Smart News

A self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci

Based on a True Story

A New Leonardo da Vinci Biopic Is Coming to the Big Screen

The film will be an adaptation of Walter Isaacson's biography of the Renaissance painter, scientist and inventor

An artist's rendering of a feathered dinosuar in the snow. Feathers would have allowed dinosaurs, ancestors of birds, to trap their body heat in cold climates.

Some Dinosaurs Evolved to Be Warm-Blooded 180 Million Years Ago, Study Suggests

Researchers studied the geographic distribution of dinosaurs to draw conclusions about whether they could regulate their internal temperatures

The exhibition includes portraits of staff by Sir Godfrey Kneller.

The British Royals' Huge Staff Once Included Exotic Cat Wranglers, Rat Killers and Toilet Attendants

A new exhibition in London offers an inside look at the lives of the workers who served the monarchy between 1660 and 1830

A subpopulation of orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar (not pictured) have interacted with roughly 700 boats since 2020, causing five of the vessels to sink.

Orcas Sink 50-Foot Yacht Off the Coast of Morocco

The vessel's two passengers were evacuated onto an oil tanker in the Strait of Gibraltar. The incident marks the fifth vessel the mammals have sunk in recent years

Jonathan Yeo's portrait of Charles III wearing the uniform of the Welsh Guards

Charles III Unveiled His First Official Portrait as King. Is It Too Red?

Artist Jonathan Yeo's nontraditional approach to royal portraiture has drawn mixed reactions

A protein-DNA interaction, modeled by AlphaFold 3.

Google Releases A.I. That Can Predict How the Human Body's Molecules Behave, Boosting Drug Discovery Research

Called AlphaFold 3, the latest update of the software models the interactions of proteins with DNA, RNA and other molecules for the first time

An image from the eBay listing for Forest With a Stream, which is attributed to Claude Monet

Art Meets Science

A.I. Detects 40 Allegedly Counterfeit Paintings for Sale on eBay

Art Recognition's algorithm is trained to identify specific artists' patterns of style and composition

Wig Shoes, Chunxiao Qu, 2017

These Artworks Explore the Cultural Significance of Hair

A new exhibition at the Heide Museum of Modern Art in Australia examines what hair says about identity, gender, social status and more

Tourists cool off in front of a fan in Rome, Italy on July 18, 2023. Temperatures in the area at the time surpassed 104 degrees Fahrenheit.

Last Year, the Northern Hemisphere Had Its Hottest Summer in 2,000 Years

Researchers used tree ring data to compare temperatures from as far back as 1 C.E. to 2023 temperatures

Lightning wowed onlookers watching the eruption of Volcán de Fuego in Guatemala last month.

Lightning Dazzles Onlookers Watching the Eruption of Volcán de Fuego in Guatemala

Volcanic lightning is so common that it's even earned its own nickname: dirty thunderstorms

The stone has inscriptions on three sides.

Cool Finds

Geography Teacher in England Finds Stone With 1,600-Year-Old Inscriptions in His Garden

The rock is covered in ogham, an alphabet made up of parallel lines used for writing in the Irish language

Teal Helms (right) and volunteer Gali Begim (left) perform intake assesments on a brown pelican at the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach, California.

Hundreds of Starving Brown Pelicans Are Turning Up on California Beaches, Puzzling Wildlife Rescuers and Scientists

By all available accounts, there isn’t a lack of ocean forage

An illustration of some of the underwater creatures that lived during the Ediacaran Period, roughly 635 million to 541 million years ago.

Earth's Magnetic Field Nearly Collapsed 600 Million Years Ago. Then, Weird and Complex Life Evolved

A new study suggests more solar radiation reached Earth while the magnetic field weakened, leading to a rise in oxygen that drove an explosion of multicellular organisms during the Ediacaran Period

Runners compete in the Marathon des Sables, a 250-kilometer race in the Sahara Desert in Morocco, in 2022. Humans have a number physiological adaptations, such as slow-twitch muscle fibers and the ability to sweat a lot, that help with endurance running.

Long-Distance Running May Have Evolved to Help Humans Chase Prey to Exhaustion

Scientists found hundreds of recent examples from around the globe of hunters using "endurance pursuits" to tire out their prey, furthering the debate over the hunting technique

Researchers used ground-penetrating radar and electrical resistivity tomography to scan the graveyard near the Great Pyramid of Khufu.

Cool Finds

Scientists Are Investigating a Puzzling Underground 'Anomaly' Near the Giza Pyramids

Using remote-sensing technologies, researchers have discovered two connected structures in a previously unexplored area

This artistic reconstruction shows how the two women and the horse may have originally been placed.

New Research

These Ancient Skeletons Are Not Entwined Lovers, But a Daughter Embracing Her Mother

New research found that the two women, who were buried in Austria atop a horse, were first-degree relatives who died some 1,800 years ago

Elephants use different greetings depending on whether the other animal is looking at them.

How Do Elephants Say Hello? Reunions Lead to Ear Flapping, Rumbling and Trunk Swinging in Greeting

New research explores how African savannah elephants use vocalizations, gestures and secretions when they meet up with companions

The world’s quietest room registers a background sound of -24.9 dBA.

In the Earth’s Quietest Room, You Can Hear Yourself Blink

Background noise in the custom-built chamber is actually measured in negative decibels, which means it’s below the threshold of human hearing

A pterosaur cranium fossil is among the donated artifacts that will be on display and studied behind the scenes when the museum reopens in 2026.

More Than 1,000 Fossils, Including Rare Dinosaurs, Gifted to Brazil's National Museum Following Fire

The massive donation was made by Burkhard Pohl, a Swiss-German collector, as the museum works to replenish its collections after a devastating blaze in September 2018

London, Parliament, Sunlight in the fog, Claude Monet, 1904

Monet's Thames Paintings Will Finally Go on View in London—Nearly 120 Years After the Original Exhibition Was Postponed

The artist hoped to display the works in the city where he painted them, but he was plagued with anxiety over their quality

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