عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Varieties

Huge Australian King Penguin Chick Pesto Grows into Social Media Star 

In this photograph provided by SEA LIFE Melbourne, Pesto, a huge king penguin chick who weighs as much as both his parents combined, mingles in his enclosure at Australia's Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium, Sept. 3, 2024, and has become a social media celebrity and a star attraction at the aquarium. (SEA LIFE Melbourne via AP)
In this photograph provided by SEA LIFE Melbourne, Pesto, a huge king penguin chick who weighs as much as both his parents combined, mingles in his enclosure at Australia's Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium, Sept. 3, 2024, and has become a social media celebrity and a star attraction at the aquarium. (SEA LIFE Melbourne via AP)
TT
TT

Huge Australian King Penguin Chick Pesto Grows into Social Media Star 

In this photograph provided by SEA LIFE Melbourne, Pesto, a huge king penguin chick who weighs as much as both his parents combined, mingles in his enclosure at Australia's Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium, Sept. 3, 2024, and has become a social media celebrity and a star attraction at the aquarium. (SEA LIFE Melbourne via AP)
In this photograph provided by SEA LIFE Melbourne, Pesto, a huge king penguin chick who weighs as much as both his parents combined, mingles in his enclosure at Australia's Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium, Sept. 3, 2024, and has become a social media celebrity and a star attraction at the aquarium. (SEA LIFE Melbourne via AP)

A huge king penguin chick named Pesto, who weighs as much as both his parents combined, has become a social media celebrity and a star attraction at an Australian aquarium.

Weighing 22 kilograms (49 pounds) at 9 months old, Pesto is the heaviest penguin chick the Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium has ever had, its education supervisor Jacinta Early said on Friday.

By contrast, his doting parents, Hudson and Tango weigh 11 kilograms (24 pounds) each.

Pesto’s global fame has grown with his size. More than 1.9 billion people around the world had viewed him through social media, an aquarium statement said.

He ate more than his own substantial body weight in fish in the past week: 24 kilograms (53 pounds), Early said.

The veterinary advice is that that quantity of food is healthy for a chick approaching adulthood.

His growth will plateau as he enters his fledging period. He has started to lose his brown feathers and will replace them with the black and white plumage of a young adult.

His keepers expect him to trim down to around 15 kilograms (33 pounds) in the process.

“He’s going to start losing that really adorable baby fluff. It might take him one to two months to really get rid of it. Then he’ll be nice and sleek and streamlined,” Early said.

But she expects Pesto will remain recognizable as the sought-after TikTok celebrity he has become for another two weeks.

For now, he's a star attraction.

“Such a small head for such a big body,” one admirer remarked on Friday as a crowd gathered against the glass of the penguin enclosure at feeding time.

Hatching on Jan. 31, Pesto was the only king penguin chick to hatch at the aquarium this year and the first since 2022, a year when there were six. The reason why there was none last year isn’t clear.

Adult king penguins weigh between 9.5 kilograms (21 pounds) and 18 kilograms (40 pounds), according to the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, a global environmental group.

They are the world’s second largest penguin species, after the emperor penguin.

Most Viewed

 
 
Varieties

Astronomers Trace the Origin of Meteorites that Have Struck Earth

Reporters gather around a piece of a meteorite, which according to local authorities and scientists was lifted from the bottom of the Chebarkul Lake, placed on display in a local museum in Chelyabinsk, October 18, 2013. REUTERS/Andrey Tkachenko/File Photo
Reporters gather around a piece of a meteorite, which according to local authorities and scientists was lifted from the bottom of the Chebarkul Lake, placed on display in a local museum in Chelyabinsk, October 18, 2013. REUTERS/Andrey Tkachenko/File Photo
TT
TT

Astronomers Trace the Origin of Meteorites that Have Struck Earth

Reporters gather around a piece of a meteorite, which according to local authorities and scientists was lifted from the bottom of the Chebarkul Lake, placed on display in a local museum in Chelyabinsk, October 18, 2013. REUTERS/Andrey Tkachenko/File Photo
Reporters gather around a piece of a meteorite, which according to local authorities and scientists was lifted from the bottom of the Chebarkul Lake, placed on display in a local museum in Chelyabinsk, October 18, 2013. REUTERS/Andrey Tkachenko/File Photo

Meteorites - rocks that fall to Earth from space - have pelted our planet from its birth about 4.5 billion years ago to today, often causing scant damage but sometimes triggering cataclysms. But from where exactly are these space rocks coming? New research has the answer, according to Reuters.

By studying the composition of meteorites that have landed over the years and the asteroids populating our solar system, astronomers have determined that about 70% of known meteorite impacts came from just three groups of asteroids residing in our solar system's main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

In total, the researchers in three different studies have now been able to account for the origins of most of the tens of thousands of known meteorites that have landed on Earth.

As part of the research, the astronomers carried out numerical simulations that enabled them to model the formation and evolution of families of asteroids orbiting the sun in the main asteroid belt.

"It is a group of asteroids which have similar orbits because they were fragments created during a collision between two asteroids," said astronomer Miroslav Brož of Charles University in Prague, lead author of two of the studies, published in the journal Nature, and Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Collisions in the main asteroid belt send rocky fragments flying haphazardly through space, with some of those eventually striking Earth.

"While more than 70,000 meteorites are known, only 6% had been clearly identified by their composition as coming from the moon, Mars, or Vesta, one of the largest asteroids in the main asteroid belt. The source of the other meteorites had remained unidentified," said astronomer Michaël Marsset of the European Southern Observatory in Chile, lead author of one of the two studies published in the journal Nature.

The Massalia asteroid family, formed about 40 million years ago, accounts for a class of meteorites called L chondrites that represent 37% of known Earth meteorites, the research found. The Karin family, formed 5.8 million years ago, and the Koronis family, formed 7.6 million years ago, account for a class of meteorites called H chondrites that represent 33% of known Earth meteorites, it showed.

Another 8% of the Earth meteorites can be traced to the Flora and Nysa asteroid families in the main asteroid belt, the research found. And about 6% of the meteorites can be traced to Vesta, it showed. Previous research found that less than 1% of the meteorites came from Mars and the moon.

The researchers are still exploring the source of the remaining roughly 15% of known Earth meteorites.

Space rocks have played a role in shaping the direction of life on Earth.

The new research did not look at the source of the one that struck Earth 66 million years ago that wiped out the dinosaurs, aside from their bird descendants, and enabled mammals to become dominant. Another study published in August found that this object formed beyond Jupiter and probably migrated inward to become part of the main asteroid belt before being sent hurtling toward Earth, perhaps due to a collision.

As the dinosaur-killing impact showed, a large space rock can pose a mortal threat to life on Earth. In 2022, NASA's DART spacecraft slammed into the asteroid Dimorphos in a proof-of-principle planetary defense mission that showed that a spacecraft can change a celestial object's trajectory just enough to keep Earth safe.

Some of the meteorites that have landed on Earth can give clues about the solar system's early history. They are primordial leftovers from a time before the planets formed in a large disk of material - called the protoplanetary disk - swirling around the newborn sun.

"Chondrites are primitive meteorites that have mostly preserved their original composition since their formation in our protoplanetary disk," Marsset said.