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Smart News / Smart News Science

Thank Andrey Markov for your smartphone's predictive text feature—and also somewhat sillier uses.

Three Very Modern Uses For A Nineteenth-Century Text Generator

Andrey Markov was trying to understand poems with math when he created a whole new field of probability studies

New Research

Jupiter Could Be the Solar System’s Oldest Resident

The early former may have set up just the right conditions for Earth to take shape

This flatworm fragment went to space and became a double-headed worm.

New Research

What Space-Faring Flatworms Can Teach Us About Human Health

Their experiment had some weird results—and could one day help humans thrive in microgravity and back here on Earth

Pasteur took blood samples from a cow, a sheep and a horse who had died of anthrax.

How Sheep’s Blood Helped Disprove This Wacky Nineteenth-Century Theory of Illness

Scientists didn’t understand that bacteria caused disease, but then enter Louis Pasteur

A simulation of the large-scale structure of the universe

New Research

We May Live in a Massive Cosmic Void

If the universe were a block of Swiss cheese, the Milky Way would sit within one of the cheesy holes

Trending Today

Eagles Adopt—Not Attack—a Red-Tailed Hawk Chick

Bird lovers are watching with bated breath to see if the eagles will keep feeding the little guy or turn him into dinner

I can haz a sense of inequity?

New Research

Wolves and Dogs Both Have a Sense of Fairness

But wolves seem to take inequity much more seriously than dogs

New Research

This 115-Million-Year-Old Mushroom Is the Oldest Fossilized Fungus

Preserved against all odds, the tiny mushroom sprung up when dinosaurs still ruled the lands

Early shoots of thale cress sprout in their case of transparent gel on the space station. This is the same type of plant examined in this latest study for its "brain."

New Research

Seeds May Use Tiny “Brains” to Decide When to Germinate

Two clumps of cells send hormone signals to each other to help determine when the time has come to sprout

This coprolite specimen, dubbed "Precious," is the largest fossilized feces found to date. Found in South Carolina, it weighs just over four pounds.

New Research

Researchers Use Particle Accelerator to Peek Inside Fossilized Poop

This new method could reveal just what dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures ate

The sperm in the Repository for Germinal Choice was intended to create ideal children, but for some prospective parents, it just offered them control over the process of having a child.

The “Nobel Prize Sperm Bank” Was Racist. It Also Helped Change the Fertility Industry

The Repository for Germinal Choice was supposed to produce super-kids from the sperm of white high achievers

Once rare floods could afflict cities like San Diego more often in the future, a new study finds.

New Research

Catastrophic Coastal Floods Could Become Much More Likely

A new study predicts a median 40-fold increase in flood frequency by 2050

Fossilized skin from the neck of a Tyrannosaurus rex.

New Research

T. Rex Was Likely Covered in Scales, Not Feathers

The research dispels theories that the fearsome dino boasted a feathery plume

Tree resin trapped this baby bird 99 million years ago.

New Research

This 99-Million-Year-Old Bird Coexisted With Dinosaurs

The tiny bird is a big find for paleontologists

A man dives in the Coral Triangle off Ghizo, Solomon Islands, in 2011.

Three Things to Know About the Coral Triangle, the Ocean’s Biodiversity Hot Spot

At more than a billion acres of ocean, the Coral Triangle is one of the world’s biggest and most important marine regions

The star KELT-9 and its hellish planet KELT-9b

New Research

Researchers Discover a Planet That’s As Hot As a Star

It’s daytime temperatures clock in at a scorching 7,800 degrees Fahrenheit

Before St. Martin's living digestive system was studied, doctors knew what the digestive system looked like but not how it looked or behaved while working.

This Man’s Gunshot Wound Gave Scientists a Window Into Digestion

The relationship between St. Martin and the doctor who experimented on him was ethically dubious at best

New Research

How Common Are Food Allergies?

Roughly 3.6 percent of Americans have at least one food allergy or intolerance, study says

Puntung wallowing in mud as a calf.

One of Malaysia’s Last Sumatran Rhinos Has Died

After performing emergency surgery on Puntung, experts realized that the abscess was caused by cancer

A field of methane craters on the floor of the Barents Sea

New Research

Ancient Methane Explosions Rocked the Arctic Ocean at the End of the Last Ice Age

As retreating ice relieved seafloor pressures, trapped methane burst through to the water column, study says

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