Smart News

After completing the first milestone surviving on its own, Ingenuity is now preparing for its next challenge, passing a series of test flights on the Red Planet's thin atmosphere.

Ingenuity Helicopter Survives Its First Night Alone on Mars

On April 3, 2021, the spacecraft launched from the Perseverance rover and successfully landed on the red planet

Microscope image of an isolate from the first U.S. case of Covid-19. Viral particles are visible in blue.

WHO Releases Results of First Investigation Into the Origin of Covid-19

The virus was most likely first spread from a wild animal, possibly bats, to an unknown intermediate animal, possibly farm animals, and then to humans

Egyptian officials moved 22 mummies—including 18 kings and 4 queens—to the newly opened National Museum of Egyptian Civilization.

Why Egypt Paraded 22 Ancient Pharaohs Through the Streets of Cairo

Officials organized the lavish, made-for-TV event in hopes of revitalizing the country's tourism industry

The yazh's design is based on detailed descriptions of the ancient instrument.

Listen to the First Song Ever Recorded on This Ancient, Harp-Like Instrument

Tharun Sekar, a luthier based in southern India, has painstakingly recreated the long-lost yazh

L to R: John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison perform at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany, in May 1962.

How a Stint in Hamburg Helped Catapult the Beatles to Superstardom

A trove of letters and photographs associated with the band's time in Germany is set to go up for auction next month

The dolphins swam in the Grand Canal near St. Mark's Square, Venice's main public square

Dolphins Spotted in Venice's Grand Canal—for Real This Time

The coast guard and a rescue organization took about two hours to guide the cetaceans out of the canal

The team used LiDAR scanning and computer modeling to recreate the acoustics of Linlithgow Palace's chapel.

Art Meets Science

Hear a 16th-Century Concert Recreated by a 'Musical Time Machine'

Researchers modeled the acoustics of Linlithgow Palace in Scotland to transport listeners back to a 1512 performance

A viral video shows an octopus (not pictured) lashing out at an Australian tourist in shallow water.

A Very Angry Octopus Goes Viral After Lashing Out at an Australian Tourist

A video posted to social media captures the cephalopod's arm-flinging attack

A study of ten narwhal tusks reveals how the animals are responding to a swiftly changing Arctic.

New Research

Study of Narwhal Tusks Reveals a Swiftly Changing Arctic

Chemical analysis of ten tusks shows shifting diets and increasing levels of mercury as climate change warms the polar region

Cascatelli, a play on the word for waterfall in Italian, was designed to hold the right amount of sauce with its 90-degree curve and hollow slide-like inside.

Get Lost in the Sauce With a Brand New Pasta Shape, Cascatelli

The ruffled, waterfall-inspired noodle resembles a combination of mafaldine and bucatini

The new study compared 1,131 children between 12 and 15 years old who received two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and 1,129 who received two doses of a placebo.

Pfizer-BioNTech Vaccine Is Highly Effective at Preventing Covid-19 Infections in Adolescents

In a study of 2,260 children age 12 to 15, no vaccinated kids contracted the virus

Ancient people brought the crystals to the rock shelter.

Cool Finds

Crystals Found in Kalahari Desert Challenge Assumptions About Where in Africa Human Culture Arose

The 105,000-year-old items may have held religious meaning

Captive lemurs receive an abundance of food year-round, so the need to hibernate as a way to store energy when resources are scarce is not needed.

How Studying Lemur Hibernation Could Make Long-Distance Space Travel Easier One Day

As humans' closest hibernating relative, learning from the critters could also make emergency surgery safer and inform metabolic disease research

Grasshoppers swarm a street light a few blocks from the Las Vegas Strip on July 26, 2019.

New Research

Las Vegas Was Inundated by 46 Million Grasshoppers on a Single Night in 2019

A new study says the horde of insects was drawn to the Vegas Strip by its famously bright lights

The William F. Winter Archives and History Building in Jackson, Mississippi

Mississippi Returns Hundreds of Native Americans' Remains to Chickasaw Nation

Decades after their bones were placed in storage, the state has repatriated the remains of 403 Indigenous ancestors

The Ingenuity helicopter is scheduled to attempt flight this week no later than April 8 after the Mars rover completes its first mission of transporting the small chopper to a flat "airfield" free of obstructions.

Mars Helicopter Ingenuity Holds Piece of Wright Brothers History

Secured under Ingenuity's solar panels is a stamp-sized swatch of fabric from the Wright Flyer

A stone-lined latrine was one of the few surviving remnants of a medieval hall in Oxford's Jewish quarter.

Cool Finds

Medieval Jews in England Kept Kosher Laws, New Research Suggests

An 800-year-old trash dump in Oxford reveals adherence to Jewish dietary codes

This is an atomic clock that uses the predictable frequency of ytterbium atoms absorbing and emitting light to tell time. A new experiment paired a ytterbium-based atomic clock with two others that used aluminum and strontium atoms, respectively, to create an even more accurate measure of time.

New Research

New Atomic Clocks May Someday Redefine the Length of a Second

Researchers used three atomic clocks to measure time accurately down to the quadrillionth of a percent

L to R: Forged works attributed to Goya, Modigliani and El Greco

A Swindler Almost Sold These Forged 'Masterpieces' for $14.7 Million

Spanish authorities halted the sale of the three works, which were falsely attributed to El Greco, Modigliani and Goya

Astronaut Scott Kelly shown in October of 2010 in the Cupola of the International Space Station.

New Research

How Space Travel Shrank Astronaut Scott Kelly's Heart

While in orbit, the adaptable muscle doesn't need to combat gravity to pump blood

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