See the Buzz Blog story about human cloning and motor neuron disease. Also, see the link to the Tissues of Life website for more information, and visit the stem cell area of the Human Body gallery. Other content coming soon!

Adele, I believe you have to be registered to start a new blog. (Anyone can comment, but only registered users can post new stories?) Anyway, I have a call in to the web moderator and I will provide an official answer as soon as I have it.

I actually prefer having the links. I like being able to go to the original source and see it for myself.

But, it's a big blogosphere. Certainly there is plenty of room for different styles of entries.

Krystle,

We posted the original tsunami story on December 27. If you go to that post, you'll see that we've added a lot of updates as comments since then. So you may find what you're looking for.

If you don't, tell us what you'd like to see and we'll write it, or you can write it yourself and post it for everyone else.

Thanks for your suggestion.

I think having Buzz information show up in search engines like google, yahoo, Jeeves, etc. would be a plus. Do you know how to optimize this? Are you pinging Technorati, Blo.gs, weblogs,etc.?

Hey Krystle,

That's a great idea! It would be hard to have comments about each and every story since they change so often. But a comment section about What's Abuzz might work. I will try it out soon and see how it goes. Thanks for the idea.

Those are two things that scientists are studying right now! Argennial, you are right on the cutting edge of science!

65 million years ago, all the dinosaurs died out. But that's not all -- between 60% and 75% of ALL living things also went extinct at that time. In addition to the dinosaurs, some of the other casualties included:

• flying reptiles (pterosaurs)
• some sea-going reptiles
• an important group of shelled sea creatures (ammonites)
• some microscopic sea creatures (foraminifera)
• many flowering plants

and a host of others.

But many other things -- birds, mammals, fish, ferns, bugs -- all survived. Why?

The answer lies in biodiversity. The Earth supports millions of different species, each adapted to survive in different conditions. When conditions change -- especially if they change drastically and suddenly -- it's bad news for some species, but good news (or no news) for others. It would take something really, REALLY enormous to wipe out absolutely all life on Earth.

So, when the Earth changed 65 million years ago, it changed in ways that dinosaurs could not survive, but other (mostly smaller) animals could.

No one knows exactly what killed off the dinosaurs and other animals. It was probably a combination of things. There are some good websites where you can learn more:

• I haven't read the entire thing, but this site seems to do a pretty good job of summarizing the main explanations for why dinosaurs went extinct, and does so in terms that even I can understand!
• Here's another good site that lays out all the possibilities and the evidence. (Personally, I think they're a bit snotty about explanations they don't agree with, but hey, they're from California.)

= = =

Now, as for your second question -- how did the universe come out of the Big Bang? Well, I have to admit, I don't know as much about space stuff. (Maybe Bryan can chime in?) But I have learned a couple of things:

1. We know the universe is expanding now. Scientists can measure the galaxies flying away in every direction. Working backwards, they have figured out that the universe must have been really, REALLY small about 13 billion years ago. But when you take all the matter and energy in the universe and squeeze it into such a tiny space, the rules of the universe -- gravity, radiation, how atoms work, etc. -- start to break down. And, because we can't recreate those conditions in the lab, we don't know what rules existed beforehand. The laws of physics explain everything back to the first fraction of a second of the universe. But what happened at the very, very beginning, or what -- if anything -- happened before that? It's possible we may never know.
2. While it's a little misleading to think of the Big Bang as an explosion -- it was more like blowing up a balloon than popping one -- you are absolutely right: every day, the universe becomes a little more chaotic, a little less ordered. But here on Earth, there's plenty of order. Life is a type of order. How can this be? Well, you have to look at the universe as a whole. In various tiny pockets -- like on planets that support life -- order may arise, while the universe, on average, gets more chaotic.

There are LOTS of websites on the Big Bang, most of which use big words that make my head hurt! This site seems to be one of the more understandable ones. (Like I said, I'm really not an expert on this stuff.)

I hope this helps!