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Smart News / Smart News Ideas & Innovations

A collection of Nokia mobile handsets, including unseen prototypes

If You’re Nostalgic for Nokia, See the Devices That Defined ’90s Cellphone Design in a New Online Archive

The iconic brand’s mobile phones were pop culture mainstays. Soon, a new online archive will bring together thousands of documents, early models and design concepts

DNA on Earth is built from sugars with a property known as right-handedness. Though left-handed sugars aren't used by any known life, scientists can create them—but now, researchers say they shouldn't.

Scientists Warn of an ‘Unprecedented Risk’ From Synthetic ‘Mirror Life,’ Built With a Reverse Version of Natural Proteins and Sugars

So-called mirror cells could rampage through our ecosystems, food supply and immune systems, experts say, potentially without existing barriers to protect against them

Lightning strikes over the countryside near Potsdam, Germany, on July 10, 2024, following a period of high temperatures.

Google Reveals New A.I. Model That Predicts Weather Better Than the Best Traditional Forecasts

Instead of crunching mathematical calculations, GenCast was trained on four decades of historical weather data to produce an array of 15-day forecasts

Grazing cows produce more methane than feedlot cows because of the fiber content of the grass they consume.

Eating Seaweed Could Make Cows Less Gassy, Slashing Methane Emissions From Grazing by Nearly 40 Percent

A new study finds that feeding seaweed pellets to grazing beef cattle dramatically reduces their greenhouse gas emissions

Scientists created a spear using tar they produced from a makeshift hearth to test whether Neanderthals might have used similar methods to obtain tar.

New Research

A 65,000-Year-Old Hearth Reveals Evidence That Neanderthals Produced Tar for Stone Tools in Iberia

While Neanderthals have been found to create glue-like substances with other materials, this finding, if confirmed, would be the first sign of Neanderthals burning the rockrose plant to make tar

The York Theatre Royal says Richard III has been given a voice so he can finally "speak for himself."

Listen to the Resurrected Voice of Richard III—Who Speaks With an Unexpected Accent

A team of experts has created a digital avatar of the maligned monarch, who speaks with a Yorkshire accent. The 15th-century king was born in Northampton, but he spent much of his life in northern England

The yellow powder is a type of compound known as a “covalent organic framework,” or COF.

This New, Yellow Powder Quickly Pulls Carbon Dioxide From the Air, and Researchers Say ‘There’s Nothing Like It’

Scientists say just 200 grams of the material could capture 44 pounds of the greenhouse gas per year—the same as a large tree

The BYU research team at Boca Chica Beach, Texas.

Here’s What a SpaceX Starship Rocket Launch Sounds Like, According to New, Detailed Data

Just six miles away from the mega-rocket’s fifth test flight, the noise level was equivalent to a rock concert, researchers found

The 3D bioprinter at the Collins BioMicrosystems Laboratory at the University of Melbourne.

New 3D Bioprinter Could Build Replicas of Human Organs, Offering a Boost for Drug Discovery

The invention uses light, sound and bubbles to quickly create copies of soft tissue that might one day support testing individualized therapies for cancer and other diseases

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This Interactive Map Shows Which Indigenous Lands You Live On

The nonprofit behind the tool wants people to learn the history of the spaces they inhabit

Australian Reptile Park spider expert Rob Porter milks a male Sydney funnel-web spider to create antivenom in 2001.

Australian Zoo Asks Residents to Capture the World’s Most Venomous Spider: the Deadly Sydney Funnel-Web

The Australian Reptile Park’s annual callout is crucial to creating life-saving antivenom

The researchers made experimental spindles and whorls based on 3D scans of the pebbles.

These Mysterious 12,000-Year-Old Pebbles May Be Early Evidence of Wheel-Like Tools, Archaeologists Say

Researchers in Israel suggest the roughly donut-shaped artifacts could be spindle whorls, representing one of the oldest examples of rotational technology

An artist's rendering of the X-37B conducting an aerobraking maneuver using the drag of Earth's atmosphere, with the bottom of the craft glowing red as it heats up.

The Secretive Spaceplane of the U.S. Space Force Conducts First-of-Its-Kind Maneuvers

Called aerobraking, the technique allows the highly classified craft to change orbit without using propellant—and some are wondering why the agency has let us in on this news

The decorative coffin of Lady Chenet-aa, a high-status woman who died some 3,000 years ago

New Research

Scientists Are Using CT Scanners to Reveal the Secrets of More Than Two Dozen Ancient Egyptian Mummies

For the first time, researchers were able to see inside the mummies in the Chicago Field Museum’s collections. Their findings paint a more comprehensive picture of ancient Egyptian life

Screenshot from a video of the fireball reported to the American Meteor Society.

Watch a Starlink Satellite Plummet Through the Atmosphere in Videos Captured Last Weekend

The fireball—one of many decommissioned satellites from SpaceX’s internet service—was spotted by dozens of people across at least four states, and many mistook it for a meteor

Cloned black-footed ferret Antonia's kits at three weeks old, on July 9, 2024.

A Cloned Ferret Has Given Birth for the First Time in History, Marking a Win for Her Endangered Species

Antonia, a cloned black-footed ferret at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, has produced two healthy offspring that will help build genetic diversity in their recovering population

NASA's aging Voyager 1 spacecraft entered interstellar space in 2012 and has faced a handful of technical issues over the last year, even as it continues to collect scientific data.

Voyager 1 Breaks Its Silence With NASA via a Radio Transmitter Not Used Since 1981

The farthest spacecraft in the universe went momentarily rogue, but scientists breathed a sigh of relief when it reconnected at an unexpected radio frequency

Ai-Da's portrait depicts Alan Turing, a pioneering computer scientist and early figure in A.I. research.

Art Meets Science

A Portrait of Alan Turing Made by an A.I.-Powered Robot Could Sell for Up to $180,000

Ai-Da creates art using A.I. algorithms, cameras and robotic arms. Her abstract painting will be the first-ever artwork made by a humanoid robot to be sold at Sotheby’s

Calcea Johnson (right), currently studying environmental engineering at Louisiana State University, published the new study with her high school classmate, Ne'Kiya Jackson (left), now a student in pharmacology at Xavier University of Louisiana.

New Research

Two High Schoolers Found an ‘Impossible’ Proof for a 2,000-Year-Old Math Rule—Then, They Discovered Nine More

Ne’Kiya Jackson and Calcea Johnson of Louisiana published a new study proving the Pythagorean theorem using trigonometry, a feat mathematicians long thought could not be done

The core of the Valeriana site contained a ballcourt and an architectural arrangement that indicated a construction date before 150 C.E.

Cool Finds

‘Found’ Dataset Reveals Lost Maya City Full of Pyramids and Plazas, Hiding in Plain Sight Beneath a Mexican Forest

By analyzing an old lidar survey, researchers found evidence of more than 6,500 ancient structures in a previously unexplored area of Campeche

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