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.

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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.

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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 Juana Summers talks with Regina Barber and Berly McCoy of the Short Wave podcast about stealthy fish, a recent communication hiccup with Voyager 2 and why waves are getting taller in California.

Grieving is a form of learning, says a scientist who studies the brain's response to loss. When someone you love dies, you have to learn new rules for navigating the world and your brain has to adapt.

A new study shows that when ads made hedonistic marketing claims, such as "exotic" or "delicious," rather than targeting environmental interests, more people were willing to try eating insects.