Bobby Azarian is a cognitive neuroscientist and science journalist. His work can be found in publications including The Atlantic, the New York Times, Scientific American, and BBC Future. He has also authored academic papers for prestigious peer-reviewed journals, such as Human Brain Mapping and Cognition & Emotion.

Below, Bobby shares 5 key insights from his new book, Listen to the audio version—read by Bobby himself—in the Next Big Idea App.

If you’re listening to this then congratulations, you’re lucky enough to be alive during the most exciting time in history. We are on the verge of a paradigm shift of unparalleled magnitude. Such a shift occurs when new science forces us to adopt a different overall framework and perspective.

While the planet is too large and hot for life, it could help us study more Earth-like exoplanets.

WASP-39b, a distant gas giant “hot Jupiter,” shows signs of water vapor and carbon dioxide, helping Webb scientists hone in on how to find them on smaller planets.

Circa 2019 face_with_colon_three

Scientists zapped mold spores in a laboratory and concluded that two types of fungus could survive a journey to the moon or Mars.

There are both positive and negative implications about this news, according to a recent statement by the American Geophysical Union (AGU). AGU coordinated the 2019 Astrobiology Science Conference in Seattle, where lead researcher microbiologist Marta Cortesão, a doctoral student at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), will present her research on the mold today (June 28).

Any Xenomorph-fearing ‘Alien’ fan will tell you that sound doesn’t exist in space. The thing is, that’s not completely true.

Back in May, during black hole week, NASA released an eerie sound clip of a black hole showing that space does make a lot of noise, depending on where you look, and how you process it.

“The misconception that there is no sound in space originates because most space is a ~vacuum, providing no way for sound waves to travel. A galaxy cluster has so much gas that we’ve picked up actual sound. Here it’s amplified, and mixed with other data, to hear a black hole!”

Posted on Big Think.

The private space firm hopes to send a small probe to Venus by 2023.

Rocket Lab is self-funding a mission to go to Venus in search of signs of extraterrestrial life, a report from *Ars Technica* reveals.

Venus’s surface is a hellish landscape with crushing pressures and temperatures that make it completely uninhabitable. However, some scientists believe the clouds above Venus’ surface may have conditions that are conducive to some forms of microbial life.

Jupiter’s icy moon Europa is an ocean world encased beneath a thick crust of ice — a place where snow floats upward.

The underwater snow forms in the global ocean and travels up though the water to attach to submerged ravines and inverted ice peaks, according to new research. This same phenomenon takes place below ice shelves on Earth — and it may be how Europa builds its ice shell.

The finding, published Monday in the journal Astrobiology, suggested Europa’s ice shell may not be as salty as scientists first thought. Understanding the salt content of the ice crust is crucial as engineers work on assembling NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft, which is preparing to launch to Europa in October 2024.