A ball of ice meets a ball of fire - AND THE FIRE WINS! OR DOES IT?

UPDATE 3: It's dead. Ison made it around the Sun but a few hours later it broke up and disappeared. You know what they say... it's better to burn out than to fade away.

UPDATE 2: Cancel the funeral. It looks like Ison might have made it after all. New pictures show the comet or what is left of it rounding the sun. As Ison gets further from the Sun we'll be able to work out what kind of condition the comet is in, but for now, ISON LIVES!

UPDATE 1: I am sorry to report that Ison didn't make it. All that appears to be left is a trail of rocks, dust and gas. The Bad Astronomy blog has all the details.

A large comet is approaching the Sun and scientists don't know if it will survive.

Comet Ison will tonight pass 1.2 million kilometres from the Sun. This seems like a long way, but it really isn't when you compare it to the Earth, which is 150 million kilometres from the Sun, or even Mercury, which is 58 million kilometres away, or the Sun itself, which is a massive 1.4 million kilometres wide.

This video from NASA shows the path of Comet Ison.

Comets are made from ice, and the Sun is rather hot. This is not a great combination for the comet. The heat from the Sun hits the surface of the comet and blasts off gasses and bits of ice and rock. This is the tail. As the comet gets closer to the Sun, the tail gets bigger, but if it gets too close to the Sun, the comet will break up and be destroyed.

Will it survive?

Find out tomorrow.

Icy links:

• Did you know that comets have two tails? Find out why from Caltech.
• Will you be able to see the comet? If you are in the Southern Hemisphere, probably not. The Sydney Observatory has the details.

Eagles did not walk to Tasmania after all

The wedge-tailed eagle probably arrived in Tasmania much more recently than was previously thought.

The magnificent wedge-tailed eagle or 'wedgie'.

19,000 years ago much of the world was covered in ice. Most of the rain that fell on the land froze and because of this the sea level was about 120 metres lower than it is today. Back then, many places that are now islands were connected to continents by what we call 'land bridges'.

Until about 12,000 years ago you could walk from mainland Australia to Tasmania.

When the ice melted and the sea level rose, many animals and plants became trapped on these islands.

Why did Typhoon Haiyan cause so much destruction?

Typhoon Haiyan, one of the most powerful and destructive tropical cyclones ever seen, has devastated parts of the Philippines, destroying homes and killing thousands of people.

How did this happen?

Tropical cyclones - or typhoons, or hurricanes... they are all the same thing - form over the ocean when warm sea temperatures and an unstable atmosphere together build a large, rotating storm.

A radar image showing the wind speed of Typhoon Haiyan as it hit the Philippines. The red and pink parts are the most intense. Note the calm 'eye' of the storm. Source: Philippines Government

In the Philippines, a tropical cyclone gets called a typhoon when wind speeds are above 118 km/hr. Typhoon Haiyan had winds up to 325 km/hr! Scientists are still looking at all of the data that was collected during the typhoon, but they think that typhoon Haiyan was the fourth most powerful tropical cyclone that we know about, and the most powerful to reach the land.

Science comic of the week: Newton's Playground

The Newton's Cradle is a toy that business people like to have sitting on their desks for when they get bored.

It is named after Sir Isaac Newton, the scientist who described the laws of motion and energy and gravity and a bunch of other things about five-hundred years ago. This is the playground version. Don't try this at home.

Giant platypus discovered in Queensland

The fossilised tooth of a giant platypus has been found in Queensland.

The scientists who found the tooth think it belonged to a platypus that was one-metre long and ate crayfish, fish, frogs and small turtles. Modern platypuses grow to about fifty centimetres long, don't have any teeth and mostly eat crayfish and other small crustaceans.

The new species is named Obdurodon tharalkooschild after a character in an Aboriginal dreamtime story called Tharalkoo. She was a duck that mated with a water rat and gave birth to the first platypus.

But here at Death Ray Science News we're calling it...

Predatorpus!

Now you know why turtles and platypuses don't get along
Drawing by Peter Schouten, tooth photo by Rebecca Pian

Mangalyaan Mission to Mars: The Fart Probe

India has launched a rocket carrying a fart probe that is heading for the Red Planet.

The rocket blasted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on the east coast of India on Tuesday morning. It will orbit the Earth for a few weeks and slowly build up speed before a final blast of its engine sends it rocketing towards Mars.

If all goes well the Mangalyaan (which means Mars craft in Hindi) will travel through space for 300 days and then go into orbit around Mars. When in orbit it will use a special instrument to look for farts in the Martian atmosphere.