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"Space Archaeologists" to Examine the International Space Station

Using millions of photos and documents, researchers will reconstruct life on the ISS to see how visitors interact with their tools and each other

Text an Emoji and the SFMOMA Will Respond with a Picture of Art

A new text messaging service lets users explore the museum’s vast collection

Engineer Mark Rober posing with his Super Soaker creation

The Innovative Spirit fy17

Ex-NASA Engineer Builds World's Largest Super Soaker

More than a mere toy, this water gun can slice through glass and watermelons

The July 14, 1868 patent for a tape measure included these two drawings.

How Hoop Skirts Led to Tape Measures

Eighteenth-century ladies would recognize some things about the modern contractor’s tool

It looks a bit like a blimp–unsurprising, since Fuller meant it to fly.

Buckminster Fuller Was Good at Ideas, Terrible at Car Design

Fuller held more than 30 patents during his life, but many of his ideas didn't make it off the page–or not for long

Josiah Wedgwood, of Wedgwood pottery fame, was also a staunch abolitionist and designed this medallion to further the cause.

This Anti-Slavery Jewelry Shows the Social Concerns (and the Technology) of Its Time

The 'Wedgwood Slave Medallion' was the first modern piece of protest jewelry

Police remove peaceful protestors from a sit-in at the U.S. Capitol in 1965.

Martin Luther King and Gandhi Weren’t the Only Ones Inspired By Thoreau’s ‘Civil Disobedience’

Thoreau's essay became a cornerstone of 20th-century protest

This familiar landscape is always in flux.

Cool Finds

Surf Through Newly Digitized Images to See Rome’s Ever-Changing History

The Eternal City is always evolving. Now, a new web resource shows how

3-D forensic facial reconstruction of a shíshálh Chief who lived nearly 4,000 years ago.

High-Status Indigenous Family Brought Back to Life With Digital Reconstruction

Some 3,700 years ago, the relatives were given elaborate burials along the coast of British Columbia

This structure in Tuscany holds clues to why Roman concrete is still so strong.

New Research

Why Ancient Roman Concrete Is So Strong

A rare chemical reaction strengthens it even today—and that could help threatened coastal communities

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"Corpse Hotels" Are in Demand in Japan

Crematoria are too busy, so a new type of business stepped in to make the wait more comfortable

All of these images were created by the neural networks

New Research

AI Project Produces New Styles of Art

Researchers let two neural networks critique each other to create the images

Today's Girl Scouts, tomorrow's cybersleuths.

Cool Finds

New Badges Will Make Today's Girl Scouts Tomorrow's Cybersleuths

Camping and cookie sales are just the tip of the iceberg for modern scouts

Now you see it...

Cool Finds

Celebrate the Eclipse With a Color-Shifting Stamp

Your next letter just got more celestial

Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna shot her own mirror selfie in 1913. The picture,taken five years before she was killed, shows a young woman of 13 looking herself in the eye, stabilizing the camera on a chair in front of a mirror.

Take a Peep at This Gallery of Historic Selfies

People have been photographing themselves almost since the dawn of the technology

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Renewables Generated Ten Percent of U.S. Energy In March

Longer days, stronger wind and reduced electricity demand helped green energy break double digits for the first time

Canada

Canada's New Two-Dollar Coins Glow in the Dark

The two-dollar coins celebrate the nation's 150th anniversary and include a scene with Northern Lights that really glow

Although scientific discoveries about blood started happening in the seventeeth century, blood transfusions are (mostly) a twentieth-century thing.

350 Years Ago, A Doctor Performed the First Human Blood Transfusion. A Sheep Was Involved

Early scientists thought that the perceived qualities of an animal—a lamb’s purity, for instance—could be transmitted to humans in blood form

One concern about wind turbines is that they are noisy, but the Department of Energy notes that at a distance of 750 feet, they make about as much noise as a household fridge.

Two Myths and One Truth About Wind Turbines

From the cost of turbines to one U.S. senator's suggestion that "wind is a finite resource"

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Art Installation Recreates the Smell of Cities Around the World

The Pollution Pod project emphasizes the unequal air quality divide between rich and poor cities

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