Smart News Ideas & Innovations

The 3D bioprinter at the Collins BioMicrosystems Laboratory at the University of Melbourne.

New 3D Bioprinter Could Build Replicas of Human Organs, Offering a Boost for Drug Discovery

The invention uses light, sound and bubbles to quickly create copies of soft tissue that might one day support testing individualized therapies for cancer and other diseases

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This Interactive Map Shows Which Indigenous Lands You Live On

The nonprofit behind the tool wants people to learn the history of the spaces they inhabit

Australian Reptile Park spider expert Rob Porter milks a male Sydney funnel-web spider to create antivenom in 2001.

Australian Zoo Asks Residents to Capture the World’s Most Venomous Spider: the Deadly Sydney Funnel-Web

The Australian Reptile Park’s annual callout is crucial to creating life-saving antivenom

The researchers made experimental spindles and whorls based on 3D scans of the pebbles.

These Mysterious 12,000-Year-Old Pebbles May Be Early Evidence of Wheel-Like Tools, Archaeologists Say

Researchers in Israel suggest the roughly donut-shaped artifacts could be spindle whorls, representing one of the oldest examples of rotational technology

An artist's rendering of the X-37B conducting an aerobraking maneuver using the drag of Earth's atmosphere, with the bottom of the craft glowing red as it heats up.

The Secretive Spaceplane of the U.S. Space Force Conducts First-of-Its-Kind Maneuvers

Called aerobraking, the technique allows the highly classified craft to change orbit without using propellant—and some are wondering why the agency has let us in on this news

The decorative coffin of Lady Chenet-aa, a high-status woman who died some 3,000 years ago

New Research

Scientists Are Using CT Scanners to Reveal the Secrets of More Than Two Dozen Ancient Egyptian Mummies

For the first time, researchers were able to see inside the mummies in the Chicago Field Museum's collections. Their findings paint a more comprehensive picture of ancient Egyptian life

Screenshot from a video of the fireball reported to the American Meteor Society.

Watch a Starlink Satellite Plummet Through the Atmosphere in Videos Captured Last Weekend

The fireball—one of many decommissioned satellites from SpaceX's internet service—was spotted by dozens of people across at least four states, and many mistook it for a meteor

Cloned black-footed ferret Antonia's kits at three weeks old, on July 9, 2024.

A Cloned Ferret Has Given Birth for the First Time in History, Marking a Win for Her Endangered Species

Antonia, a cloned black-footed ferret at the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, has produced two healthy offspring that will help build genetic diversity in their recovering population

NASA's aging Voyager 1 spacecraft entered interstellar space in 2012 and has faced a handful of technical issues over the last year, even as it continues to collect scientific data.

Voyager 1 Breaks Its Silence With NASA via a Radio Transmitter Not Used Since 1981

The farthest spacecraft in the universe went momentarily rogue, but scientists breathed a sigh of relief when it reconnected at an unexpected radio frequency

Ai-Da's portrait depicts Alan Turing, a pioneering computer scientist and early figure in A.I. research.

Art Meets Science

A Portrait of Alan Turing Made by an A.I.-Powered Robot Could Sell for Up to $180,000

Ai-Da creates art using A.I. algorithms, cameras and robotic arms. Her abstract painting will be the first-ever artwork made by a humanoid robot to be sold at Sotheby's

Calcea Johnson (right), currently studying environmental engineering at Louisiana State University, published the new study with her high school classmate, Ne'Kiya Jackson (left), now a student in pharmacology at Xavier University of Louisiana.

New Research

Two High Schoolers Found an 'Impossible' Proof for a 2,000-Year-Old Math Rule—Then, They Discovered Nine More

Ne’Kiya Jackson and Calcea Johnson of Louisiana published a new study proving the Pythagorean theorem using trigonometry, a feat mathematicians long thought could not be done

The core of the Valeriana site contained a ballcourt and an architectural arrangement that indicated a construction date before 150 C.E.

Cool Finds

'Found' Dataset Reveals Lost Maya City Full of Pyramids and Plazas, Hiding in Plain Sight Beneath a Mexican Forest

By analyzing an old lidar survey, researchers found evidence of more than 6,500 ancient structures in a previously unexplored area of Campeche

A visualization of Tiktaalik roseae, an extinct aquatic animal with fossils that shed light on the evolution of land animals from marine animals millions of years ago.

New 'Paleo-Robots' Could Shed Light on Animal Evolution, Revealing How Some Fish Evolved to 'Walk' on Land

A team of roboticists, paleontologists and biologists are building robots to simulate crucial evolutionary developments that can’t be tested with static fossils

Researchers are trying to "bring back" the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, a species that has not been officially recorded since 1936.

A 110-Year-Old Pickled Thylacine Head Helped Build the Most Complete Ancient Genome to Date, Says 'De-Extinction' Company

Colossal Biosciences reports it extracted DNA and RNA from the Tasmanian tiger specimen, a key step forward in its effort to create a modern proxy of the extinct species. Other scientists are calling for data to back up the claim

Officials unveiled the portal installation in Philadelphia's LOVE Park on October 22.

New 'Portal' Opens in Philadelphia, Connecting Residents to Cities Around the World With Identical Installations

The looming sculpture features a small camera above an eight-foot-tall screen, which displays live video from Lithuania, Poland and Ireland

The lack of a sense of smell, called anosmia, can be congenital or acquired at some point in a person's lifetime.

New Research

People Born Without a Sense of Smell Have Different Breathing Patterns, Study Finds

Study participants with lifelong anosmia sniffed less than those with a normal sense of smell. Future research could shed light on whether this has negative implications for their health

The Upper Klamath River is also part of restoration work. The salmon's return inspires biologists to continue their efforts in the upper basin.

Salmon Make a Long-Awaited Return to the Klamath River for the First Time in 112 Years, After Largest Dam Removal in U.S.

Chinook salmon spark excitement among local Klamath Tribes, who have advocated for decades to restore the flow of the river in California and Oregon

Prime numbers are only divisible by themselves and one.

Amateur Mathematician Discovers the Largest Known Prime Number, With More Than 41 Million Digits

Called M136279841, the value belongs to a rare class of prime numbers called Mersenne primes and was found using a supercomputer system spread across 17 countries

The Endurance was discovered resting on the seafloor east of the Antarctic Peninsula in 2022.

See the Wreck of Ernest Shackleton's 'Endurance' in Astonishing Detail With This New 3D Scan

Created from more than 25,000 high-resolution images, the digital model shows artifacts from the ill-fated expedition, including a boot, dishes and a flare gun

The Super Heavy booster returning to the launch tower.

SpaceX Launches Starship Mega-Rocket and Catches Its Booster in Midair on First Try

The success is a giant leap toward the company's goal to take humans and cargo all the way to Mars on the world's biggest and most powerful launch vehicle

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