Researchers from Curtin University bolted an air sampler to a car and drove more than 1,100 kilometres across Western Australia, from Cottesloe to Cocklebiddy, sampling the air roughly every 26 kilometres. From those samples they identified 633 different types of plants and animals, and the mix changed with the landscape — habitat and environmental conditions mattered more than distance alone. Alex and Jordan unpack how airborne environmental DNA works, why a detection does not prove a species lives exactly where it was sampled, and the practical side: the same drive detected 12 regulated pest species, including native budworm, stable fly and Australian sheep blowfly. Guest Dr Joshua Newton, lead author of the study, explains in his own words what the team was trying to find out and what airborne DNA can — and cannot — tell us.

Sources:

Curtin University, "The road to discovery: DNA in the air maps WA biodiversity", Oct 20, 2026 — https://www.curtin.edu.au/news/media-release/the-road-to-discovery-dna-in-the-air-maps-wa-biodiversity/

Newton et al., "Car-mounted airborne eDNA sampling detects landscape scale biodiversity turnover along environmental gradients", Molecular Ecology Resources, 2026 — https://doi.org/10.1111/1755-0998.70217

Phys.org, "The road to discovery: DNA in the air maps biodiversity", Oct 20, 2026 — https://phys.org/news/2026-10-road-discovery-dna-air-biodiversity.html

On Venus, one full turn takes longer than a whole year. Venus spins so slowly it takes about 243 Earth days just to turn around once — but only about 225 Earth days to go all the way around the Sun. So by the time Venus has finished one spin, it has already finished a whole year.

Priya also explains the twist: Venus spins backwards, so the Sun would rise in the west and set in the east — and sunrise to sunrise is a different number, about 117 Earth days. Scientists think Venus's thick atmosphere and the Sun's pull helped slow its spin over billions of years, but the full story is still being worked out.

Sources:

NASA Science, Venus: Facts — https://science.nasa.gov/venus/venus-facts/

Enceladus, a small icy moon of Saturn, hides a global ocean under kilometres of ice — and its south-polar tiger stripes spray that ocean into space as a plume. In this episode, Alex and Jordan unpack a lab study that shows how a salt mineral called natron can trap tiny pockets of fluid as it freezes, making natron a key target for reading that ocean without drilling through the ice. They explain why larger, fresh grains near the vents are the best samples, and the honest caveats: this is a mechanism, not a detection of life, natron has not yet been confirmed on Enceladus's surface, and the lab solution was about five times more concentrated than Cassini-based estimates.

Sources:

Perera et al., Fluid inclusions establish natron as a key astrobiological target on Enceladus, Communications Earth & Environment, 2026 — https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-04080-z

Phys.org, Salt crystals could hold clues to life beneath Enceladus's ice, Oct 17, 2026 — https://phys.org/news/2026-10-salt-crystals-clues-life-beneath.html