Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Smart News / Smart News Science

Engineers working on the Hope space probe prior to launch.

Exploring Mars

The United Arab Emirates’ Hope Probe Enters Into Mars Orbit

The spacecraft’s successful transit makes the UAE the fifth nation to reach the Red Planet

If approved, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine could become available as soon as March.

Johnson & Johnson Applies for FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization for Covid-19 Vaccine—Here’s Why That Takes Time

Independent experts will review data from over 40,000 trial participants and meet on February 26 to make a recommendation

Scientists suspect that the wombat evolved this unique trait to mark its territory on rocks and logs with poop that won’t easily roll off

Wombats Poop Cubes, and Scientists Finally Got to the Bottom of It

The marsupial’s unique digestive tract forms square dung

The black sea cucumber Holothuria atra is found in shallow waters along reefs and uses sand to coat itself for camouflage and protection from the sun.

Sea Cucumber Poop Could Revitalize Coral Reefs

In one reef, three million sea cucumbers released 64,000 metric tons of nutrient-packed poo back into the ecosystem

Sidewinder snakes most likely phased out the spikes along their bellies in favor of a smoother belly that can move with no frictional drag.

Snakeskin Reveals Secrets Behind a Sidewinder’s Twisted Wiggle

Serpent bellies seem smooth, but on a microscopic level, their species-specific scale structures may show how they adapted to their environments

An artist's rendering of a new species of mosasaur named Xenodens calminechari. The marine reptile was about the size of a porpoise and had serrated shark-like teeth.

New Research

Newly Discovered Marine Reptile Sawed Prey With Serrated Teeth

Researchers say the new species of mosasaur had teeth unlike those of any known reptile

Tangle-web spiders can catch prey up to 50 times their size thanks to their pulley system-like hunting strategy.

New Research

Small Spiders With Big Appetites Use a Pulley System to Catch Large Prey

New research and videos show how spiders in the Theridiidae family hoist up prey 50 times their size

ENGS peaks in March during the dry season and researcher’s suspect that something within the chimps’ biology or in their environment is prompting the disease

The Mysterious Cause of a Deadly Illness in Sanctuary Chimps Revealed

Researchers identified the 100 percent fatal pathogen as epizootic neurologic and gastroenteric syndrome or ENGS

Einsteinium was first created in 1952 in the aftermath of the first hydrogen bomb test on the island of Elugelab, which is now a part of the Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands, located in the Pacific Ocean.

New Research

Scientists Take Fundamental Measurements of Einsteinium for the First Time

The highly radioactive element was first created in a 1952 hydrogen bomb test

A 38-foot male whale washed up along Sandy Key in the Florida Everglades in January 2019. Researchers have now determined that the whale is a member of a previously unknown species they've dubbed Rice's whale. A necropsy revealed a 3-inch hunk of plastic lodged in its gut that may have contributed to its demise.

New Research

Large New Whale Species Identified in the Gulf of Mexico

Named Rice’s whale, the species can reach lengths of 42 feet and lives in the Gulf’s warm waters all year

A new study suggests cities across the United States may be underreporting their carbon emissions. The study suggests Los Angeles' self-reported emissions could be 50 percent below the metropolis' true carbon footprint.

New Research

U.S. Cities Are Underestimating Carbon Emissions, New Research Shows

Forty-eight cities across America have shorted their emissions by nearly 20 percent

Researchers were first intrigued by the social structure of the mole rats in the 1970s because, like bees and termites, naked mole rats have a single-breeding queen and have non-breeding worker rats

Naked Mole Rats Speak in Dialects Unique to Their Colonies

The accent is influenced by each group’s queen but can vary if the monarch is overthrown

Female Mediterranean field crickets (Gryllus bimaculatus) crickets can tell male cricket qualities and fitness through their courtship songs.

Noise Pollution Interrupts Crickets’ Sex Lives

Anthropogenic noise is affecting the female cricket’s ability to hear the male’s courting song

Titan's largest lake, Kraken Mare, is larger than the five Great Lakes combined.

New Research

Titan’s Largest Methane Lake May Be One Thousand Feet Deep

NASA’s Cassini probe flew just 600 miles above Saturn’s largest moon to gather the data

The male of a newly discovered species named Brookesia nana may be the smallest adult reptile ever found.

New Research

Chameleon Discovered in Madagascar May Be World’s Smallest Reptile

The male of the newly described species measured just half an inch long from his nose to the base of his tail

The four-inch-long footprint happened to be in a rock at about the height of a four-year-old child's shoulder.

Cool Finds

Four-Year-Old Lives Every Child’s Dream and Discovers a Dinosaur Footprint

Found on a beach in Wales, the fossil is 220 million years old and shows the details of the muscles and joints in the reptile’s foot

A group of perovskite solar cells that have been treated with capsaicin.

New Research

Chili Pepper Compound Increases Solar Cell Efficiency

Adding capsaicin, the chemical responsible for making chili peppers spicy, improved the efficiency of solar cells in experiments

The study analyzes thousands of records to understand how many species of bees are spotted by scientists each year.

New Research

Thousands of Wild Bee Species Haven’t Been Seen Since 1990

Between 2006 and 2015, researchers worldwide observed 25 percent fewer bee species than they had before 1990

During fall migration, nearly 40 percent of Anna’s Hummingbirds (Calypte anna) migrate through California’s Central Valley

California’s Central Valley and the Colorado River Delta Are Epicenters for North America’s Migratory Birds

A database called eBird reveals as many as 65 million birds fly through these Western migration zones

All dogs with the genetic signature A2b descended from the same Siberian canines roughly 23,000 years ago

How Dogs Migrated to America From Ice Age Siberia 15,000 Years Ago

Northern Siberians and ancestral native Americans may have traded pups at the time

Page 219 of 545