Where many other meteor showers are often over-hyped, the Geminids are the real deal: far and away the best shower of the year, peaking on December 14–15 in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.

The Geminids – dust and debris left behind by the rock comet Phaethon – put on a fantastic display every year, but 2025 promises to be extra special because the Moon will be out of the way, giving us perfectly dark skies.

So where and when should you look?

Meteors that radiate from the constellation Gemini

The key thing for working out the visibility of a meteor shower is its “radiant”, the single point in the sky from which the meteors seemingly originate. For the Geminids, at their peak, that point lies within the constellation Gemini, near the bright star Castor (α Geminorum).

The radiant is a result of perspective – the dust that causes a given meteor shower is all travelling in the same direction towards Earth, just like the lines in the drawing below.

The higher the radiant is in the sky, the more meteors you will see. When the radiant is below the horizon, you won’t see any meteors from that shower because they are hitting the other side of the planet.

What time should I look?

The absolute best time to observe is when the radiant is at its highest in the sky, called “culmination”, which happens around 2am or 3am local time on December 15. But any time between midnight through dawn will be a great time to watch the meteor shower in Australia and New Zealand.

The time at which the Geminid radiant rises varies depending on your latitude. The farther south you live, the later the radiant will rise. And the farther north you live, the higher in the sky the radiant will reach, increasing the number of meteors you will see per hour.

The more light-polluted your skies, the fewer meteors you’ll see. Fortunately, the Geminids often produce many bright meteors so it’s worth looking even from inner city locations. Just remember the rates you see will be markedly worse than if you were camping somewhere dark in the countryside.

If the forecast is cloudy for the night of the Geminid maximum, the nights of December 13 and 15 will still offer a decent display, although not as spectacular.

Where should I look?

The Geminids can appear in any part of the night sky, but the best place to look with the unaided eye is usually around 45 degrees to the left or right of the radiant (whichever direction is a darker sky for you).

The easiest way to work this out is to find the constellation Orion, and look so that Orion is about 45 degrees from the centre of your vision.

I’d recommend spending at least an hour out beneath the stars when looking for Geminids, to give your eyes enough time to adapt to the darkness. Don’t look at your phone or any other bright lights during this time. Instead, take some blankets and pillows and lie down.

Ideally, you want to be resting so that the centre of your vision is about 45 degrees above the horizon. Then lie back, and enjoy the show. Remember that meteors come in randomly – you might wait ten minutes and see nothing, then three come along all at once.

Why do meteors look different in photos?

In the days after the Geminid peak, you’ll doubtless see lots of spectacular images on social media. But photos showing dozens of meteors against the background stars are composites of many photographs taken over a period of several hours.

Keen photographers will often set up their cameras pointing at the northern sky, take a lengthy series of exposures, then pick those with meteors in them and stack them together to make a composite image.

If you want to try this yourself, here are a couple of useful tips.

First, to avoid any star trails on your individual images, follow the rule of 500. Find out the focal length of your lens (common wide-angle lenses have focal lengths of 14 to 35mm), and set your exposure time to be less than 500 divided by the focal length of your lens. For example, if you’re using a 50mm lens, you’d have to keep your exposures under 10 seconds.

Next, set the lens focal ratio, or f-number, to be as small as possible. This will ensure the lens is wide open, allowing it to gather as much light as it can during each image.

Finally, set the ISO of your camera to be relatively high, choosing a number of at least 1,600. The higher you set the ISO, the more sensitive your camera will be to light, and the fainter the objects visible in the dark sky images. However, be warned that setting the ISO too high can make your images grainy.

Once all that is done, set up your camera with the field of view you want to image, take a timelapse of the sky, and leave your camera running while you watch the skies. Hopefully over the course of an hour or two under the stars you might just capture some spectacular shots of debris bits burning up high overhead.

Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Curious Kids is a series by The Conversation, which gives children of all ages the chance to have their questions about the world answered by experts. All questions are welcome: you or an adult can send them – along with your name, age and town or city where you live – to curiouskids@theconversation.com. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we’ll do our best.

What forms a current under water? – Natalie, age 11, Melksham, UK.

Thanks for your question, Natalie. Underwater currents can form in lakes, rivers and oceans, and there are many reasons why they happen. Since I’m an ocean scientist, I’m going to explain the currents you find in the sea.

Some ocean currents are very large, and the biggest one – called the “global conveyor belt” – moves water very slowly all the way around the world. In fact, it takes water in the global conveyor belt about 1,000 years to get right around the planet.

Because the global conveyor belt and other big ocean currents move so slowly, we don’t notice them when we go to the beach. But we might feel some other types of currents when we go for a swim.

When ocean waves get to a beach, they turn white at the top and crash onto the sand – this is called “breaking”. Swimming or surfing in breaking waves can be good fun, but we need to remember that these waves cause currents to form.

When waves break on the shore, the sea water in them gets pushed up against the beach. This water must get back out to sea somehow, otherwise we’d expect the water level at the beach to rise and rise forever.

Of course, the water can’t get back out to sea near the surface, because that’s where the breaking waves are busy moving water toward the shore. So, two different currents form, to help take the water back out.

Back out to sea

One of these currents is called the “undertow”. It forms beneath the breaking waves, and pulls the water back toward the sea, across the sandy seabed, out past where the waves are breaking.

Though the undertow helps to get some of the water back to sea, it’s not usually very strong. So, some of the work has to be done by another type of current, called a “rip” current.

Rips are much stronger, narrow currents that run straight out to sea. Rip currents don’t happen all the way along the beach. They only form at certain “weak spots” along the beach where waves are not breaking, and the water is a bit deeper. This makes it easier for the water to flow back out to sea.

Here’s how it works: after water is brought in toward the shore by breaking waves, it can’t turn around and go straight out again, so it runs sideways along the beach in what we call a “feeder current”. As soon as it finds a weak spot, where the waves aren’t breaking, the water flows back out to sea in a rip current.

Staying safe in the surf

It’s very handy to know how to spot a rip current when you go to the beach, because they are much stronger than undertow currents and can sweep people out to sea.

When there are lots of waves breaking on the beach, it’s tempting to swim in places where the water looks calmer. But we know that rips form at the places where the waves aren’t breaking – so this is actually the worst place to swim!

Rip currents sometimes leave another tell-tale sign: because they’re so strong, they can churn up the sand on the seabed, making the water look brown and murky.

Even if we know how to spot a rip current, it is always best to swim at beaches where there is a lifeguard, because they’re specially trained to know the best places to swim, and will always be on the look out to make sure everyone is safe.

More Curious Kids articles, written by academic experts:

• How does heat travel through space if space is a vacuum? – Katerina, age ten, Norwich, UK.

• What makes a shooting star fall? - Katelyn, age seven, Adelaide, Australia.

• Is there a place in the middle of the English Channel where the waves change direction? – Sebastian, age 12, Kent, UK.

Chris Blenkinsopp, Senior Lecturer in Civil Engineering Hydraulics, University of Bath

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How does your brain tell you to stop if you’re crossing the road and you have to stop quickly? – Ruby, aged nine, Rochester, UK

The human brain is really clever. It keeps our heart beating, it allows us to see and hear the world around us, and it also helps us to make hundreds of decisions every day.

Sometimes decision making is hard, like deciding what book we want to read next. At other times decisions seem to happen without us even thinking, like when we stop crossing the road suddenly if a car is coming. So, how does our brain make decisions?

Curious Kids is a series by The Conversation that gives children the chance to have their questions about the world answered by experts. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskids@theconversation.com. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we’ll do our very best.

Our brain has two ways of thinking: slow thinking and fast thinking. We use our slow thinking when we have to do something difficult, like our homework.

Our slow brain helps us to think through things logically, and it helps us to find the best answers. It also helps us to plan for the future, like thinking about our weekend activities or what we want to be when we grow up. Our slow brain is what we tend to think about when we think about our thinking.

The other way our brain makes decisions is by using fast thinking. We use our fast brain when we perform a task without even thinking, like when we jump out the way of a ball thrown towards us, stop suddenly when a car is coming, or sing along to our favourite song without reading the words.

We also use our fast brain when we know the answer to a question automatically. What is two plus two? What colour is the sky? Is chocolate delicious? We know these answers straight away. Our fast brain helps us to answer questions like these quickly and easily.

Working together

What’s even more interesting is that our fast and slow brains work together. When we learn a new task, like playing the piano, we have to use our slow brain at the beginning. We have to concentrate in order to learn how to read music, and we have to try and memorise which piano key plays which note.

But over time, when we practice, our fast brain starts to take over from our slow brain. This means that eventually we are able to play some songs on the piano without even thinking.

Sometimes our fast brain makes mistakes though, like when we wave at someone by mistake because they look like our friend. Our fast brain mistakenly recognises that person because they have the same hair or clothes, and it accidentally tells us it’s our friend without thinking.

This can be embarrassing, but our fast brain is only trying to help. If we used our slow brain all the time, we would never get anything done as it would take too long.

So next time you make a decision, have a think about whether you used your fast or your slow brain. Did you have to think things through? In that case you used your slow brain. Or did you know the answer straight away? If so, you used your fast brain!

And, remember, whenever you are struggling to learn something new, it’s only going to be difficult for a very short time. If you keep practising it won’t be long until you can do it without thinking. Your slow brain is doing the hard work right now, but your fast brain can’t wait to take over.

When sending in questions to Curious Kids, make sure you include the asker’s first name, age and town or city. You can:

• email curiouskids@theconversation.com
• tweet us @ConversationUK with #curiouskids
• DM us on Instagram @theconversationdotcom

Nicola Power, Lecturer in Psychology, Lancaster University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Curious Kids is a series by The Conversation, which gives children of all ages the chance to have their questions about the world answered by experts. All questions are welcome: you or an adult can send them – along with your name, age and town or city where you live – to curiouskids@theconversation.com. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we’ll do our best.

What makes the wind? - Eric, 94-year-old kid, Ipswich, UK.

The wind has always been very important to us humans: from thousands of years ago, when sailors used the wind to cross the sea in ships, right up to today, as we make electricity from wind turbines. But it’s taken a long time for scientists to understand exactly how the wind is made.

Although we can’t see it, the air is made up of billions and billions of tiny particles. There are lots of different types of particles in the air, but the most common ones are nitrogen and oxygen (which is what humans and other animals need to breathe).

The wind blows when these air particles move around in the Earth’s atmosphere. The atmosphere is an envelope of gases, which surrounds the Earth. It’s around 100 kilometres thick, which is about the length of 4,000 blue whales.

Most of the particles that make up the Earth’s atmosphere are found closer to the surface. As you get further out into space, there are fewer and fewer particles, until finally, in outer space, there are none.

Under pressure

The weight of all of these particles stacked on top of each other pushes down on the Earth’s surface – and this force is called atmospheric pressure.

Atmospheric pressure changes, depending on how warm or cold the Earth’s surface is. When the surface heats up, the air closest to it also gets warmer. And when the air gets warmer, the particles will tend to rise upwards and spread out.

When this happens, it leaves fewer air particles at the Earth’s surface, which lowers the atmospheric pressure.

So, you would expect the air over a very warm and sunny place, like a desert, to have lower atmospheric pressure than the air over a cold and dark place, like the North Pole.

When the warmer air rises, cold air particles – which are generally packed in closer together – will sink into those low pressure areas.

This movement of air particles, driven by areas of heating and cooling, is what makes the wind.

From gusts to gales

How fast the wind blows depends on how much of a difference there is in pressure between a low pressure and a high pressure area of air. If there’s a bigger difference in the pressure, the wind will blow faster.

There are 12 different levels of wind speed, measured on a scale called the Beaufort scale. The scale ranges from winds of less than one kilometre per hour (calm) to more than 118 kilometres per hour (hurricane).

Lighter winds are called “breezes”, stronger ones are called “gales”, and the very strongest winds are “hurricanes”.

You might also have heard the weather forecast talking about “easterly” or “northerly” winds. We describe which way the wind is blowing, by the direction it comes from. So an “easterly” blows from east to west, while a “northerly” blows from north to south.

More Curious Kids articles, written by academic experts:

• How do babies learn to talk? – Ella, aged nine, Melbourne, Australia.

• Our guinea pigs have dark eyes. Why do we have white eyes? - Rhoswen, aged three, Bristol, UK.

• What’s the point of nits?! – Connie, aged nine, Nambour, Australia.

Hannah Bloomfield, Postdoctoral Research Assistant, University of Reading

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Curious Kids is a series by The Conversation, which gives children of all ages the chance to have their questions about the world answered by experts. All questions are welcome: send them – along with your name, age and the town or city where you live – to curiouskids@theconversation.com. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we’ll do our best.

Why can’t we tickle ourselves? – Florence, aged 12, Cambridgeshire, UK.

Thanks for the question, Florence. The short answer is, we humans can’t tickle ourselves because we’ll already be expecting it. And a big part of what makes tickles ticklish is the element of surprise.

Tickling is an important sign that someone or something is touching you. In general, there are two types of tickles. There are good tickles, like when your family or friends tickle you and make you laugh. And there are bad tickles, like when you can feel a bug on you.

Both types of tickles help us in different ways.

Bad tickles

Over the hundreds of thousands of years that humans have been around, being ticklish has had its advantages. Tickling tells us when there is a bug or something else crawling on our skin.

The reason why we feel ticklish is because our body is covered in small hairs. These help us to feel danger that might be too small to see – like bugs.

People who are ticklish can feel bugs land on them, and flick them off before they bite. This helps to avoid getting bitten by poisonous insects.

Over the ages, ticklish people would have been less likely to be bitten by poisonous bugs, so they would have lived longer and had more babies, who were also ticklish.

In other words, humans have evolved to be ticklish, because it can help us to sense danger, such as bugs. If we could tickle ourselves, then we might have more trouble telling when there’s a bug on us or when we are just touching ourselves.

So it makes sense that we cannot tickle ourselves, so that we can be sure when dangerous things, such as bugs, are on us.

Good tickles

Good tickles feel good and can make us laugh. It can be a fun way to play – and humans aren’t the only animals that can tickle.

Did you know that when chimpanzees chase and tickle each other they make panting sounds? These pants do not mean that the chimp is tired – they actually mean that it wants to play!

Pets, such as rats, also make noises like laughter when people stroke them.

Laughter and play are good ways for animals (including us!) to make friends . And if you could tickle yourself, you might be less likely to laugh and play with others.

So, there are good reasons why we can only be tickled by others, and not ourselves. But to understand how tickling really works, we’ll have to look inside the human body.

The motor system

The motor system is a thing that most animals – including humans – have in their body. It’s made up of our muscles and brain, and it’s what lets us move

Every time that you move, your brain sends a plan to your muscles. It does this by sending the plan, in the form of electrical signals, along the nerves that run like wires through your body.

This plan tells the muscles when and how to move, and also what to expect when we have moved.

We have five senses: sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing. The plans sent to your muscles guess how each of these senses may change, after you have moved.

So, when you try to tickle yourself, your brain sends the plan through the nerves: it tells the muscles in one arm to move to do the tickling, and it also tells your other muscles that the tickle is coming.

When somebody else tickles you, your muscles haven’t got a plan from your brain, so the feeling is surprising – and ticklish!

But you can’t tickle yourself, because your brain is always one step ahead, telling your muscles and senses what to expect and stopping you from giving yourself a surprise. But then, maybe it’s better that way.

More Curious Kids articles, written by academic experts:

• Why do eggs have a yolk? – Rafael, age 7.

• Who is Siri? – Miles, aged four, London, UK.

• What would happen if the sun exploded? – Lizey, aged 12, Australia.

Aysha Bellamy, PhD Candidate, Royal Holloway, University of London

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com.

Why can’t I wiggle my toes individually, like I can with my fingers? – Vincent, age 15, Arlington, Virginia

One of my favorite activities is going to the zoo where I live in Knoxville when it first opens and the animals are most active. On one recent weekend, I headed to the chimpanzees first.

Their breakfast was still scattered around their enclosure for them to find. Ripley, one of the male chimpanzees, quickly gathered up some fruits and vegetables, sometimes using his feet almost like hands. After he ate, he used his feet to grab the fire hoses hanging around the enclosure and even held pieces of straw and other toys in his toes.

I found myself feeling a bit envious. Why can’t people use our feet like this, quickly and easily grasping things with our toes just as easily as we do with our fingers?

I’m a biological anthropologist who studies the biomechanics of the modern human foot and ankle, using mechanical principles of movement to understand how forces affect the shape of our bodies and how humans have changed over time. Your muscles, brain and how human feet evolved all play a part in why you can’t wiggle individual toes one by one.

Comparing humans to a close relative

Humans are primates, which means we belong to the same group of animals that includes apes like Riley the chimp. In fact, chimpanzees are our closest genetic relatives, sharing almost 98.8% of our DNA.

Evolution is part of the answer to why chimpanzees have such dexterous toes while ours seem much more clumsy.

Our very ancient ancestors probably moved around the way chimpanzees do, using both their arms and legs. But over time our lineage started walking on two legs. Human feet needed to change to help us stay balanced and to support our bodies as we walk upright. It became less important for our toes to move individually than to keep us from toppling over as we moved through the world in this new way.

Human hands became more important for things such as using tools, one of the hallmark skills of human beings. Over time, our fingers became better at moving on their own. People use their hands to do lots of things, such as drawing, texting or playing a musical instrument. Even typing this article is possible only because my fingers can make small, careful and controlled movements.

People’s feet and hands evolved for different purposes.

Muscles that move your fingers or toes

Evolution brought these differences about by physically adapting our muscles, bones and tendons to better support walking and balance. Hands and feet have similar anatomy; both have five fingers or toes that are moved by muscles and tendons. The human foot contains 29 muscles that all work to help you walk and stay balanced when you stand. In comparison, a hand has 34 muscles.

Most of the muscles of your foot let you point your toes down, like when you stand on tiptoes, or lift them up, like when you walk on your heels. These muscles also help feet roll slightly inward or outward, which lets you keep your balance on uneven ground. All these movements work together to help you walk and run safely.

The big toe on each foot is special because it helps push your body forward when you walk and has extra muscles just for its movement. The other four toes don’t have their own separate muscles. A few main muscles in the bottom of your foot and in your calf move all four toes at once. Because they share muscles, those toes can wiggle, but not very independently like your fingers can. The calf muscles also have long tendons that reach into the foot; they’re better at keeping you steady and helping you walk than at making tiny, precise movements.

In contrast, six main muscle groups help move each finger. The fingers share these muscles, which sit mostly in the forearm and connect to the fingers by tendons. The thumb and pinky have extra muscles that let you grip and hold objects more easily. All of these muscles are specialized to allow careful, controlled movements, such as writing.

So, yes, I have more muscles dedicated to moving my fingers, but that is not the only reason I can’t wiggle my toes one by one.

Divvying up brain power

You also need to look inside your brain to understand why toes and fingers work differently. Part of your brain called the motor cortex tells your body how to move. It’s made of cells called neurons that act like tiny messengers, sending signals to the rest of your body.

Your motor cortex devotes many more neurons to controlling your fingers than your toes, so it can send much more detailed instructions to your fingers. Because of the way your motor cortex is organized, it takes more “brain power,” meaning more signals and more activity, to move your fingers than your toes.

Even though you can’t grab things with your feet like Ripley the chimp can, you can understand why.

Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.

And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

Steven Lautzenheiser, Assistant Professor of Biological Anthropology, University of Tennessee

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.