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Smart News / Smart News Science

Cool Finds

Rare Two-Headed Porpoise Found in North Sea

Only nine other cases of conjoined cetacean twins have ever been documented

Nesting space is at a premium as humans tear down natural habitats.

New Research

The Early Birds Might Be Crowding Out the Bees

As humans expand, nesting space contracts—and competition heats up

Cool Finds

Endangered Balkan Lynx Kitten Photographed for the First Time in a Decade

There are less than 50 of these critically endangered cats left in the wild

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”

Icy conditions kept BAYSYS ships from making their way to the research site.

Trending Today

Climate Change Cuts Climate Change Study Short

Ironic? Yes. But it could be a new reality for scientists

Trending Today

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

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

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