Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Smart News

None

This New Charger Checks To See If Your Phone’s Been Hacked

As your smartphone becomes more important, it also becomes a more appealing target for hackers

Read a Great Work of Literature, And You Could Understand Real People Better

Literary fiction presents a myriad of characters and leaves it up to the reader to piece together all of those takes on reality

We Can Guess What Holden Caulfield’s Reaction to the New Salinger Documentary Would Be: LMAO

Caulfield was one of the first to employ the phrase LMAO

The ancient brain, preserved by flame

Archaeologists Just Found Someone’s 4,000-Year-Old Brain

Boiled in its own juices by fire, this brain has been preserved for the past 4000 years

Pufferfish Create Underwater Crop Circles When They Mate

There is a chance that it’s only the fine sand the females are after, not the formations’ intricate patterns or symmetry

Major General Edwin Walker

Before JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald Tried to Kill an Army Major General

Seven months before he shot President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald tried to kill Major General Edwin Walker

This Japanese Shrine Has Been Torn Down And Rebuilt Every 20 Years for the Past Millennium

In addition to reinvigorating spiritual and community bonds, the tradition keeps Japanese artisan skills alive

Centipede Venom Is a More Potent Pain Killer Than Morphine

Of the nine possible sodium ion channels the centipede venom could have affected, it happened to correspond with just the right one for numbing pain

These Jellyfish-Mulching Robots Could Be the Savior of the Seas

These new robots can chew up nearly a ton of jellyfish per hour

This New, Weird Beer Has Moon Dust in It

We hear it goes great with cheese

How Do Canada Geese Get Ready to Fly?

In the movie Fly Away home that involved a goose shaped plane, but in the wild it’s just a few flicks of the neck.

None

This 5’5” Basketball Player Can Dunk And Has a Message: Treat Short Athletes Better

Brandon Todd spent years training to be able to dunk, putting on 80 pounds of muscle and increasing his vertical to 45 inches

People Are Just As Superficial About Robots’ Looks As They Are About Humans’

Depending on a person’s age and the robot’s job, people feel differently about what the robot should look like

None

Energy Innovation

This Gadget Charges Your Phone With Fire

A new device uses heat from any fire to produce electricity

A recreation of an ancient English farm

Early Agriculture Nearly Tanked Ancient Europe’s Population

While the rise of agriculture allowed human populations to blossom, it also opened the door for catastrophic collapses

257,000 Years Ago, a Hyena Ate Some Human Hair (And Probably the Rest of the Person, Too)

The brown hyena who originally planted the evidence most likely ate the person, though it could have scavenged on a dead body

These Mice Sing to Mark Their Territory

A lot of things sing to mark their territory - birds, wolves, howler monkeys. But you can now add mice to that list

None

People Have Already Managed to Litter on Pakistan’s New Earthquake-Formed Island

A massive earthquake last week created a new island off the coast of Pakistan

Tom Clancy at a book signing at Boston College.

Espionage Thriller Author Tom Clancy Dies

Clancy authored more than 20 books and his final novel, Command Authority, is scheduled for release on December 3

NASA Found Propene, the Chemical Used to Make Your Tupperware, on One of Saturn’s Moons

This new discovery fills in a gap in that chemical line-up, though experts suspect that many more molecular surprises await

Page 1013 of 1132