Smart News: Latest Discoveries & News

This image shows a region in Saturn's outer B ring. NASA's Cassini spacecraft viewed this area at a level of detail twice as high as it had ever been observed before. And from this view, it is clear that there are still finer details to uncover. Researchers have yet to determine what generated the rich structure seen in this view, but they hope detailed images like this will help them unravel the mystery.

Cool Finds

NASA Releases Spectacular New Snapshots of Saturn’s Rings

Millions of moonlets appear to be tucked inside the debris that famously circles the planet

February 1, 2017

A 1925 pastel portrait of Hughes that belongs to the Smithsonian.

How Langston Hughes’s Dreams Inspired MLK’s

Langston Hughes wrote about dreams at a time when racism meant that black people’s dreams were silenced

February 1, 2017

A guard tower at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where tens of thousands were murdered.

New database lays out details of the SS guards and commanders who carried out some of history’s most terrible crimes

Updated: February 1, 2017 | Originally Published: January 31, 2017

A stone marten that disrupted the Large Hadron Collider in November goes on display in Rotterdam in an exhibit about human-animal mishaps

February 1, 2017

An artist's recreation of what the ancient creature looked like.

Bag-Like, Big-Mouthed Sea Creature Could Be Earliest Human Ancestor

This minute wriggly sea blob could represent some of the earliest steps along the path of evolution

January 31, 2017

New Research

Dig This: Researchers Found a 38,000-Year-Old Engraving in France

Excavated from a rock shelter, the image of an aurochs covered in dots was made by the Aurignacians, the earliest group of modern humans in Europe

January 31, 2017

Ron Hill celebrates fifty years of running every day

After running a mile a day for 52 years and 39 days, running legend Ron Hill finally took a day off due to heart problems

January 31, 2017

The front of the Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris.

Co-Defendant in €100 Million Art Heist Claims He Threw Five Masterpieces in the Trash

But investigators are skeptical

January 31, 2017

New Research

This 100-Million-Year-Old Insect Trapped in Amber Defines New Order

These now-extinct creatures are thought to have been able to secrete a chemical repellant and rotate their heads 180 degrees

January 31, 2017

Among other necessary items, the list includes "greenfish," a "fireshovel" and two dozen pewter spoons.

Seventeenth-Century Shopping List Discovered Under Floorboards of Historic English Home

Penned in 1633, the “beautifully written” list hints at household life 400 years ago

January 31, 2017

The definition of "boy scout" just expanded to include transgender kids who identify as male.

The decision is thanks to an 8 year old

January 31, 2017

Part of a 1949 ad for Scotch tape, which was billed as a "thrifty" way to make repairs around the home.

Scotch Tape Can Create X-Rays, and More You Didn’t Know About The Sticky Stuff

People have used it to repair everything from curtains to ceilings

January 31, 2017

Balloon prints like this one, of the Great Nassau “enable us to share some sense of the excitement that gripped those watching their fellow beings rise into the sky for the first time,” writes Tom D. Crouch of the National Air and Space Museum.

A Picture History of One of the World’s Greatest Hot Air Balloons

Designed by Charles Green, the Great Nassau was big enough to capture the imaginations of an entire country

January 31, 2017

Though coral usually needs light to thrive, the Amazon Reef survives despite murky waters.

Cool Finds

Underwater Images Give First Glimpse of Newly Discovered Brazilian Reef

The Amazon Reef once shocked scientists. Now, for the first time, we know what it looks like

January 31, 2017

Deforestation threatens natural world heritage sites.

New Research

Humans Threaten Over 100 Precious Natural Heritage Sites

Forest loss and humans’ footprint are endangering the very sites humans want to preserve

January 30, 2017

One of the Last Links to the Inner Nazi Circle Dies at 106

Brunhilde Pomsel worked with Joseph Goebbels until the final days of the Third Reich

January 30, 2017

Douglas Engelbart rehearsing for his 1968 computer demo.

In One 1968 Presentation, This Inventor Shaped Modern Computing

Douglas Engelbart’s career was about seeing the possibilities of what computing could do for humanity

January 30, 2017

There are few images of the top-secret map room. This one, taken at the end of WWII, shows Army Chief Warrant Officer Albert Cornelius standing before a map of Europe.

Take a Rare Look Inside FDR’s WWII Information Center: The Map Room

Long before Google Earth, this was how the president saw the world

January 30, 2017

Nuptse with the peak of Mount Everest behind it

New Research

Did an Earthquake Make Mount Everest Shorter? New Expedition Aims to Find Out

India and Nepal both plan to determine if the 2015 earthquake that devastated Nepal caused the world’s highest peak to lose an inch

January 30, 2017

Monument declaring Rugby, North Dakota, the city claiming geographic center—until now.

After an 90-year-reign, the title moves from Rugby, North Dakota, to the city of Center, in Oliver County

January 30, 2017