Recently, a group of scientists claimed they found possible signs of life on a planet called K2-18b. The news made headlines. Researchers said they'd detected sulphur-based gases that, on Earth, are strongly associated with life. But the research caused an uproar in astronomy circles because other scientists don't think the data is strong enough to celebrate an alien find just yet. In fact, they have some real issues with how this whole thing went down, and a new analysis casts further doubt on the findings. NPR science correspondent Nell Greenfieldboyce is here to wade into the controversy — and tell us what all this means for the future of searching for life beyond our solar system.

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Dune. Star Wars. Alien. Science fiction movies love alien worlds, and so do we. But how do scientists find planets outside our solar system in real life? One way is by looking for the stars that wiggle. Historically, astronomers have measured those wiggles via the Doppler method, carefully analyzing how the star's light shifts. Thanks to new data from the GAIA telescope, scientists have a much better picture of distant stars' wiggles — and the exoplanets that cause them.

Want to hear more about exoplanet discoveries? Send us an email at shortwave@npr.org.

Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.

Most iguanas are indigenous to the Americas. So how did the Fijian species end up on the island, nearly 5000 miles away in the South Pacific? According to a new study in the journal PNAS, it was probably via raft ... that is, on clump of floating trees.

And this rafting hypothesis isn't entirely unprecedented. After hurricanes Luis and Marilyn hit the Caribbean in the 1990s, researchers found that a group of iguanas had floated over 180 miles away from Guadeloupe to the territory of Anguilla.

Want to hear more about iguanas? Or rafts? Or evolutionary biology? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.

Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.

When you picture a dinosaur, what does it look like? For Jingmai O'Connor, paleobiologist and associate curator of reptiles at the Field Museum of Chicago, the dinosaurs she studies look a lot more like birds.

"If you looked at an artist's reconstruction of something like Velociraptor or Microraptor ... you would see that it pretty much looks the same as a bird," Jingmai says. "In terms of the plumage, the soft tissues covering the body, it would have looked very, very birdlike."

In this episode, Short Wave delves into the dinosaur-avian connection. Which dinosaurs had feathers? Were they using them to fly? And once and for all – what are those ancient dinosaurs' relationship to birds today?

Have other dinosaur questions you want us to unravel? Email us at shortwave@npr.org — we'd love to hear from you!

Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.

The thick-billed parrot is the only surviving parrot species native to the United States. These brightly colored birds once roamed across the American Southwest and as far south as Venezuela — but today, the only wild population remaining lives high in the forests of Mexico's Sierra Madre mountains.

For years, conservation organizations like OVIS (Organización Vida Silvestre) and the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance have been working on a multi-faceted conservation project to save these birds. Host Regina G. Barber and producer Rachel Carlson dive into the details of that project — and how tiny "bird backpacks" are helping to make it all happen.

NOTE: This episode contains multiple high-pitched noises (human and other animals) that some listeners might find startling or distressing.

In this episode, host Regina G. Barber and NPR correspondent Nate Rott dive into the science behind the sound of fear. Along the way, they find out what marmot shrieks, baby cries and horror movie soundtracks have in common — and what all of this tells us about ourselves.

If you like this episode, check out our episode on fear and horror movies.

Curious about other science powering the human experience? Email us at shortwave@npr.org and we might cover your topic on a future episode!

New York: The city that never sleeps, the concrete jungle where dreams are made of and more recently ... home to a mysterious ant spreading across the city — before continuing across metropolitan and even state lines. NPR science correspondent Nell Greenfieldboyce joins host Regina G. Barber to trace the MahattAnts' takeover, explain why they're an interesting invasive species case study. Plus, how everyday people can get involved in research efforts to learn more about these critters.

Read more of Nell's ManhattAnt story here. And if you like this story, check out our story on ant amputation!

Interested in hearing more animal news? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.

Another Olympics, another set of stellar performances by the U.S. women's artistic gymnastics team. Thursday, the team won two medals in the women's all-around final: a gold for Simone Biles and a bronze for Sunisa Lee. The medals add to the team's overall count, which also includes a gold for the women's team final. Simone and Suni are expected to lead the team to more medals in the coming days. Each day the gymnasts compete, we are left to pick our jaws off the floor and wonder: How do they do that? So we called up one of our favorite science communicators, Frederic Bertley, to explain just that. He's the CEO of the Center of Science and Industry and our gymnastics physics guide for the day.

Follow NPR's 2024 Paris Olympics coverage.

Want us to cover the science powering other Olympians? Email us at shortwave@npr.org. We'd love to hear from you!

Right now, there's a "heat dome" lingering over the southwestern U.S. – a high pressure system that pushes hot air down and traps it, raising the temperature. Heat is becoming increasingly lethal as climate change causes more extreme heat. So in today's encore episode, we're exploring heat. NPR climate correspondent Lauren Sommer talks with Short Wave host Regina G. Barber about how the human body copes with extended extreme heat and how today's heat warning systems could better protect the public. With scientists predicting a very hot summer, if you can, stay cool out there, dear Short Wavers.

What science story do you want to hear next on Short Wave? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.

We kickoff our series Space Camp with a look at space launches. What does hurtling into space feel like? What physics are involved? And what's the "junk" in Earth's orbit?

It feels like this is the summer of space launches. So, it's only appropriate that we kick off our new series Space Camp with a look at space launches. Throughout the series, Regina and Emily will plumb our universe to uncover the strange, wonderful things happening all around us. This episode, that entails answering a series of questions about getting to space: What does hurtling into space feel like? What physics are involved? And what's the "junk" in Earth's orbit?

Space Camp episodes drop every Tuesday in the Short Wave feed in addition to our regular episodes happening every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

For a full explainer of Newton's third law of motion, g-forces and visuals on his cannonball thought experiment, check out our digital story.

Have a particular aspect of space you want us to cover in a future episode? Email us at shortwave@npr.org — we'd love to hear from you!

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Regina Barber and Emily Kwong of Short Wave about the origins of baobab trees, lizard-inspired construction, and why outside play is beneficial for kids' eyesight.

An extreme geomagnetic storm reached Earth yesterday, with the northern lights dancing across the skies in places they're normally not seen. It's the most powerful solar storm in decades.

NPR's Juana Summers talks with Regina Barber and Emily Kwong of Short Wave about biodegradable plastic, simulating growing crops on Mars, and how deer are disrupting caribou populations.

Stars are born in clusters. Some stay together as binaries, some drift apart and some are violently thrown out of the family. The Pleiades are young clustered blue stars being born from dust and gas.

The twin is Venus — the hottest planet in our solar system. Our series on The Science of Siblings, examines how these two planets started out so similar but end up so different.

NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with Regina Barber and Rachel Carlson of Short Wave about chickadees with awesome memories, grinning robots, and the bugs most commonly found in haiku.

NPR's Ailsa Chang talks with Regina Barber and Anil Oza about rhythms and the brain, how electric fish sense their environment, and a new methane-detecting satellite.

NPR's Ailsa Chang talks with Regina Barber and Rachel Carlson of Short Wave about singing gibbons, how tai chi might lower blood pressure, and why women get quicker benefits from exercise than men.

Short Wave's Regina Barber and Margaret Cirino talk through how moths produce an anti-bat signal, why clownfish could be counting to 3 and the first GMO food crop sold directly to home gardeners.