1. PLANET PICKS – Satisfy your sweet tooth and enter a haunted house!
2. THE WIRE – News of an archaeology find in Indonesia...
3. TRY THIS! – Use science to make your costume look more realistic!
4. MAKE A DATE – Things to see and do this weekend.
5. WINNERS – Will the astronomy kit be making its way to you?

There’s an easier way than trick-or-treating to get your hands on oodles of chocolate, you just have to know your facts about the colour brown – the theme of next month’s quiz in Wired...

The multiple-choice questions range from fish to famous scientists and from bears to CHOCOLATE, which is why we’re giving 20 lucky winners the chance to win bars of the stuff!

Click here to enter:
http://www.planet-science.com/wired/comp_quiz/11_04_brown

With Halloween just around the corner, why not pay a visit to Planet Goth’s Haunted House? As you wander around the house, you’ll find all you need to know about the science behind vampires, blood, black clothing, garlic and much, much more. When you’ve finished in the house, why not get busy in the kitchen by making Sticky Worm Balls or Peppermint Scream Creams?

Click here if you dare:
http://www.planet-science.com/outthere/index.html

If you’re looking for inspiration for fancy dress this Halloween then look no further than the news. This week scientists have announced the discovery of a new and tiny species of human on Flores island, Indonesia.

So how would you dress like this Hobbit-like human? Well, you need to be no more than a metre tall, between 18 000 and 12 000 years old with hair all over your body and not just on your feet like Frodo Baggins! Oh, and your brain has to be significantly smaller – around the size of a chimpanzee’s brain.

Even more intriguing is the fact that people living on Flores Island talk about the existence of little people on the island, they call Ebu Gogo. The islanders describe Ebu Gogo as being one metre tall, hairy and speaking in a mumbled language! Whatever next? Leprechauns!

Find out more by visiting the Science Museum website at:
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/antenna/flores/  

If you want to give that costume idea a miss then you can always make these fake scars and scabs...

Stuff You Need:

• Cornflour
• Golden syrup
• 2 lipsticks – one red and one that resembles the colour of a scar or scab
• Unflavoured gelatine
• Two paintbrushes or cotton buds

What To Do:

In a small jug, sprinkle one sachet of gelatine onto 4 tablespoons of hot but not boiling water and keep stirring until the gelatine is dissolved. Let the gelatine stand for 2 minutes whilst stirring occasionally. Leave to cool for 10 minutes before using.

Apply red lipstick to the area of your skin underneath and around where you want your scar or scab to be. Rub this lipstick in with a paper towel so the skin has a slight pinky appearance.

Cover the syrup with a thick layer of the lipstick and cornflour mixture. If making a scar you can mould the mixture into an appropriate shape and thickness. If making a scab let the mixture sit for 2 minutes and then gently tap off any excess.

What’s Going On?

As soon as you cut yourself blood rushes to the site of the injury. You can see this if you scratch the underside of the your arm quite hard. The area you have just scratched turns red – this is the blood rushing to the scratched area. Applying the red lipstick to the area around your fake scab or scar shows that this part of the body has been recently injured.

If dressing up isn’t your thing then why not pop along to your local science centre to see if there are any spooky specials for Halloween? Here are four to get you started:

Glasgow Science Centre
Sat 30^th and Sun 31^st October
Professor Bedlam's Potion Show will keep you entertained throughout the Halloween weekend. This magical and mysterious sorcerer puts on a show crammed full of whizzes, flashes, bangs and explosions. Not for the faint-hearted! Visit http://www.glasgowsciencecentre.org for more details.

Thinktank, Birmingham
Until 30^th November
Experience The Dark! You are in pitch darkness. Disoriented, you are drawn towards eerie voices and sounds. Guided by your ears and imagination, you find yourself immersed in the story of a disease-ridden slave ship where sickness is rife amongst the human cargo, rendering many of them completely blind. Find out more here:
http://www.thinktank.ac/explore/events/the_dark.htm

Finally, the draw for last week’s competition took place yesterday at 5pm. The first prize was a Young Scientist Astronomy Kit and two runner-up prizes of an Usborne Astronomy and Space book.

All you had to do was answer these four questions and the first letters of each answer would spell an animal that was also the name of a constellation. Here are the answers:

• The constellation of Taurus resembles this animal – BULL
• The third planet from the Sun – EARTH
• This is the name for the scientific study of the planets, stars, galaxies and the Universe – ASTRONOMY
• Another name for the planet Mars – RED PLANET

The constellation was (The Great) BEAR. The lucky winner of the Astronomy Kit was Aaron Cross. The winners of a book each were: Luke Batten from Swindon and Abigail White from Cambridge.

Got Wired-Up? Got clued up!

See you in seven...

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