Category: Science

In about 5 billion years, our Sun will run out of fuel and expand, possibly engulfing Earth. These end stages of a star’s life can be utterly beautiful – as is the case with this planetary nebula called the Helix Nebula. Astronomers study these objects by looking at all kinds of light. This images show X-rays from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (magenta), optical light data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (orange, light blue), infrared data from the European Southern Observatory VISTA telescope (gold, dark blue), and ultraviolet data from GALEX (purple) of the Helix Nebula.

After 11 years mapping the Milky Way, the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope has retired. Scientists hailed it as “the discovery machine of the decade.”

Smart scales track changes in your muscle mass, body fat percentage and other health metrics — but how do they work?

A metalworking die found in Denmark features a depiction of a horse and warrior that is remarkably similar to motifs on the Sutton Hoo helmet in England.

In 1950 the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi was discussing the possibility of intelligent alien life with his colleagues. If alien civilizations exist, he said, some should surely have had enough time to expand throughout the cosmos. So where are they? Many answers to Fermi’s “paradox” have been proposed: Maybe alien civilizations burn out or destroy themselves before they can become interstellar… Source

They look like baseball bats morphing into bowling pins, their ends flaring into an aggressive bulge that suddenly tapers. So how do they work? (Image credit: Mike Stobe)

New tests of blood and spinal fluid can identify people experiencing memory loss from Alzheimer’s disease. (Image credit: Andrew Brookes)

Each year, the United States has about 1,200 tornadoes. Many of them happen in tornado alley, a very broad swath of the U.S. that shifts seasonally. This area gets at least ten times more tornadoes than the rest of the world. Science writer Sushmita Pathak says that huge difference can be chalked up to one word: geography. But there’s a slice of South America with similar geographical features that gets comparatively fewer tornadoes, so what gives? Sushmita wades into the research weeds with guest host Berly McCoy, one of Short Wave’s producers. Read Sushmita’s full article on tornadoes that she wrote for the publication Eos . Have other science weather stories you think we should cover on the show? Let us know by emailing 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 . (Image credit: Connect Images/Jason Persoff Stormdoctor)

The best smart telescopes offer a supremely easy way of viewing the night sky.

Unitree’s G1 demonstrates a new level of robotic agility with a complex movement following an AI software update.

Tropical storms have been steadily increasing in frequency over the past 5,700 years, new evidence from sediment in the Great Blue Hole reveals, with a massive spike in the past two decades.

An eerie new video from ESA’s Solar Orbiter shows a towering ‘cyclone’ of plasma exhibiting behaviors never seen before on our sun.

Whether a galactic environment has the right conditions for habitable planets to form could depend on how the black hole in that galaxy is rotating.

Discover interesting facts about the different types of bears and learn why not all bears hibernate.