This Week in Science: Nuclear Fusion, Giant Shrimp, and Snake Sex

It’s time for “Nerd News,” covering the most important news for your brain.

Here’s a quick rundown of this week in science . . .

1.  A big breakthrough in nuclear fusion was announced this week.  For the first time, researchers in California were able to create more energy with it than they put in, which is a big deal.

In layman’s terms, “fusion” is when you’re combining atoms, and “fission” is when you’re splitting an atom.  Fission is what nuclear power plants use, but it creates a ton of radioactive waste.  Fusion doesn’t, and could produce unlimited clean energy.

2.  The two volcanoes on Hawaii’s Big Island suddenly stopped erupting this week, and might be done for now.

That’s good news for a lot of people worried about lava reaching their homes.  They ended up erupting for about two weeks.  It was the first time since 1984.

3.  In animal news:  Researchers found fossils of giant shrimp from 470 million years ago.  The biggest one they found was six-foot-five.  That’s as tall as Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

4.  (Careful!)  In other animal news:  Researchers in Australia discovered female snakes have ‘love buttons’, just like humans.  Researchers say it was just really hard to find.

5.  In other baby-makin’ news:  A biotech firm in Germany wants to open the first “artificial womb facility” to grow designer babies in labs.  So you could choose things like height and hair color.  They claim it could be common in 10 years.

6.  And in space news:  NASA’s Orion spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific on Sunday after a 1.4-million-mile journey around the Moon.  And the Perseverance rover captured first ever audio of a dust devil on Mars.  (Listen to it here at :23.)