Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Articles

Staff from nearly every major museum in the world has visited CMA to study how they might incorporate digital.

The Cleveland Museum of Art Wants You To Play With Its Art

The digital-savvy museum is using more than a dozen interactive games to collect data on how visitors digest artwork

The American eel fishery has historically focused on mature eels (as shown here), which are exported around the world. But these days, there’s more money to be made from juveniles.

The Epic Fight Over the Enigmatic Eel

The slippery fish is at the center of a Canadian national debate about economics, conservation and Indigenous rights

Olympic Dreams by Neil Leifer, 1984

Winter Olympics

These Portraits Capture the Agony and Ecstasy of What It Means to Be an Olympian

From Sonja Henie to Shaun White, see these rare images from the collections of the National Portrait Gallery

A replica of Foucault's famous experiment at the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e Tecnica in Milan, Italy

Ask Smithsonian

How Does Foucault’s Pendulum Prove the Earth Rotates?

This elegant scientific demonstration has been delighting everyday people for nearly 200 years

Mass start speed skating sounds like chaos.

Winter Olympics

A Primer on the Four Olympic Events Debuting in Pyeongchang

The Winter Games hope to stay popular, with new disciplines that create shareable videos or feature men and women competing together

Once common along highland streams in Costa Rica and western Panama, the variable harlequin frog, Atelopus varius, is now endangered throughout its range, thanks in large part to a disease caused by the amphibian chytrid fungus.

These Captive-Bred Frogs Are Facing Predators and the Chytrid Fungus to Make It in the Wild

Scientists in Panama release 500 harlequin frogs, some wearing transmitters, in a first attempt to reintroduce the endangered species

Behold, the unsung hero of the Winter Olympic Games: ice.

The Beijing Winter Olympics

The Slick Science of Making Olympic Snow and Ice

Crafting the ideal ice rink or bobsled course takes patience, precision and the skill of an Ice Master

Reports of weird, wondrous, and worrying objects in the skies date to ancient times.

How UFO Reports Change With the Technology of the Times

Fears of Zeppelins, rockets and drones have replaced the “celestial wonders” of ancient times

Is this the future of grocery shopping?

Five Questions You Should Have About Amazon’s New AI-Powered Store

Will it destroy retail as we know it? Is it spying on you? Will it weaken your resolve not to buy that $8 gourmet chocolate bar?

Terje Isungset on the ice horn

Europe

These Musical Instruments Are All Made of Ice

Chill out at Norway’s Ice Music Festival this February

Eighmey's colonial-style corn cakes (top), forcemeat balls (lower right) and pickled French beans (lower left).

The Ben Franklin-Inspired Super Bowl Recipes You Never Knew You Needed

We don’t know who Ben Franklin would root for, but we do know what he’d eat on Super Bowl Sunday

A photo of David Koresh rests beside a wooden cross as part of a monument erected in Waco, Texas, by supporters of the Branch Davidian leader and founder, Friday, April 30, 1993.

The True Story of ‘Waco’ Is Still One of Contention

A new mini-series hopes to humanize those in and outside the doomed compound

Will blue packets replace pink ones soon?

New Research

Heart-Stopping Arrow Poison Could Be the Key to Male Birth Control

A non-toxic version of the compound interrupts fertilization in rats

Thomas Jefferson's two-volume personal copy of George Sale's 1734 translation of the Qur'an is now in the collections of the Library of Congress.

Why Thomas Jefferson Owned a Qur’an

Islam in America dates to the founding fathers, says Smithsonian’s religion curator Peter Manseau

View from the cockpit of Solar Impulse 2 as the plane heads for landing in Abu Dhabi.

Future of Energy

Inside the First Solar-Powered Flight Around the World

A new documentary highlights the challenges overcome by the experimental aircraft, Solar Impulse

Images created by NASA with satellite data helped the U.S. Department of Agriculture analyze outbreak patterns for southern pine beetles in Alabama, in spring 2016.

Can Scientists Forecast Algal Blooms and Pest Outbreaks Like We Do the Weather?

With big data, ecologists have the ability to predict short-term ecological phenomena over the span of days and seasons rather than decades

English Bulldogs illustrate the dramatic turn dog evolution has taken at the hands of humans.

The Evolution of Petface

The same traits that make these dogs adorable threaten their health and well-being

Page 345 of 1327