We now know what happened to a supernova discovered by a Canadian 37 years ago (0:58)A mystery about the ultimate fate of an exploding star has been solved. Canadian astronomer Ian Shelton discovered the new bright light in the sky back in February 1987, and recognized it as the first supernova to be visible to the naked eye in 400 years. In a new study in the journal Science, astrophysicist Claes Fransson from Stockholm University, confirmed that the remaining cinder collapsed into a super-dense neutron star.A vibrating pill makes pigs feel full (10:30)Theres a lot of interest in weight loss drugs right now, but a new technology could one day be able to help control appetite without pharmaceuticals. Researchers at MIT have developed a mechanical pill that, when ingested, vibrates in the gut, stimulating the nerves that signal fullness much like drinking a full glass of water before a meal. The research was led by Shriya Srinivasan, a former MIT graduate student who is now an assistant professor of bioengineering at Harvard University. She says that while it hasnt been tested in humans, pigs ate 40% less food after ingesting the pill. The research was published in the journal Science Advances.Wildebeest push Zebras out in front in the annual Serengeti migration (18:22)Nearly two million animals zebras, wildebeest and gazelles migrate through Africas Serengeti plain every year. It was thought the Zebras led the migration. But a new large-scale study has shown that the reason the Zebras go first is that theyre being pushed ahead by the more numerous Wildebeest who eat everything in sight. Michael Anderson from Wake Forest University in North Carolina shares the new findings in this migration pattern.Temperature and pollution are conspiring to mess up sea turtle sex ratios (26:55)Biologists have known that higher temperatures cause endangered green sea turtle hatchlings to develop as females more often. Now a team has discovered that pollution can exacerbate this, causing sex ratios to skew even more. Arthur Barraza of the Australian Rivers Institute in the School of Environment and Science at Griffith University in Australia said this could add to the turtles difficulties if too few males are available for reproduction. The research was published in Frontiers in Marine Science.How Icelanders suffer and benefit from their volcanically active home (36:14)Scientists studying the recent volcanic activity near the town of Grindavik now have a much better understanding of whats behind the recurring eruptions. Freysteinn Sigmundsson, a geophysicist at the University of Iceland, said theyve seen pressure building up and moving underground repeatedly before erupting at the surface. Their study was published in the journal Science. Over in the northeast region of the country, in Kafla, scientists and engineers are busy preparing to tunnel into a relatively shallow magma chamber. Hjalti Pll Inglfsson, the director of GEORG, described their plan to dig into the magma chamber that was discovered by accident for scientific research. However they are also interested in whether it can be exploited as a potential energy source ten times more powerful than current geothermal energy sources. 

Reintroducing a rare butterfly to a restored ecosystem; Studying Vancouvers bats in front of a curious audience; Investigating whether Arctic methane seeps could tell us about life on Mars; Revealing the hidden worlds in Pacific ocean depths; Plan a, forget it. Plan b, oh well. Plan c study Saskatchewan ticks; Dodging wild boars while doing archeology in southern Italy; Sidewalk gardens keep harmful chemicals out of streams.

The matter in the universe at one point was just a diffuse cloud, until it began to clump together with an invisible scaffold of dark matter that expanded into galaxies and stars we see today. Now scientists, using the Atacama Cosmology Telescope to peer back in time, used the afterglow from about 400,000 years after the Big Bang as a backlight to illuminate the dark matter in its path. Blake Sherwin, a professor of cosmology at the University of Cambridge, said by measuring how the dark matters gravity deflected that afterglow, they created the most detailed map of the dark matters lumpiness that gave rise to the universe as it is today.

A listener asks: What would be the effect on animals if the oxygen concentration in the atmosphere were to be doubled or even tripled? ?For the answer we hear from Dr. Greg Goss, a professor of Biology at the University of Alberta.

In 2021 an unusually violent storm hit Antarctica and essentially pre-empted an entire breeding season for several species of seabirds, including Antarctic and snow petrels and south polar skuas. Canadian researcher Sebastien Descamps, a seabird ecologist at the Norwegian Polar Institute, said he was shocked to see nearly empty seabird breeding colonies when he visited the sites in early 2022. Missing a single breeding season likely wont have a big effect on these seabirds, but as powerful storms become more frequent with climate change, Descamps said hes concerned that missed breeding seasons could become an increasing and damaging trend. Their research was published in the journal Current Biology.

The permanent animal life on Antarctica is dominated by small insect-like creatures, worms and other microscopic critters. Ever since scientists started visiting the Antarctic, theyve wondered how these animals have survived there given that the continent was thought to have been completely covered by thick ice at the height of the last ice age. Now Mark Stevens, a senior research scientist in terrestrial invertebrates from the South Australian Museum, says the answer to this ice-age mystery provides valuable context for what we can expect with climate change.

As eggs, spadefoot toads make adjustments to how their bodies develop and grow based on the food availability they sense in their environment. The tadpoles studied by Emily Harmon, an evolutionary biologist at the University of North Carolina, developed into ordinary omnivorous forms or sharp toothed, powerfully jawed carnivores depending on the abundance of the nutritious tiny shrimp that live in the ponds where they are hatched. Her study was published in the Royal Society Biology Letters.

Underwater volcanic eruptions, like the 2022 explosion of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haapai in the South Pacific, can rain ash and create destructive tsunamis for nearby coasts, but they don't have the same impact on the Earth's climate as land-based eruptions. Dr. Johan Gilchrist and a team of researchers at the University of British Columbia studied past submarine eruptions and built lab simulations to examine their unique features. In a new study in Nature Geoscience, Dr. Gilchrist and his co-authors describe terrace-like deposits left by these eruptions, and what these structures can tell scientists about past and future submarine volcanic events.

Biologists have found that the mass of plastic circulating in the middle of the Pacific ocean has developed into an ecosystem that is as alien to the open ocean as the plastic is. Its been settled by organisms that are normally found on coastal shallows, rocks and piers, and theyre concerned that this represents a new kind of competition to the native species of the remote open ocean. Henry Choong, a curator of Invertebrate Zoology from the Royal British Columbia Museum, was part of the team that made the surprising discovery. The research was published in the journal Nature.

The great Pacific garbage patch is crawling with coastal life; A new cosmic map shows lumpy dark matter was scaffolding for our universe to evolve; We now know why huge underwater volcanoes dont change the climate much; Spadefoot toads decide in the egg what kind of tadpoles they need to be; Life in Antarctica survived the last ice age, but is threatened in a warming world; Antarctic seabirds breeding seasons are being pre-empted by unseasonal storms; Listener Question: What would happen to animals if atmospheric oxygen levels increased significantly?

The science of why bad words feel so good during painful moments (1:40). 40 years ago Mount St. Helens blew its top, here's how it got green again (10:05). Recycling spare genes was how some plants turned into carnivores (27:48). COVID reopening: hoping it goes right watching carefully how it might go wrong (35:53).

Ecologist Dr. Charlie Crisafulli first arrived at Mount St. Helens just two months after it erupted in 1980. He's spent four decades watching the ecosystem of the mountain and the surrounding area recover from near complete devastation into a vibrant green landscape.