Science Quickly

A blind astronomer “sonified” the universe’s most explosive events: gamma-ray bursts. By listening to, rather than looking at, the data, she made a critical discovery and changed the field of astronomy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Space is famously silent, but astronomers and musicians are increasingly turning astronomical data into sound as a way to make discoveries and inspire people who are blind or visually impaired. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One researcher has been hiring planes to strafe the sky over the Amazon rain forest to collect the air coming off the trees, and what she is finding is cause for alarm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Consumers can now get easy tests for Alzheimer’s. But these tests may not really help patients that much—yet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón discusses her involvement in NASA’s Europa Clipper mission and the inspiration behind her poem, which will travel onboard the spacecraft. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Caterpillars can’t regulate their body temperatures, so they have to come up with a totally different strategy to make it through the coldest months of the year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A honeybee swarm has as much electric charge as a thundercloud, and the insects’ mass movements in the atmosphere might even have some influence on the weather. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The new field of digital bioacoustics is using machine learning to try decipher animal speak, including honeybee toots and quacks and whoops. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are you working really hard to learn something? Remember this counterintuitive fact, and you might improve your learning curve. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The bite of the lone star tick makes people allergic to a sugar found in mammalian products, and many doctors don’t know about it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A “Darwinian paradox” is that homosexual activity occurs even though it does not lead to or aid in reproduction. But if you visit three capuchin monkeys in Los Angeles, they’ll show you how beneficial their liaisons are. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Luddites did not hate technology—but they did fight the way it was used to exploit humans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Xenotransplants could help to solve the organ transplant crisis—if researchers can get the science right. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Light is a very dangerous, if not so obvious, threat to birds who migrate at night. But researchers are using weather radar to track birds and provide “lights out” forecasts to help keep their paths clear of visual distraction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Science is turning to machines to unlock the secrets of the vast, mysterious pulse-of-the-planet phenomenon that is nocturnal migration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you really want to challenging your bird identification skills, try using them at night, when bird calls are less than 100 milliseconds long. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For thousands of years, no one truly knew how birds migrated—that is, until a few unlikely pioneers sat in an empty field with hundreds of pounds of kludged together recording gear and waited to hear sounds that no one had ever captured. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On any given night, dense clouds of dark, ghostly figures pass over your head as you sleep. Maybe you never knew they were there, but there are people out there who are deciphering all the unseen movement that happens amid the darkness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hearing aids may help maintain better brain functions in older people and better health overall. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Apothecaries founded this famous garden—one of the most ancient botanical gardens in Europe—to teach their students which plants poison and which plants cure.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here’s how scientists are planning on getting underground fungi data from space using satellites. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Atmospheric carbon is a currency that plants use to “buy” nutrients from fungi in the soil. To find out where this economy will go next, the devil is in the details. And the details are in the dirt. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Like us, plants and fungi have complex economies. By burning fossil fuels, we’ve been devaluing their currency. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Drugs such as Wegovy and Ozempic might help people tackle substance abuse as well as shed pounds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientists used a smoking machine—complete with a 3-D-printed mouthpiece—to figure out how to get the most cannabinoid per puff.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices