Smart News

Cool Finds

Come for the Giant Rock, Stay for the UFO History

George Van Tassel believed he could communicate with aliens

January 9, 2015

Early Food Safety Workers Tested Poisons by Eating Them

They were hailed as heroes and even had a song

January 9, 2015

Cool Finds

It’s Cheaper to Make Diabetes Test Strips of Silk Than of Paper in India

Skilled handloom weavers and abundant silk hold the key for an innovative solution

January 9, 2015

New Research

Planes Fly Too Fast for Birds to Dodge

New research shows that birds are not adept at avoiding obstacles at such high speeds

January 9, 2015

Cool Finds

A Museum’s Butterfly Emerged Half Male, Half Female

The rarity is like a natural experiment that tells scientists how genes and hormones interact to produce different sexes

January 9, 2015

Cool Finds

U.S. Air Force Builds New Radar for Space Junk

It’s called Space Fence and should help us track the estimated 500,000 pieces of debris that orbit Earth

January 9, 2015

New Research

Europe’s Great Gothic Cathedrals Weren’t Built Just of Concrete

The designers and builders of Europe’s great Gothic cathedrals weren’t actually so innovative

January 9, 2015

Cool Finds

The 1887 Blizzard That Changed the American Frontier Forever

A blizzard hit the western open range, causing the “Great Die Up” and transforming America’s agricultural history

January 9, 2015

New Research

Monkeys Can Learn to Recognize Themselves in the Mirror

Generations of monkeys had tried and failed a classic test of intelligence, but the fault may have been in the way humans thought of the test

January 8, 2015

Trending Today

60 Years Ago, the First African-American Soloist Sang at the Met Opera

Marian Anderson performed as the fortuneteller Ulrica in Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera

January 8, 2015

Cool Finds

The Flu Has Been Making People Sick for At Least 500 Years

The 1918 flu pandemic gets all the headlines, but the malady is thought to have first appeared in the 16th century—and possibly earlier

January 8, 2015

Trending Today

The Art of Vaccinations

The Art of Saving a Life is connected to a fundraising effort for an international group working to eradicate disease through vaccinations

January 8, 2015

Cool Finds

Ellis Island Isn’t to Blame for Your Family’s Name Change

A long-standing myth obscures the truth behind the Americanization of some European names

January 8, 2015

Trending Today

2015 Will Be One Second Longer Than 2014

Because the Earth is rotating more slowly than the tick of our atomic clocks, says the International Earth Rotation Service

January 8, 2015

Cool Finds

Visit Kepler’s Exoplanets—And Don’t Worry About the Natives (At Least for Now)

NASA has made a set of travel posters themed to exoplanets while a nonprofit searches for life among them

January 8, 2015

New Research

Fossils Show How Flying Fish Started to Glide

In the quest to avoid being eaten, some fish took a leap into the open air

January 7, 2015

Cool Finds

Jurassic Park May Have Been Right—Some Dinosaurs Hunted in Packs

The film inspired paleontologists to discover the truth about dinos, including whether raptors were social hunters

January 7, 2015

New Research

Scientists Can Tell How Old a Star Is by Observing How Fast It Spins

A newly proven method can pinpoint the age of stars with at least 90% accuracy

January 7, 2015

New Research

Insecticide-Treated Nets May Create Super Mosquitoes

Two species of mosquitos have interbred, giving rise to hybrids that can resist the most potent weapons used against them

January 7, 2015

Cool Finds

A Test Tube in Michigan Holds the Air From Thomas Edison’s Death Room

Two famous inventors, one glass tube and a museum mystery

January 7, 2015