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Smart News / Smart News Ideas & Innovations

An artist impression of Cheops, the CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite, with an exoplanet system in the background

Three Things to Know About Europe’s New Exoplanet Space Telescope

CHEOPS is the first exoplanet satellite devoted specifically to learning more about the thousands of planets we have already found

An artist's impression of the upcoming ClearSpace-1 robot using its four arms to capture a piece of space debris that was left behind in 2013.

The European Space Agency Is Sending a Robot to Hug Junk Out of Space

The mission, set to launch in 2025, will be the first to remove a piece of debris from Earth’s lower orbit

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This Electric Eel Is Shocking Around the Christmas Tree

The Tennessee Aquarium’s internet-famous eel, Miguel Wattson, is powering Christmas lights in the exhibit

William Shakespeare (left) and John Fletcher (right) both contributed to Henry VIII, a new study suggests.

Artificial Intelligence Reveals Second Playwright’s Contributions to Shakespeare’s ‘Henry VIII’

Scholars have long suspected the play, written in 1613, was a collaborative effort. Now, an algorithm has mapped out who wrote what

A New Yorker captured this image of a flooded subway entrance on November 20.

How the New York City Subway Is Preparing for Climate Change

“We’re doing this because climate change is real,” the MTA account wrote on Twitter after a local shared a snapshot of a flooded subway entrance

The scan captures every detail that made the bust so iconic, including Nefertiti’s delicate neck, painted headdress, high cheekbones and sharp eyeliner.

3-D Scans of the Bust of Nefertiti Are Now Available Online

A German museum released the digital data to artist Cosmo Wenman after a hoax heist and lengthy legal battle

The 19-page volume features three original stories, advertisements and a table of contents.

Miniature Manuscript Penned by Teenaged Charlotte Brontë Will Return to Author’s Childhood Home

The tiny volume, one of six created for a series, will now join four surviving counterparts on view at the Brontë Parsonage Museum

The $9,500 digital dress

Designers Are Selling Expensive Clothes That Don’t Exist—and People Are Actually Buying Them

Earlier this year, a digital-only dress sold at auction for $9,500

The lonely rover is heading through Gale Crater to dig around for hints of microbial life.

See Mars’s Eerie Horizon in New Images From Curiosity Rover

Gale Crater—where the image was captured—was likely covered with lakes and rivers of liquid water around three billion years ago, scientists suggest

Not for the faint of heart, these destinations are meant to entice thrill-seeking tourists.

Chinese Province Closes All of Its Glass Bridges Amid Safety Concerns

Heart-stopping glass structures have become a craze in China, but some have been linked to injuries and fatalities

The Dampier Peninsula reburial on November 20, 2015, was part of the RRR project.

Website Provides Blueprint for Repatriating Aboriginal Remains

Called “Return, Reconcile, Renew,” the new site offers a virtual space for support and healing

Shift supervisor James Quinn walks through a darkened CVS Pharmacy as downtown Sonoma, California, remains without power on Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2019.

Northern California Cuts Power to 700,000 Homes and Businesses in an Effort to Prevent Fires

In an unprecedented move intended to reduce fire risk, power will be purposefully cut in 34 California counties, an outage that may last up to a week

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Queens Museum Brings Rube Goldberg Machine to Life

To celebrate an exhibition of the cartoonist and hometown hero, curators commissioned one of Rube’s overly complicated gadgets

Photo shows seized pangolin scales and elephant ivory in Singapore this July

New Report Finds at Least One in Five Terrestrial Vertebrate Species Are Traded Globally

The research team also predicts increased trade going forward

The researchers write, "These results [indicate] … nonhuman animals have a theory of mind and do not simply rely on behavior rules to interpret and anticipate others’ actions"

Great Apes May Use Their Own Experience to Guess What Others Will Do

New research suggests primates possess ‘theory of mind’, an ability once thought to be unique to humans

The map shows locations including accused witches' places of residence, sites of trial, detention and execution

This Map Shows the Scale of 16th- and 17th-Century Scottish Witch Hunts

The interactive tool tells the stories of 3,141 men and women accused of practicing witchcraft

Tawanda Kanhema, as pictured in 2018 at Zimbabwe's Victoria Falls

Meet the Photographer Single-Handedly Putting Zimbabwe on Google Street View

Thanks to Tawanda Kanhema, you can now take a virtual tour of Victoria Falls, the Great Zimbabwe National Monument and other attractions

The tool is set to go offline this Friday, but it will remain accessible as a physical art installation at Milan’s Fondazione Prada Osservertario

Art Meets Science

Art Project Shows Racial Biases in Artificial Intelligence System

ImageNet Roulette reveals how little-explored classification methods are yielding ‘racist, misogynistic and cruel results’

Dreaming May Help the Brain Forget Excess Memories, a Study of Mice Shows

Researchers identify neurons linked with memory retention, performance in mice

The Redemption of Vanity, a work of art by MIT artist in residence Diemut Strebe in conjunction with with Brian L. Wardle, MIT professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, along with Luiz Acauan and Estelle Cohen.

There’s a New Blackest Black in Town

Artist Diemut Strebe covered a $2 million diamond with a substance that absorbs 99.995 percent of any incoming light

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