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Articles

"Baby Louie," formerly of the Indianapolis Children's Museum, is now back home, at the Henan Geological Museum.

Big Baby Dinosaur Finally Goes Home

An infant oviraptorosaur smuggled out of China decades ago comes back to Henan Province with new stories to tell

This gigantic piece of chalk art was created by dozens of artists in attempt to snag a Guinness World Record for Largest Anamorphic Pavement Art.

These 3D Pavement Paintings Take Chalk Art to a New Level

The pavement becomes a playground at the Sarasota Chalk Festival

This Pump Could Make Blood Transfusions Safer and Cheaper in the Developing World

The Hemafuse gives doctors a sterile way to suction, filter and retransfuse patients’ blood in places without electricity

Echelman's sculpture is inspired by data supplied by NASA and NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, measuring the effects of the earthquake and tsunami that ravaged Tohoku, Japan in 2011.

The Renwick Reopens

How One Artist Learned to Sculpt the Wind

Artist Janet Echelman studied ancient craft, travel the world and now collaborates with a team of specialists to choreograph the movement of air

Movilă: "I was near the Bataclan café and I saw two girls. I saw this one in front of me starting to really scream and cry. I took several photographs of her and posted one to Facebook, and it was picked up by another account. This girl wrote me, 'Cristian, I am the girl in the photo.' She lost her two close friends."

Photographer Cristian Movilă’s Eyewitness Photos of the Attack on Paris and its Aftermath

The experienced photographer says that nothing could have prepared him for what he saw

The latest Li-Fi prototype

What Is Li-Fi, and Will It Replace Wi-Fi?

Mobile communications professor Harald Haas has theorized about using LED bulbs to transmit data for years. Now, the technology is a reality.

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Spectacular High Fashion Rises From a Landscape of Trash

Photographer Fabrice Monteiro conjures the specter of environmental ruin

Scientists reconfigured a magnetic resonance scanner to capture a woman and her baby.

Why I Captured This MRI of a Mother and Child

A venerable symbol of human love, as you’ve never seen it before

An 1877 mousetrap called “The Delusion.” Directions read “Put as large a piece of cheese you can crowd into the box…”

The Unceasing American Quest to Build a Better Mousetrap

There has always been some truth to the apocryphal Emerson quote

In 1856, a Nantucket sailor sketched the killing of his crew’s “100-barrel” prize.

How Nantucket Came to Be the Whaling Capital of the World

Ron Howard’s new film “In the Heart of the Sea” captures the greed and blood lust of the Massachusetts island

Get Reintroduced to Rosa Parks as a New Archive Reveals the Woman Behind the Boycott

The Rosa Parks collection adds depth to the story of the civil rights heroine

Ask Smithsonian 2017

When Did the Vice Presidency Stop Going to the 2nd Place Winner and More Questions From Our Readers

Also up for discussion—why are oceans seawater and not freshwater?

The trailhead to Supai Village, part of the vast Grand Canyon area. Supai is the only the human settlement within the Grand Canyon.

Visit the Only Village Inside the Grand Canyon

Supai is so remote, mail is delivered by mule train

Jewish refugees about the St. Louis

The U.S. Government Turned Away Thousands of Jewish Refugees, Fearing That They Were Nazi Spies

In a long tradition of “persecuting the refugee,” the State Department and FDR claimed that Jewish immigrants could threaten national security

The pigeon will see you now.

New Research

Pigeons Can Spot Breast Cancer in Medical Images

After just a few weeks of training, the brainy birds rivaled human levels of accuracy in their diagnoses

A blue whale’s tale waits for student volunteers to begin cutting away blubber and flesh from the bones. The complete skeleton will eventually be displayed in Newport, Oregon.

What a Dead Blue Whale Can Teach Us About Life in the Ocean, and About Ourselves

Scientists and spectators gathered on an Oregon beach for the rare, messy, mesmerizing sight of a whale being carefully dismantled for museum display

In the movie The Martian, Matt Damon plays a stranded astronaut who has to grow his own food on the red planet. What he did in the film isn't so far off from how we could grow food in harsh environments on Earth.

Age of Humans

What Growing Potatoes on Mars Means for Earth’s Farmers

Matt Damon made it look easy in the recent Hollywood blockbuster, but Mars and Earth aren’t really all that different after all

Ask Smithsonian

Ask Smithsonian: What Is a Freckle?

Those adorable and charming spots splayed across the nose and cheeks might also be an indicator of sun damage

Dawe says he loved having to work with the Renwick building’s 19th-century architectural details as a backdrop.

The Renwick Reopens

Artist Gabriel Dawe Made a Rainbow Out of 60 Miles of Thread

The artwork is an optical illusion that delights the senses; as if the artist embroidered the air

A woman in traditional Aymara dress sits with her daughter and their honored human skull, or ñatita, and a bag of coca leaves during the 2015 Fiesta de las Ñatitas in Bolivia.

Meet the Celebrity Skulls of Bolivia’s Fiesta de las Ñatitas

Each November, the Aymara people honor their special bond with the helpful spirits of the deceased

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