and fresh desk for customer support.
Learn more at freshworks.com.
Hello, my lovely wavers.
It is me, your fearless co-host, Emily Kwong, here with a quick free ask.
Right now, on the app or platform where you're listening, can you leave us a rating or a review?
Like this one from Tristan who says, howdy from Texas.
I love y'all's show.
It is always a way for me to learn more about the world, especially as a student.
I learn more than I would at school listening to y'all. but also listen to your teacher.
Tristan says, thanks y'all so much for being an excellent source of knowledge.
Oh, listeners like Tristan, we appreciate you so much.
You help people find our show.
So keep it coming.
Write a few bars, drop it into the review section, give us some stars and spread the shortwave word.
All right, on to the news roundup.
You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
Hey Shore Wavers, Regina Barber here.
And Emily Kwong with our bi-weekly science news roundup featuring the host of All Things Considered.
And today we have one of our favorites, the amazing space nerd, Scott Detrow.
I'm back.
I'm here.
I'm thrilled.
I assume we're going to talk space.
Otherwise, I'm leaving.
But what other stories?
First, we're going to talk about AI and the kind of the energy crisis therein broken out by state.
Then we're going to talk about how scientists are learning more about an ocean moon of Saturn.
And finally, after going to space, we're going to come back to Earth to talk about chameleons and what makes them so weird and cool.
Okay, these are two joyous, interesting things and one existential downer-y thing.
So I'll take that ratio.
Sounds about right.
Excellent.
You're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.
This message comes from AT&T.
America's first network is also its fastest and most reliable.
Based on RootMetrics, United States Root Score Report 1H2025, tested with best commercially available smartphones on three national mobile networks across all available network types.
Your experiences may vary.
RootMetrics rankings are not an endorsement of AT&T.
When you compare, there's no comparison.
AT&T.
This message comes from Dell Technologies.
It's time for Black Friday, Dell Technologies' biggest sale of the year for gift-worthy accessories and select PCs like the Dell 16 Plus featuring Intel Core Ultra processors.
Shop now at dell.com slash deals.
This message comes from ServiceNow.
People should do the creative work they actually want to do, not boring, busy work.
Now, with AI agents built into the ServiceNow platform, you can automate millions of repetitive tasks in every corner of your business IT, HR and more.
So your people can focus on the work that they want to do.
That's putting AI agents to work for people.
It's your turn.
Get started at servicenow.com slash AI dash agents.
Okay, Scott, we're going to get to space.
But before that one, where do you want to start?
Let's, since it seems the least joyous, let's start with AI computing.
We talk a lot about AI these days, and there's a lot of concern about the power it's sucking up.
Yeah, truly.
A lot of AI computing relies on data centers.
Data centers are these big buildings which gobble up gigawatts of energy, sometimes millions of gallons of water for cooling energy.
And as tech companies try to make good on AI's potential, there is an energy crisis in the making.
How so?
Well, because the majority of these data centers are powered by fossil fuels.
Tianqi Xiao is a PhD candidate at Cornell University and he says that if the tech industry and policymakers are not careful, the boom in AI will jeopardize our climate progress.
The monitoring will be much important in the next few years because before we know the whole picture, we may already do something very bad for our environment.
So this week in the journal Nature Sustainability, Tianqi's team at Cornell published a state-by-state portrait of the environmental impact of AI.
And this map took three years to make.
Three years.
What did it tell us?
Was it worth the wait?
Well using data analytics and ironically, some AI.
The team determined that by 2030, the rate of AI growth in the US would put an additional
24 to 44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
And the team said it could use as much water as 6 to 10 million Americans do every year.
All of this, the paper concludes, would put the tech industry's climate goals out of reach.
Can you remind me what those initial goals were or are?
Yeah.
So Google, Microsoft and Meta have all pledged to reach net zero carbon emissions and to be water positive by 2030.
Amazon has set their net zero carbon deadline for 2040.
But according to this paper, AI is putting all of those climate goals in peril.
We reached out to these companies.
Google didn't reply and the others declined to comment.
I mean, I'm hearing this and I'm feeling sad and discouraged.
Yeah, me too.
Never.
Is that the right feeling?
Never despair, Scott, ever.
Because a big part of this study is about solutions.
The biggest takeaway is location.
Study author Feng Qiyu says where you build a data center matters.
If we build AI in the right place, on a clean power grid and with efficient cooling technology, it could really grow without blowing past climate and water limits.
Feng Shui wants data centers built in places with low water stress that are already transitioning to clean energy.
So spots in the Midwest and wind-built states like Texas Montana, Nebraska and South Dakota are good candidates.
And big tech has been scouting future data centers in some of these states.
This still makes me anxious and worried, and I think it's time to change the topic to an ocean moon, which I would much rather talk about.
What a pivot.
Well, me too.
Me too, Scott.
Off Earth.
I know you love space.
I do.
And you might remember that Saturn has 274 confirmed moons, right?
Confirmed moons.
Yeah.
And one of those moons is Enceladus.
And it's really intriguing to scientists looking for life elsewhere in the solar system, because it has an ocean covering its entire surface that's locked under a thick layer of ice.
And scientists say it could be a good potential spot for life.
It looks like all the right ingredients are there for it.
All it needs is time.
That's Georgina Miles with the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado.
And the ingredients for life she's talking about are liquid water, chemicals like hydrogen oxygen, nitrogen and carbon.
And in a new paper in the journal Science Advances, she and her colleagues write about another important ingredient.
A heating source.
Which feels pretty important for life, huh?
Yeah, it turns out, because if the temperatures in the ocean fluctuate too much or too hot or too cold, that's not good for life.
You want a stable heat flow process.
And overall, this study found that the heat flow seems to be pretty consistent on Enceladus.
And that means that the ocean on Enceladus is very stable.
It is now and probably has been for most of the moon's existence.
Which I assume is another good ingredient for what we're talking about here.
Yeah, it's promising because life takes a really long time to begin and develop.
Here's Carly Howitt, another author of the study and fellow planetary scientist.
We know that evolution is a slow process, but we're hopeful.
If it started on Enceladus, there might be something for us to see today.
Something for us to see today.
Does that mean we're going there?
Are we sending robots there?
What's the situation?
Not NASA, but the European Space Agency may.
Carly and Georgina are based in the UK and the European Space Agency is proposing a mission to Enceladus in the 2040s.
But there is a NASA mission going to another promising moon of Saturn, Titan.
It's set to launch in 2028, which is really soon.
This moon has mountains of ice and methane lakes.
The lander on this mission, Dragonfly, will do close-up measurements of a Titan's surface.
Okay, that's interesting.
Yeah.
Can we also talk about chameleons?
And can I make a request?
My three-year-old daughter has recently started calling chameleons colorful lizards.
They are.
It's true.
They're part of a clade called Old World Lizards, and they are incredibly colorful and funky.
Yeah, and Scott, let me also start with this like stone cold, like this universal truth about these colorful lizards, these chameleons.
Every aspect of them is weird.
This is Ed Stanley, an evolutionary biologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History.
They have fused fingers for grasping onto branches.
They have all the color chain stuff.
They have a ballistic tongue.
Their body shape is absolutely bizarre, right?
Most lizards are short and wide.
These ones are incredibly thin and tall.
And there's another trait to add to the list.
They've got really weird optic nerves.
Okay, so optic nerves, that's the bundle of nerve fibers that send information between the eyes and the brain.
In lizards, they're more straight.
But in chameleons, those optic nerves are coiled.
In shortwave and all things considered, we love weirdos.
Yeah.
It's very true.
Three of them are in this room.
Yes.
But in terms of our chameleon friends, why does all this weirdness matter?
Okay.
So researchers suspect it could help chameleons move their eyes in those like strange twisty ways.
I'm sure you've seen this before, Scott like when one eye of a chameleon is like moving independently from the other.
Like maybe one is looking at an insect for lunch and the other one's looking at another chameleon.
Chameleons can even look backwards.
So it's really bizarre for an animal.
What?
Right?
Okay, this is Juan Daza.
He's one of the study authors and he compared the coils of their optic nerve to those old landline telephone cords.
Oh.
We discovered at some point that if you made this cord twisted, you can have more range of movement.
Like remember the days when the phone would be in the kitchen and you could walk into the living room.
So your mom couldn't hear you.
Yeah, you didn't want that.
Maybe the coil in the optic nerves of chameleons is what allows their eyes to go all catawampus like that.
I mean, I'm kind of surprised this is all new information.
We've all been loving chameleons for a long time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And scientists have dissected them.
They've looked at chameleons, but that's probably why we didn't know this.
So like dissections can damage the optic nerve.
Mm-hmm.
Researchers in this study used CT scans which allowed them to get a 3D view of the chameleon's internal structures without destroying the optic nerve.
They wrote about it this week in the journal Scientific Reports.
I wish I could look backwards like a chameleon.
I think that's my takeaway.
Yeah.
And I miss phone landlines.
I kind of do too.
That's really what we wanted you to take away from this story.
Scott, we've had a great time with you.
Please come back as much as you want.
Always happy to be here.
You can hear more of Scott on Consider This NPR's afternoon podcast about what the news means for you.
This episode was produced by Daniel Offman and Rachel Carlson.
It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez and Christopher Intagliata.
Tyler Jones checked the facts.
Simon Laszlo Jansen and Kweisi Lee were the audio engineers.
I'm Emily Kwong.
And I'm Regina Barber.
Thank you for listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.
This message comes from Capital One with the Venture X card.
Earn unlimited double miles, a $300 annual Capital One travel credit, and access to airport lounges.
Capital One.
What's in your wallet?
Terms apply.
Details at CapitalOne.com.
This message comes from Capital One.
The Capital One VentureX Business Card earns unlimited double miles on every purchase.
Capital One.
What's in your wallet?
Terms and conditions apply.
Find out more at CapitalOne.com slash VentureX Business.
This message comes from BetterHelp.
Most FSA dollars expire at the end of the year, so it's time to use them or lose them.
With BetterHelp, you can invest those funds in taking care of your mind with online therapy.
Join today and you can be matched with a licensed therapist in as little as 24 hours.
Visit BetterHelp.com to get 10% off your first month.
