Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Smart News / Smart News Science

Asian elephants have less than a 33 percent chance of lasting beyond the 21st century

Earth Lost 2.5 Billion Years’ Worth of Evolutionary History in Just 130,000 Years

Even if humans curbed destructive actions within next 50 years, it would take between five to seven million years for mammal biodiversity to fully recover

Rice terraces in Yunnan, China.

Trending Today

136,000 Varieties of Rice Are Now Protected in Perpetuity

An annual $1.4 million funding grant will allow the International Rice Research Institute to help develop drought, heat- and flood-resistant rice varieties

New Research

This Humongous Fungus Is as Massive as Three Blue Whales

A new estimate suggests this mushroom is 2,500 Years Old and Weighs 440 tons

Previous excavations at the site have revealed raven talons, toad bones and even bronze cauldrons filled with the remains of ritually sacrificed puppies

Cool Finds

This Ancient 10-Year-Old Received a ‘Vampire Burial’ to Prevent Return From the Dead

The malaria-stricken Roman child was buried in the ominously named Cemetery of the Babies with a stone inserted into its mouth

More than half of Americans of European descent could be matched to a third cousin or closer through anonymous DNA samples

You Could Be Identified Through a Genealogy Database—Even If Your DNA Hasn’t Been Tested

New study finds that approximately 60 percent of people of European-descent in the U.S. can be matched to a third cousin or closer

The sample included women from 31 out of 34 Chinese provinces and 36 out of 55 ethnic minority groups

New Research

Largest Ever Study of Chinese People’s Genetics Reveals Insights on Migration Patterns, Diet, Disease

Scientists analyzed DNA samples from 141,431 pregnant Chinese women, or roughly 1/10,000 of the country’s population

The Average Person Can Recognize 5,000 Faces

But some participants in a recent study were able to recall as many as 10,000 faces

Well then what would we call a cow that jumps over a moonmoon?

New Research

If a Moon Has a Moon, Is Its Moon Called a Moonmoon?

A new study suggests it’s possible some moons could have moons and the internet wants to give them a name—but scientists have yet to actually find one

Hurricane Michael made landfall along the Florida Panhandle Wednesday, devastating the region with winds of up to 155 miles per hour and storm surges of up to 14 feet

Trending Today

Hurricane Michael Could Worsen—or Alleviate—Florida’s Toxic Red Tide Outbreak

Experts describe conflicting scenarios that alternately find the state’s poisonous algal bloom either weakening offshore or spreading inland

Russian Soyuz rocket carrying astronauts Nick Hague and Aleksey Ovchinin lifts off on Thursday, October 11.

Astronauts Survive Emergency Landing After Russian Rocket Launch Fails

The two crew members landed safely in Kazakhstan after aborting the spaceflight to conduct a high-speed reentry procedure

New Research

Mount Vesuvius Boiled Its Victims’ Blood and Caused Their Skulls to Explode

A new study of residue on skeletons from the 79 A.D. eruption indicates Herculaneum was hit with a 400 to 900 degree pyroclastic flow

How Siberian Huskies Get Their Piercing Blue Eyes

A new study suggests that the defining trait is linked to a unique genetic mutation

Agglutinated walls in Palaeopascichnus linearis from the khatyspyt formation

Oldest Known Macroscopic Skeletal Organism Was Masquerading as Fossilized Feces

Some researchers initially dismissed the remains of Palaeopascichnus lineari as teeny turds from a bygone era

Polar bears are shown scavenging on the carcass of a dead bowhead whale that washed ashore on Wrangel Island, Russia.

Weird Animals

Polar Bears May Soon Feast on Whale Carcasses. Global Warming is to Blame.

This scavenging strategy saved sleuths of bears in the past, but it’s not sustainable as temperatures climb at unprecedented rates

Katmai National Park and Preserve has a ton of chubby cubbies. But which bear's bulk will bury the competition in the 2018 Fat Bear Week?

Trending Today

Time to Get Jiggily With it, Fat Bear Week Is Upon Us

Your vote will determine which fish-chomping ursine competitor in Katmai National Park and Preserve is the chubbiest cubby of them all

Cool Finds

How Fish Farms Can Use Facial Recognition to Survey Sick Salmon

A Norwegian aquaculture company plans to combat sea lice and other problems by monitoring individual salmon in a high-tech fish farms

Forgive us, we're just the messenger: When it comes to animal intelligence, canines are clever, but they're not at the top of the class.

Dogs Are Smart, But Not Exceptional

A new study has found that a host of similar animals match, or even exceed dogs’ intellectual abilities

In a newly released report, a team of nearly 100 scientists from around the world stress the urgency of combating climate change.

New Research

The World Was Just Issued 12-Year Ultimatum On Climate Change

Leading climate scientists paint dire portrait of years to come if we maintain carbon-emission status quo

New Research

We Haven’t Been Zapped Out Of Existence Yet, So Other Dimensions Are Probably Super Tiny

In theory, other dimensions aren’t big enough to form black holes and consume our universe or it would have happened already

Garbage that was found after the eruption of the Ear Spring geyser.

This Yellowstone Geyser Spat Out a Pacifier From 1930s—And Lots of Other Trash

Park officials found items like a cement block, coins, aluminum cans and a pacifier from the 1930s

Page 303 of 537