Bears break into car for candies

A North Carolina teenager captured video of a family of bears that broke into her car and ate 49 chocolate bars she was selling for a fundraiser.

Lilly Thurmond, 16, said she was at her Asheville home one evening when she saw the mother bear and three cubs walk up her driveway.

Thurmond said she noticed moments later that the animals had opened the door to her car.

“I turned my head, and I saw the car door is open,” Thurmond told. “I could hear growling and stuff.”

Thurmond filmed as the bears ate ravenously on the fundraiser chocolate in the vehicle. The bears ate 49 of the candy bars, leaving only a single dark chocolate bar untouched. The bears ended up trashing the car too.

Lilly’s mum, Kim Peck, said bears aren’t uncommon in their neighbourhood, but this incident was different.

She’s thankful her daughter wasn’t outside when the bears arrived.

“I think we all learned a lesson,” Peck said. “Keep your doors locked, because bears know how to open them up.”

The sun has a twin

Astronomers believe they’ve found our star’s ‘twin’ which formed at the same time before disappearing off on a lonely journey through space. This ‘solar sibling’ may even be home to alien organisms because there is a chance that traces of life spread from our own planet during a tumultuous period of our star system’s history. This era is called The Late Heavy Bombardment or ‘Lunar Cataclysm’ and saw vast numbers of asteroids rain down on Earth, Mars, Venus and Mercury.

Could life have escaped from humanity’s home planet aboard an asteroid and then evolved separately on a star just like ours? This might sound far-fetched, but some scientists believe it’s a real possibility and have dubbed the process by which life can float between star systems ‘interstellar lithopanspermia’.

The star is called HD186302 and is the same age as our own sun with an identical chemical composition. It formed in the same cluster and then set off a space odyssey, which means it’s a very long away from our sun.

Largest synchronised car dance

Nissan was awarded a Guinness World Record for largest synchronised car dance after arranging 180 vehicles into the shape of a falcon.

Guinness said the car company gathered 180 of its new Patrol Falcon 4x4s at the Dubai Rugby 7s stadium and they drove in the shape of a falcon under the leadership of Zimbabwean racing driver Axcil Jefferies.

Video from the attempt shows two lines of Nissans driving a total distance of 1,476 metres in opposite directions, to create the falcon image.

The shape formed by the 180 Nissan Patrols taking part in the attempt measured 176.5 metres by 225 metres. Viewed from above, the activation looked like a giant falcon in flight over the sands of the Arabian Desert.

“What makes this achievement even more special is the fact that everyone who took part in the record-breaking attempt was Nissan staff,” said Juergen Schmitz, managing director of Nissan Middle East.

Nissan beat the previous world record holders by 36 cars.

Published in Dawn, Young World, December 8th, 2018