tens of thousands of record sent to guinness. Only about 80% of those are sent into consideration. When agreed they will send in a judge to record the guinness record. There are nearly 4,000 new records put into the book each year. The first published world record book was in 1955.

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The Saturn article explains a little more about the rings that are surrounding Saturn. It tell you more about what they are made of and how they were made. They were discovered in 1610 when Galileo when he invented the telescope.

This reminds me about the new pictures and studies of Pluto.

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Alex Lauer~ What's Up With Saturns Rings 

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Alex Lauer~ What's Up With Saturns Rings 

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Saturn is a planet you can see with a naked eye, but you can't see it's rings. That's because they are so thin. Scientists don't know when Saturns rings appeared, but they know that you can only see the rings with the planet when you use a telescope.

This reminds me of how people found water in Mars, because now they have found more cool things about space.

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Ethan Reed 2015 Release Of The World Records!

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Ethan Reed 2015 Release Of The World Records!

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"The 2015 Guinness World Record finally got released in September. Their are about more than 40,000 catagory's in the record Book. Yet the Record Book only holds about 4,000 Records each year. But people will do almost anything to get into the World Records, anything". The founder of the World Records was Sir Hugh Beaver in the 1951s during an arguement of the fastest bird in Europe.

My connection is that i wanted to win a world record to but it seemed to hard to win one. Also because its more challaged.

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Jack Mancini Who Was Boss Before Dinosaurs

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Jack Mancini Who Was Boss Before Dinosaurs

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Paleontologists who's study fossils have fossil records dating back to 230 million years ago which is the time of the Triassic period. They have found a huge discovery that has changed the land and the sea. The discovery caused more than half of the large reptilian creatures to go extinct.

My connection is as I was reading I remembered reading books when I was younger because when I was younger I was fascinated with the topic of dinosaurs.

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Saturn is a planet that you can see with a naked eye.It is also a planet that it ring can not be seen without a telescope.Saturn is also one of the biggest planet.Saturn's ring is almost between The Earth and The moon.One connection is that Saturn rotates at the same speed as Earth which is 175,000.

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September was a big month for the republican debates, which 15 republicans ran against each other to be the parties nomination. They mainly talked about the large topic which is the boarder between Mexico and America. Mainly all of them agreed that the boarders patrol should be improved, while Trump stood out with the idea of building a wall. At the end of the debate Trump was still at the top of polls for the Republican Party.

Connection:

This must be the republican debate that CNN followed for a while!

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On July 14, seven countries, including the U.S and Iran, reached a historic agreement on Iran's nuclear program.

For a long time now, countries around the world have been concerned that Iran is trying to build a nuclear bomb. The U.S had been in negotiations with Iran for almost two years, with support from UK, France, China, Russia and Germany.

When the deal was announced in Vienna, Austria, there was jubilation on the streets of Tehran, Iran's capital. However, the deal sparked controversy all across the world. While many called it a 'win-win situation', others such as Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu perceived the deal as a 'historic mistake'.

In the U.S, Republicans vowed to block the deal with a vote. Last Thursday, the U.S Senate delivered a victory to President Obama, allowing the Iran deal to go through.

A Little Background

It was in 2002 that the world learned about Iran's secret plans for developing capability to build nuclear weapons. The matter came to light when a group opposed to the Government, revealed information about Iran's nuclear activity.

The country by that time had already acquired nuclear material and was making substantial progress to enrich uranium. Uranium is the fuel that is used by reactors to generate nuclear power. But it also has the capability to build weapons.

Worried about the safety and security in the region, US and its European allies began pressing Iran to stop enriching uranium. Talks failed to make progress and the inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) referred the matter to the UN Security Council. Sanctions were imposed on Iran on several occasions, each one more severe than the previous one.

What Does The New Deal Involve?

Per the Vienna agreement, Iran has agreed to limit its uranium production and reduce its stockpile by 98%. It will also be required to shut down some of its most important nuclear plants, one of which will be converted for scientific research. In addition, Iran will stop manufacturing weapon-grade plutonium (another radioactive material), and not build any additional plutonium reactors for at least 15 years.

Iran has also agreed to provide greater visibility into its nuclear program. It will allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to keep constant surveillance and carry out inspections up to a period of 25 years. In return, the US and other countries will lift the harsh economic sanctions they have currently placed on Iran.

Why Did Iran Agree To The Deal?

The sanctions that had been in place so far were quite severe, and had crippled the country. Iran's ability to export oil was restricted, which in turn had affected the country's economy. Iranian banks could not work with the West, which affected the value of Iran's money. These sanctions had led to rising food and fuel prices which were affecting the common people.

Iran is also worried about the spread of ISIS extremists who have taken over large parts of Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. ISIS extremists practice the Sunni form of Islam and could be a potential threat to Shia Iran's existence (Read about Sunni and Shia Islam here). Iran has been engaged in a war with ISIS, and support from the international community is important at this time.

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On July 14, seven countries, including the U.S and Iran, reached a historic agreement on Iran's nuclear program. For a long time now, countries around the world have been concerned that Iran is trying to build a nuclear bomb. The U.S had been in negotiations with Iran for almost two years, with support from UK, France, China, Russia and Germany.

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When we think of Nepal, the massive earthquake that devastated the country earlier this year comes to mind (read here). But, the country has also been in the midst of a political quake.

Nepal has been transitioning from a kingdom to a republic. The country has not had an official constitution, with the different political groups failing to agree on details. The earthquake in April 2015 was a wake up call. Nepal was ill-equipped to handle the scale of the disaster as 9,000 people died. The lack of a working constitution was blamed for the poor response.

This past week, Nepal's Parliament approved the country's first official constitution. The country has been divided into seven states, each with a legislative body and a Chief Minister (head of state). Nepal has also decided that it would be secular country - in other words, it will not have any official religion. This move has angered the majority Hindus, and led to protests.

A Royal Kingdom

Nepal lies on the crossroads of India and China. It is the starting point for trekkers eager to scale Mt. Everest, the world's highest peak. For centuries, the country has attracted settlers from India, and been a resting stop on trading routes. It is also the birthplace of Gautama Buddha - a royal prince who abandoned his kingdom in pursuit of enlightenment, and founded the religion of Buddhism.

In 1768, Prithvi Narayan Shah, the ruler of a tiny mountain kingdom, unified the country by attacking and conquering neighboring kingdoms. Nepal came under one ruling family - the Shahs. The Shahs, originally from India, practiced Hinduism (the main religion in India today). Hence Nepal became a Hindu kingdom.

For more than two centuries, the Shah dynasty enjoyed complete control. The King was considered an incarnation of God, and ruled by divine right. But all that changed in 2001.

The Dawn Of Democracy

When democratic movements started sweeping across the world in the late 1980's, Nepal was caught in the storm. Opposition groups demanded that the country be handed back to its people, and the King declared a constitutional head (similar to the British monarchy).

King Birendra of Nepal agreed to the will of the people and elections were held. But the King retained the right to dissolve the Parliament and controlled the army. The initial experiments in democracy failed, and the country fell into a long drawn civil war.

The beginning of the end for the Shah kings came in the summer of 2001. King Birendra, along with nine other members of the royal family, was assassinated in the palace by his son - crown prince Dipendra, who was drunk and later killed himself. The King's younger brother, Gyanendra took over the kingdom. Many in Nepal believe that Gyanendra had a hand in the assassination, and that he suspended investigations into the killings too quickly.

Gyanendra tried to change Nepal back into a monarchy and seized absolute power. But he did not succeed and was ousted in 2006 by the rebels. Since then, Nepal has been on a long and rocky road to democracy. The new constitution is certainly a step in the right direction.

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When we think of Nepal, the massive earthquake that devastated the country earlier this year comes to mind (read here). But, the country has also been in the midst of a political quake. Nepal has been transitioning from a kingdom to a republic.

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Talk about record breaking. It seems folks are willing to do anything - weird and wacky, to somehow get their names into the Guinness Book of World Records.

From flipping pancakes, to scaling Mount Everest twice in one year, or doing mass massage or line dancing, there is no dearth of ideas on what one can do to get into the record books! On September 11, the iconic book released its 2016 edition.

With 40,000 records being tracked, and more added each year, there is always something new. For one, the latest edition has an entry for the world's largest feet belonging to Jeison Hernandez of Venezuela - a size 26! It is not just people, but animals have been making their way into the record books too. Bertie is the Usain Bolt of tortoises, capable of reaching speeds of 0.6 miles per hour.

Unfortunately the world's shortest man passed away earlier this month. Chandra Bahadur Dangi of Nepal was 75 years old and measured 21-1/2 inches.

For The Records...

Wondering how the Guinness Book of World Records came to be? In May 1951, Sir Hugh Beaver, the owner of a beer brewery in England got into an argument with fellow members of his hunting party over the question - "Which is the fastest game bird in Europe, the golden plover or the grouse?" Realizing that there were no reference books that carried such information and how useful they might be to resolve debates such as his, he came up with the idea of a book of world records.

Well as they say, the rest is history. The first 197-page edition of the Guinness Book of World Records came out in May 1955, and since then, nearly 100 million copies have been sold worldwide and updated annually. From the most tattoos and piercings, to the longest burrito, fastest talker, longest hair and more, there are nearly 40,000 record categories, some of which are not active.

The book however publishes only 4000 records each year and while some are standard fare -- like the tallest and the shortest, nearly eighty percent are new.

Want To Get In?

Well it may no be so easy as you may think. Guinness says it receives requests from tens of thousands of people each year who want to set a record. Guinness's motto for a record is that it should be "provable, quantifiable and breakable".

Once a request is made, Guinness officials take a month to decide whether to accept the request, eighty percent of which are rejected. If the request is accepted, detailed instructions follow. They may send an official to witness the record in public, or it has to be verified by witnesses not known to the individual and accompanied by photographs and video recordings.

Now, even if the record is verified, it may still not make it into the book! But that does not stop people from trying. Lets look at two records.

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Talk about record breaking. It seems folks are willing to do anything - weird and wacky, to somehow get their names into the Guinness Book of World Records. From flipping pancakes, to scaling Mount Everest twice in one year, or doing mass massage or line dancing, there is no dearth of ideas on what one can do to get into the record books!

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(NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute via AP)

Pluto pictures are pouring in

The spigot has opened again, and Pluto pictures are pouring in once more from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft.

These newest snapshots reveal an even more diverse landscape than scientists imagined. New Horizons swept past Pluto in July. It became the first spacecraft to ever visit the distant dwarf planet.

"If an artist had painted this Pluto before our flyby, I probably would have called it over the top. But that's what is actually there," said Alan Stern. He is the New Horizons' principal scientist from Southwest Research Institute. It is in Boulder, Colorado.

In one picture, dark ancient craters border much younger icy plains. Dark ridges also are visible. Some scientists speculate they might be dunes.

One outer solar-system geologist, William McKinnon of Washington University in St. Louis, said if the ridges are, in fact, dunes, that would be "completely wild." That is because of Pluto's thin atmosphere.

"Either Pluto had a thicker atmosphere in the past, or some process we haven't figured out is at work. It's a head-scratcher," McKinnon said in a written statement.

The jumble of mountains, on the other hand, may be huge blocks of ice. They could be floating in a softer, vast deposit of frozen nitrogen.

After several weeks of collecting engineering data from New Horizons, scientists started getting fresh Pluto pictures. The latest images were released Sept. 10.

Besides geologic features, the images show that the atmospheric haze surrounding Pluto has multiple layers. What's more, the haze creates a twilight effect. It enables New Horizons to study places on the night side that scientists never expected to see.

It has been more than two months since New Horizons' close encounter with Pluto. That was on July 14. Its journey began at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The flight has spanned 3 billion miles and 9 1/2 years. As of Sept. 11, the spacecraft was 44 million miles past Pluto.

So much data was collected during the Pluto flyby that it will take until next fall to retrieve it all on Earth. The spacecraft is operated from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. It is in Laurel, Maryland. The physics lab also designed and built it.

New Horizons' next target is awaiting formal approval by NASA. The plan is for it to reach a much smaller object that orbits 1 billion miles beyond Pluto. It, too, lies in the so-called Kuiper Belt. That is a frigid twilight zone on the outskirts of our solar system. Following a set of maneuvers, New Horizons would reach PT1 - short for Potential Target 1 - in 2019.

CRITICAL THINKING QUESTION

Why did it take so long to get more photos from Pluto?

Write your answers in the comments section below

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(NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute via AP) Pluto pictures are pouring in The spigot has opened again, and Pluto pictures are pouring in once more from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft. These newest snapshots reveal an even more diverse landscape than scientists imagined. New Horizons swept past Pluto in July.

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Big clock fixed with a few small pennies

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(AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis) Big clock fixed with a few small pennies Don't set your watch by Big Ben. Officials say the famous clock at Britain's Parliament has recently been slow by as much as six seconds. It has been used by Londoners for decades to check the time.

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Who was boss before the dinosaurs?

The Jurassic witnessed a world populated by dinosaurs. While giant plant-eaters munched their way through ferns and conifer forests, large carnivores chased them down for lunch.

At the height of the Age of Dinosaurs, they were found on every continent. They thrived in the warm environments of the time.

But, dinosaurs were not always so prominent. Fossil evidence shows that they arose about 230 million years ago during the Triassic period. But they remained scarce as other reptiles took center stage. Many mammal forerunners, such as the large plant-eater Placerias, prospered. Huge crocodile-like animals like Smilosuchus were the top predators of the Triassic.

Paleontologists who study the fossil record have discovered that something big happened 200 million years ago. It radically changed life on land and in the sea. And it paved the way for dinosaur diversification and prominence.

What happened was so important that it caused more than half of all life on Earth to go extinct. The large crocodile-like reptiles that had dominated the landscape were eliminated. So were many of the mammal forerunners.

Find out more about the events that opened the door for the Age of Dinosaurs. Join us on Thursday, October 8, 2015, for a "Smithsonian Science How" live webcast on How Fossils Explain the Rise of Dinosaurs. It is airing at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. EDT on the Q?rius website. Paleontologist Dr. Hans Sues from the National Museum of Natural History will appear live to discuss and answer questions. Get teaching resources to support your webcast experience.

CRITICAL THINKING QUESTION

To study dinosaurs, why do scientists rely on fossils instead of photographs?

Write your answers in the comments section below

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Who was boss before the dinosaurs? The Jurassic witnessed a world populated by dinosaurs. While giant plant-eaters munched their way through ferns and conifer forests, large carnivores chased them down for lunch. At the height of the Age of Dinosaurs, they were found on every continent.

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Garbage Collector Creates Library from Rescued Books

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Garbage Collector Creates Library from Rescued Books

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(AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

Garbage collector creates library from rescued books

A second-grade education has not stopped garbage collector Jose Gutierrez from bringing the gift of reading to thousands of Colombian children.

Gutierrez started rescuing books from the trash almost 20 years ago. He was driving a garbage truck at night through the country's wealthier neighborhoods. The discarded reading material slowly piled up. And now the ground floor of his small house is a makeshift community library. It is stacked from floor to ceiling with some 20,000 books. They range from chemistry textbooks to children's classics.

He says books are luxuries for boys and girls in low-income neighborhoods such as his. New reading material at bookstores is too expensive. There are 19 public libraries in Bogota. It is a city of 8.5 million. But the libraries tend to be located far away from poorer areas.

"This should be in all neighborhoods and on each corner of every neighborhood. In all the towns, in all departments and all the rural areas," says Gutierrez. "Books are our salvation. And that is what Colombia needs."

The 53-year-old Gutierrez has a love of reading that he says comes from his mother. She always read to him even though she was too poor to keep him in school.

"She used to read me stories every night," said Gutierrez. He has traveled to book fairs in Mexico and Chile to share his experience of starting a library with discarded reading material. "To me, books are the greatest invention and the best thing that can happen to a human being."

Gutierrez still sifts through the rubbish for additions to his library. But, his fame as Colombia's "Lord of the Books" has also brought him thousands of donated tomes. He has sent many to other libraries around the country. That is because he does not have room for them all.

Gutierrez is an avid reader of works by authors such as Leo Tolstoy, Victor Hugo and Mario Vargas Llosa. His favorite books include "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "The General in his Labyrinth" by Colombia's Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

He says he does not reject technology that allows books to be read digitally. But he prefers to read the printed word on paper.

"There is nothing more beautiful than having a book in your pocket, in your bag or inside your car," he says.

CRITICAL THINKING QUESTION

Why does Jose think "books are the greatest invention and the best thing that can happen to a human being?"

Write your answers in the comments section below

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Garbage collector creates library from rescued books

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(AP Photo/Fernando Vergara) Garbage collector creates library from rescued books A second-grade education has not stopped garbage collector Jose Gutierrez from bringing the gift of reading to thousands of Colombian children. Gutierrez started rescuing books from the trash almost 20 years ago. He was driving a garbage truck at night through the country's wealthier neighborhoods.

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What's up with Saturn's rings?

You asked us, "What's up with Saturn's rings?"

Although Saturn can be seen with the naked eye, its rings are invisible without a telescope. Galileo was the first to spot them. That was in 1610.

And there are 7 creatively named rings. They span up to about 175,000 miles wide, roughly 3/4 of the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

The gigantic rings are super thin, though, and some are just 30 feet high.

The rings look continuous, but they aren't. They're made of billions of particles, from dust-sized frozen grains to much larger pieces of water ice and rocky particles wrapped in ice. The frozen grains whirl around Saturn in different orbits.

We don't know how the rings formed or when. It could have been as early as when Saturn came to be. Or as late as when dinos roamed the Earth.

But we do know that the rings aren't static - their formation is a continuous process.

Thanks to tech like the probes we've been sending to Saturn since the late 1970s, we're making new discoveries all the time.

We're even identifying new rings like the 7.4-million-mile-wide behemoth that was discovered in 2009.

And that's just one of the many reasons why you've gotta love science.

CRITICAL THINKING QUESTION

How can particles appear as rings?

Write your answers in the comments section below

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What's up with Saturn's rings? You asked us, "What's up with Saturn's rings?" Although Saturn can be seen with the naked eye, its rings are invisible without a telescope. Galileo was the first to spot them. That was in 1610. And there are 7 creatively named rings.

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Teach current events in your elementary classroom, grades 1-6.

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Teach current events in your elementary classroom, grades 1-6.

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More Trouble in Greece: The Country is Facing New Financial Problems

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More Trouble in Greece: The Country is Facing New Financial Problems

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What's Happening in Europe? Here's What You Need to Know

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What's Happening in Europe? Here's What You Need to Know