Science News Explores

Meteorites that are billions of years old. Alienlike worms. A blue whale’s massive jaw bones. These are just some of the millions of marvels at the Smithsonian Institution.

Most are part of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural...

When it comes to rockets, bell-shaped engines are the norm. But they’re not the most efficient shape. Engineers have relied on this design only because it avoids a known overheating risk faced by a more efficient engine. Now, though, three 17-year-olds have redesigned the nozzle of the more efficient aerospike engine to better manage heat.

They’re hoping that one da...

Many blind people navigate the world using a cane, guide dog or wearable GPS. But some have something more in their toolkit: echolocation. That’s the ability to sense nearby objects using sound. A new study shows just how master echolocators use this technique to ge...

Superblooms are massive blooms of desert wildflowers. There isn’t an exact number of flowers required to make something a superbloom. But the word usually describes an above-average number of blossoms. These flowers create colorful carpets that blanket usually barren desert landscapes.

Ancient cultures across the globe have been playing games of chance — using dice — far, far longer than historians had ever realized, a new study finds. Researchers turned up these