CNN news 2014-11-18 加文本

cnn news 2014-11-18

CARL AZUZ, cnn ANCHOR: Whether you are watching this first thing in the morning or it`s ten minutes before the bell rings at the end of the day,

Fridays are awesome. I`m Carl Azuz with cnn STUDENT NEWS. There are just over 316 million people in the U.S. and two thirds of them are feeling a

blast of unseasonably cold weather. Now, cold is relative. Today`s high here in Atlanta, Georgia is 46, but it`s normally 64 this time of year.

The other day Casper, Wyoming`s high was two, as in two degrees. It`s normally 45 right now. Denver, Colorado, Lovett, Texas, Livingston,

Montana, they`ve all set records this week involving cold temperatures for mid-November. It`s not that it never gets cold in these places or other

American cities. It`s that it never does it so early in the season. So why?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Blame the bomb cyclone. Yep, that`s right. Bomb cyclone is actually a real weather term.

Frigid weather and snow are already in the U.S. So, how did it happen? Blame it on the leftovers from Super-typhoon Nuri. It built up to Alaska

mixing warm tropical air with the polar vortex. And changing the direction of the Jetstream allowing cold air just going to the U.S.

Normally, between the polar vortex stays where it`s supposed to be - in the North Pole, trapping frigid air up where it belongs. But the bomb cyclone

shook things up and sent all that Arctic air south.

Bottom line, winter came early and it might be here to stay.

AZUZ: Quite a different natural event to catch you up on in the 50th U.S. state. We`ve been reporting on a slow moving disaster, a creeping lava

flow from Hawaii`s Kilauea Volcano. Since late June, the 2,000 degree lava has been bubbling its way toward a Hawaiian town named Pahoa.

It overtook and burned down a home there early this week. It happened in 45 minutes. NO one was hurt, the family get evacuated in September.

There`s hope for other parts of the community: for several days now, there`s been a pause in the lava`s advance. The eruption hasn`t stopped,

but the main lava flow isn`t moving towards structures at this time.

Scientists with European Space Agency say their Rosetta mission is trying to answer very big questions about the solar system`s history. But a

simpler question they are working on involves their comet lander. Where exactly is it? The $1.4 billion mission made history this week by placing

the spacecraft on the comet 67-P, but not everything is going according to plan.

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, cnn CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely stunning images that we`re seeing from the surface of the comet 67-P, which is, of course, some

310 million miles away from Earth. Now, the interesting thing about these images is that they are stunning to the scientists themselves. They

believed that on the comet surface they would find a very powdery substance, they believed the surface itself might be very soft, and that

the lander, if bad comes to worse, might sink in and wouldn`t be able to transmit any signals back to Earth. However, what we are seeing on these

images seems to be a very rocky surface, but it`s unclear whether or not those are really rocks or whether those might be ice crystals mixed with

some sort of metallic dust.

Again, these are all things that the Philae lander is supposed to find out in the coming days.

One of the interesting things that they just told us is that the landing seems to have been a rodeo ride, by any stretch of the imagination. What

happened was, Philae lander came and touched down pretty much in exactly the spot where they wanted it to touch down, but then a harpoon system

didn`t deploy. It jumped back up. That jump took two hours, because, of course, there is very little gravity here. Then, it came back down very

close to some sort of crater, jumped again for another seven minutes, and then came to a standstill. And they think that right now it`s on the edge

of a cliff. It`s probably standing with two feet on the ground, the third foot, they believe, is up in the air. They are not exactly sure where it

is right now. They know it`s on the comet, because that`s what the sensors are telling them. And, they say, that pretty much all of the scientific

instruments are working, the one thing they think might be a problem is drilling, because the harpoon system failed and therefore the comet is not

attached to the lander or the lander attached to the attached to the comet, and they are afraid if they try something like that, that it might actually

fall off the comet.

There is one problem that they have with the mission right now, and that is the place where they act right now, close to that cliff, seems to be pretty

far away from any sort of sunlight, so they are getting a lot less sunlight than they actually thought, and that`s a problem because right now it`s

running on battery power, but it will need power on the solar panel. It`s going to need light rays if it wants to recharge those batteries and

continue their scientific experiments for a long time to come.

So, that is something that they are working on, they say could impact the mission, but at this point in time, of course, people here in this town of

Darmstadt, Germany, absolutely jubilant at what they`ve achieved and that is to catch a comet in the middle of space.