Smart News: Latest Discoveries & News

The Franklin Papers includes 4,522 documents, including angry letters the founding father never sent.

Cool Finds

It’s Ben Franklin’s Birthday—Want to Rummage Through His Papers?

4,522 documents, letters and notes that Franklin wrote or received

January 17, 2014

Russian authorities have far-reaching plans to spy on guests

January 17, 2014

Sixty people died and thousands were left homeless in one of the most deadly earthquakes in American history

January 17, 2014

People bake in the heat at this year's Australian Open.

Australia is getting hotter, creating dangerous conditions for everyone

January 17, 2014

A couple extra calories isn't going to kill you.

New Research

Diet Soda Makes Breathalyzers Think You’re Drunk

Maybe because you are

January 16, 2014

A New Way to Find Out If Your Chocolate Is Legit

You no longer have to be expert chocolate-taster to tell whether your cacao beans are as fancy as advertised

January 16, 2014

From an illuminated manuscript circa 1350s

Cool Finds

Not All the Knights of the Round Table Were White

The storytellers assumed we’d be sharp enough to pick up on their hints that Sir Morien was black. Turns out, we’re not

January 16, 2014

New Research

To Boost Your Chances of Kickstarter Success, Use These Key Phrases

Some phrases shows up time and again in successful Kickstarters, while others are associated with failure

January 16, 2014

New Research

Do Babies Fake Cry?

Babies can be evil little creatures: they can even fake cry

January 16, 2014

New Research

We’ve Got 1.5 Billion Years Left With a Habitable Earth

And then we need to get off this rock

January 16, 2014

Net neutrality might be done for. Here’s a look at where it came from

January 16, 2014

Part of the primary mirror for the James Webb Space Telescope. Imagine this, but... more.

We’re very quickly running out of time to deal with rising carbon emissions

January 16, 2014

Icelanders still hold strong to their belief in fairies

Cool Finds

Icelanders Protest a Road That Would Disturb Fairies

Nepal has the Yeti. The South has Bigfoot. Iceland has fairies

January 15, 2014

Cool Finds

How Scientists Recorded the Music Inside One Woman’s Head

A patient was hallucinating musical scores, and researchers have managed to record it

January 15, 2014

New Research

Don’t Give Your Kids and Pets Similar Sounding Names, Or You’ll Confuse Them

Your parents don’t actually think you and your sibling are interchangeable

January 15, 2014

Cool Finds

What Prompts People to Eat Human Flesh?

Power, violence, revenge—and the heat of the moment

January 15, 2014

New Research

Grasshopper Gut Parasites Could Stop Ruinous Locust Swarms

The microbes confuse the chemical signals that tell pestilent locusts: swarm!

January 15, 2014

New Research

We Burn Just Half the Calories Other Mammals Do

Our slow metabolism helps explain why it takes us so long to grow up—and why we live such long lives

January 15, 2014

In addition to its limb-like front fins, Tiktaalik had large, mobile rear fins that it used to push itself around in the water.

New Research

Ancient Walking Fish May Have Walked on All Fours

A fossilized pelvis shows the fish had functioning rear “legs”

January 14, 2014

Hundreds of years before the Great Wall of China, seen here, there was another.

Cool Finds

Archaeologists Chart the First Great Wall of China

Hundreds of years before the Great Wall, the Qi Dynasty built a wall of rammed earth

January 14, 2014