The Ship That Disappeared

Hello, Newslings! · 0:00

A ship that disappeared... but left its treasures behind, at the bottom of the sea, for more than four thousand years. Talk about a real pirate's booty! And stick around to hear the answer to last week's Mystery Sound.

Hey Newslings! It's Sunday, November first, twenty twenty-six. Ready to explore the big wide world? Let's go.

Here's the plan for today. Story one, what may be the oldest shipwreck ever found. Story two, a big storm in India, and how people got ready. And story three, new coins all about kids' sports. Plus a girl who turned banana-like peels into something useful, and a real scientist answering a listener question. Our first Newslings exclusive! Let's dive in.

The ship that disappeared · 0:56

Story one. Let's dive deep under the sea, off the coast of Turkey. Near an island called Kekova, divers have been exploring the cargo of a very old ship. Cargo means the things a ship carries. And this one may be the oldest shipwreck ever found!

Local sailors gave a scientist called Hakan Öniz a tip about where to look. And there it was, about thirty metres down in the ocean: more than thirty big clay jars, each with two handles.

But here's the strange part. The ship itself is gone. It was made of wood, and the wood has completely disintegrated over the years, under all that water. So only the cargo is left. Just its jars, resting on a rocky slope between two islands.

So how do you tell how old it is? Scientists looked at the jars: their shape, and how they were made. Their best guess? About four thousand five hundred years old. If that's right, it's older than the record holder, another shipwreck, off the coast of Greece.

And get this: some jars still have leftovers inside! Maybe olive oil, wine, or a sticky tree sap called resin.

If scientists were looking at your house in four thousand years, what do you think they would find?

Sound It Out · 2:25

Here's today's Sound It Out word. Cargo... Let's clap it. Car... go. Two beats! And it starts with the letter C, just like cat.

A big storm hits India · 2:37

Story two. This one is about a big storm.

On Wednesday, a powerful storm called Cyclone Arnab reached the east coast of India, a country in Asia. A cyclone is the same kind of storm as a hurricane, or a typhoon. They just get different names in different oceans.

Here's something surprising. Arnab was the very first storm of the whole year in that part of the ocean. Usually, the first one comes in April or May. And this one came in late October!

The good news? People had a warning, and they got ready. More than two hundred and twenty thousand people moved to safer places ahead of time. More than two thousand cyclone shelters opened. More than thirty thousand fishing boats were tied up safely. Emergency alerts went out to millions of phones. And about eleven hundred medical teams were ready to help.

The storm knocked down trees, flooded farms and homes, and cut power in some places. Banana and coconut farms were hit hard. Now, the storm has calmed down.

Before it arrived, a satellite took a picture of it from space, at night. A giant swirl of clouds... next to the glowing lights of India's cities.

Thankfully, with the right technology and systems in place, people can get an early warning, prepare, and move somewhere safe.

Coins for kids' sports · 4:06

Story three. Check your pocket! Do you have any coins?

On Monday, the United States Mint, the organization that makes America's coins, showed off some brand-new designs. And they're all about kids playing sports! Cool.

Starting next year, there'll be quarters with five sports on the back: baseball, soccer, softball, golf, and snowboarding. And a new half dollar shows wheelchair basketball, a Paralympic sport.

It's a four-year plan, where every year, five new quarters and one new half dollar are released.

Here's the fun part. Ordinary people got to share which sports they liked best, in an online survey. Later years will have sports like skateboarding, cheerleading, karate, and figure skating.

And on the front of the quarters, there's a brand-new picture of George Washington. The Mint says it's only the fifth different picture of him ever on a quarter.

Why sports? The head of the Mint says sports teach teamwork, and how to keep going.

Something to try: if you could design a coin, which sport would you put on it? Grab some paper, and draw it out!

Bottom line: the coins aren't just money. They're tiny pictures that can tell a story about the country they represent.

Kids Who Rock: Wileidy Feliciano-Rivera · 5:29

Now, it's time for our Kids Who Rock story.

Meet Wileidy Feliciano-Rivera. She's thirteen, and she lives in a town called Peñuelas, in Puerto Rico, an island in the Caribbean.

Wileidy took plantain peels from her school cafeteria. Plantains are a lot like big bananas. And she turned the peels into mulch. Mulch is kind of like compost: a layer you spread on the ground around plants, to stop weeds from growing, for example. Lots of farmers use plastic for that. But Wileidy's mulch is biodegradable. That means it breaks down naturally, back into the soil.

And get this: her peel mulch stopped weeds just as well as plastic did... and it helped keep the soil cool and moist, too!

On Tuesday, she won a ten-thousand-dollar prize in a big science contest for middle school students.

What gets thrown away at your lunch table that could be used again?

She looked at those food scraps... and saw something useful.

Ask the Scientist: Why can a coral only help its twin? · 6:34

It's time for something new: Ask the Scientist! We ask real scientists the kinds of questions you might ask.

Do you remember our Whoa Fact about corals that hug? Let me remind you. In a lab, scientists at Stanford University, in California, put pieces of bleached coral, which had lost their colourful helpers, right against healthy pieces of the very same coral. The pieces joined together, because the helpers moved across, and the bleached corals got healthy again. It's a type of algae that does this.

So we asked one of the scientists behind that study, Stephen Palumbi, a listener question: why can a coral only help its twin, and not just any other coral? Here's the answer.

Hi, I'm Steve, and I study corals at Stanford University. And the question was, why does a coral need its twin in order to be able to help it recover a little bit from bleaching?

And the answer is that in order for this mechanism to happen, the coral has to recognize the other coral, and it can only recognize its twin. Otherwise it just says, okay, you're not me, and I don't recognize you.

So once it recognizes the other coral, then the symbionts, the little cells inside the healthy coral, can get transferred to the other one. And if it doesn't recognize that other one, it won't send the symbiont.

Thanks so much for sending that in, Stephen! It's so cool to hear about scientists' real work, and how it's affecting the planet, and making it onto the world news.

Do you have a question for a scientist? Ask a grown-up to help you send it to us in the app. And we might ask a real scientist for you!

And if you want to stay tuned, in the next few weeks, we're going to have even more voice notes from scientists, talking about the studies that they've published, and the discoveries they've found.

Want to hear yourself on Newslings? Send us a joke, or a fun fact, and tell us where you learned it. Ask a grown-up to help you, on newslings dot x y z. Tap the microphone, or find "Send us a clip" in the menu.

Poem time: Boats sail on the rivers · 8:54

It's poem time! Today's poem goes with our shipwreck, because it's about boats... and something up in the sky. It's by Christina Rossetti. Listen for the word "bow". In this poem, a bow means a rainbow! The poet says a rainbow is like a bridge, or a road, from the earth up to the sky. When a poem says one thing is another thing, that's called a metaphor.

The poem is read by a LibriVox volunteer (public domain).

Mystery Sound number 3 · 9:50

It's time for our Mystery Sound! In the last episode, you heard this sound...

Did you guess it? It was... Velcro, ripping open! Rrrrip! Did you get it right?

Okay, here's a new one. Listen closely.

What do you think that was? Tell your family your guess, and I'll tell you the answer on Tuesday!

[Mystery Sound number 3 plays here. The answer is on Tuesday.]

Today's Big Question · 10:38

Want to see the old jars, the new coins, and pictures of the storm? They're on our website, newslings dot x y z, with today's pictures, the quiz, and our friendly reading coach.

That's it for today, Newslings. Let's do a quick look back. Story one, a ship that disappeared, but left its jars behind. Story two, a big storm in India, and how people got ready. And story three, new coins all about kids' sports.

Here's your big question again. If you could leave something in a jar for people to find thousands of years from now, what would you put in it? Talk about your time capsule with your family.

And here's something new in the app: your very own passport! Open the Story Map, and you'll find it. Every time you listen to a story, you get a passport stamp for that country that you listen to. How many stamps can you collect?

Stay curious, and I'll talk to you on Tuesday, November third.

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