Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Articles

The remains of slash-and-burn land clearing in Rondônia in 1985.

Age of Humans

How a Farming Project in Brazil Turned Into a Social and Ecological Tragedy

This week’s Generation Anthropocene podcast looks at Rondônia, a textbook tale of how not to set up sustainable land use

Head lice crawl across a nit comb and into your nightmares.

New Research

Lice That Can Resist Drugs Have Infested Half the States in the U.S.

Mutated pests that can survive common drugstore treatments have been found in at least 25 states so far

Looking at tree density on a city scale.

Innovative Spirit Health Care

This New Mapping Tool Shows City Planners Where to Plant Trees

Researchers at Portland State University have created an app that looks at tree density in respect to neighborhood, population and pollution

Five of the World’s Most Fascinating Topiary Gardens

Whimsical gardens in surprising shapes decorate homes, churches and cemeteries around the world. We’ve rounded up five of the most extraordinary

Jon Batiste and Stay Human perform at the Austin City Limits Music Festival.

Why Jon Batiste Is the Perfect Choice to Be the “Late Night” Bandleader

The tall, lanky jazz musician will bring his unique talents to television this fall

Visitors apply aerodynamic principles to design their own virtual fighter jets and then race against other in a high-speed flying competition.

A Next Gen Museum Show Takes Aim at Inspiring Next Gen Ingenuity

Curators are betting high-tech playtime will turn today’s kids into tomorrow’s engineering visionaries

A paralyzed subject moves his legs with the help of transcutaneous stimulation.

Five Paralyzed Men Move Their Legs Again in a UCLA Study

As electrodes on the skin stimulated their spines, the study participants made “step-like” motions

Sweetgrass, a possible anti-mosquito agent.

New Research

This Sweet-Smelling Herb Can Ward Away Mosquitoes

Traditionally used by some Native American peoples, sweetgrass contains chemicals known to repel pesky bugs

Could This ‘Drinkable Book’ Provide Clean Water to the Developing World?

Pour untreated water over a page from the book and silver nanoparticles embedded in it will kill nearly 100 percent of disease-causing bacteria

Eric Byrnes acts as the voice of the digital umpire as the San Rafael Pacifics play the Vallejo Admirals.

Are Robot Umpires Coming to Baseball?

Now that a computer has covered home plate at a minor league game, what’s next?

Greetings, 51 Eridani b!

How, and Why, Do Astronomers Take Pictures of Exoplanets?

The latest snapshot of a Jupiter-like world hints at the potential for seeing more diverse planets in direct images

A Scottish Duke Transformed This Abandoned Coal Mine into a Cosmological Land-Art Park

A scarred landscape in rural Scotland has become a grassy multiverse now open for exploration

A map of nitric oxide pollution in Denver's Highlands neighborhood

Google Street View Cars Are Mapping City Air Pollution

Google, Aclima and the EPA team up to add sensors to cars, first in Denver and then in the Bay Area, that monitor air quality throughout the day

Yeast, a multipurpose microbe.

Innovative Spirit Health Care

A Genetically Modified Yeast Turns Sugar Into Painkillers

Stanford scientists have engineered a strain of yeast that can produce opiates on its own

Aymara people prepare an offering to Mother Earth during the sunrise of the winter solstice ceremony in La Apacheta, El Alto, on the outskirts of La Paz.

Smithsonian Journeys Travel Quarterly: Inca Road

In Bolivia’s High-Altitude Capital, Indigenous Traditions Thrive Once Again

Among sacred mountains, in a city where spells are cast and potions brewed, the otherworldly is everyday

These islands in Peru are made by villagers, who form the "land" beneath their houses out of reeds.

Smithsonian Journeys Travel Quarterly: Inca Road

Visit These Floating Peruvian Islands Constructed From Plants

The Uro people who live on Lake Titicaca have been building their own villages by hand for centuries

Discharge from the Gold King Mine colored Colorado's Animas River a distinct golden hue on August 6.

Anthropocene

Why Tens of Thousands of Toxic Mines Litter the U.S. West

The spill in Colorado’s Animas River highlights the problem of wastewater building up in abandoned mines

Angel Salvatory, 17, left, poses with her mother Bestida, right, and one-year-old brother Ezekial, at the Kabanga Protectorate Center. People with albinism are in danger from a black market in albino body parts driven by traditional beliefs, black magic and witch doctors. Bestida recounts how Angel’s father had wanted to attack their daughter ever since she was three-months-old. “He thought if we would take Angel to a witch doctor as a sacrifice that we could get rich,” says Bestida. She managed to talk him out of it for years until one day a group of men came armed with machetes. Despite surviving her father’s attack, Angel died of skin cancer in 2013.

Where Albinism Means Being Targeted for Murder or Dismemberment

Elsewhere in the world, people with albinism are at high risk for blindness and skin cancer. In Tanzania, the threats are much more severe

A combined shot shows two Perseids falling a minute apart over Bergen, Norway, on August 13.

See Spectacular Photos From This Year’s Perseid Meteor Shower

The annual event sent sparks flying over dark skies as Earth plowed through debris from a comet

Lebanese-British singer-songwriter Mika performs atop a piano at Fabrique in Milan this June.

Is There a ‘Gay Aesthetic’ to Pop Music?

From Elton John to Mika, the “glam piano” genre may be as integral to the Gay American experience as hip-hop and the blues are to the African American one

Page 533 of 1324