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Articles

The Napa Valley may be beautiful, but its fertile soil is a double-edged sword.

Why Earthquakes Make Napa Wine Taste So Good

The soil that makes Napa Valley grapes so special also makes the region vulnerable to earthquakes

How Does Bao Bao Celebrate Her Birthday? With Cake, Bamboo and Hundreds of Fans

The National Zoo hosted a traditional Chinese ceremony for the giant panda’s first birthday

The Kennewick Man Finally Freed to Share His Secrets

He’s the most important human skeleton ever found in North America—and here, for the first time, is his story

Debbie Harry on camera or a monitor during the video shoot for “Picture This,” c. 1978. Debbie was constantly asked, “How does it feel to be a sex symbol?” Literally exactly that question, over and over again.

Blondie Guitarist Chris Stein Shares His Secret Photographs of the 1970s and 1980s

Hearken back to the era of punk and new wave music with these snapshots

A building downtown at 2nd and Brown sustained damage from the 6.0 earthquake in Napa.

Trending Today

A New Way to See Earthquakes: Peoples’ Fitness Trackers

Yesterday’s Napa earthquake woke people up

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Benjamin Franklin Worked Here

Step into the London house where the inventor, scientist and founding father lived and worked

Screenshot of fire burning in space.

Zero-G Fire Pulses Like a Jellyfish on the Space Station

Balls of fire burning in low gravity could help scientists create cleaner, more efficient engine fuels

Thomas Edison’s House of Wizardry

A visit to the invention factory where Edison would earn the nickname “Wizard of Menlo Park”

Commemorate the War of 1812 With These Bicentennial Events

Gain new insight into the events of 1814 by attending these reenactments, concerts, walking tours and meals

Photos of two queen ants (left, the host species Mycocepurus goeldii and right, the parasitic species Mycocepurus castrator) shown side-by-side represent what may be an example of sympatric speciation—when a new species develops in the same geographic area with its sister species, but reproduces on its own.

This Ant Species May Support a Controversial Theory on Evolution

New research suggests that species don’t have to be geographically separated in order to evolve

Researchers have developed a coating that could one day make cashmere sweaters that never have to be cleaned.

Tech Watch

Good-bye, Dry Cleaning. Hello, Self-Cleaning Cashmere

Researchers in Hong Kong have developed a nano-coating that cleans fabric when exposed to light

From the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

100 Years After Her Death, Martha, the Last Passenger Pigeon, Still Resonates

The famed bird now finds itself at the center of a flap over de-extinction

A bold conservation vision calls for a return to the South’s once-vast longleaf pine forests.

Can the World Really Set Aside Half of the Planet for Wildlife?

The eminent evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson has an audacious vision for saving Earth from a cataclysmic extinction event

A dense flock of starlings in the sky above Rome.

How Just One Bird Can Urge an Entire Flock to Change Directions

The equations that describe these movements are equivalent to those that govern waves

In the public imagination, heat waves remain a B-list natural disaster.

Forecasters Will Soon Be Able to Predict Heat Waves Weeks in Advance

In the public imagination, heat waves remain a B-list natural disaster, but in reality, they are deadly

California’s exceptional drought has exposed the bottom of Big Bear Lake.

New Research

California’s Record Drought Is Making Earth’s Surface Rise

Lifting land shows that the U.S. West is now missing some 62 trillion gallons of water

Ask Smithsonian

What Are the Biggest Waves in Recorded History?

How do waves even get this big?

Getting Ready for Rosetta to Unlock a Comet’s Secrets

The lander will hopefully reveal new truths about what the icy objects actually are

Why Does the Nile Flow North and More Questions From Our Readers

Your questions answered by our experts

In 1794, President Washington commissioned a wampum belt for the Canandaigua Treaty

Illuminating the Treaties That Have Governed U.S.-Indian Relationships

These documents were both a cause and a salve for the fraught relations between the United States and Indian Nations

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