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Articles

New Theory: King Tut Died in a Chariot Crash

A new examination of Tut’s remains reveals that he was killed in a horrific chariot accident

The Oseberg ship

The Vikings Had a Taste for Fine Persian Silk

Silk wasn’t the only thing that Vikings got from Eastern lands.

A microscope used in the development of Humulin, the first commercial product created via genetic modification. It was recently donated to the American History Museum.

A History of Biotechnology in Seven Objects

Newly donated items at the American History Museum tell the story of the birth of genetic engineering

The Mars Orbiter Mission will launch from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in a PSLV-c25 rocket.

T Minus 16 Hours Until India Goes to Mars

The countdown is on for India’s first mission to Mars

A poster for the Degenerate Art exhibit that ran in Munich’s Residenz in 1937

A Billion Dollars of Modernist Art, Stolen by Nazis, Was Just Recovered in Munich

As many as 1,500 pieces of modernist art were just found in a Munich apartment

Your Dog’s Trying to Tell You Something by the Way He Wags His Tail

The tail wag is a complicated form of communication—left and right matter

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Richard Kurin on the Importance of Pandas

Trending Today

Almost Half the Runners in the NYC Marathon Were Supposed to Race Last Year

New York’s marathon is the country’s largest, and last year, it was cancelled

Biochar

Energy Innovation

Carbon-Negative Energy Is Here! This Device Makes Clean Energy and Fertilizer

A Berkeley startup’s new spin on an old fuel-producing technology is a win-win for the environment

Germany Adds a Third Gender to Birth Certificates

Parents of newborns born in Germany now have a third option for the gender section of their birth certificate

What fMRI Can Tell Us About the Thoughts and Minds of Dogs

One neuroscientist is peering into the canine brain, and says he’s found evidence that dogs may feel love

A New App Turns Fractals Into Ornate Art

With Frax, users can create mathematically-driven art, adding color, depth and texture to geometric shapes

Rendering of the scaffolding that will surround the dome during its restoration.

Scaffolding is All Over D.C. Here’s Why the Monuments Still Look Majestic

When the beautiful historic buildings of our nation’s capital need repair, architects get creative with the exterior work

Can cameras read what’s going on in a second grader’s mind?

Can Facial Recognition Really Tell If a Kid Is Learning in Class?

Inventors of software called EngageSense say you can tell if kids are engaged in class by analyzing their eye movements

Oysters Don’t Have Ears But Still Use Sound to Choose Their Homes

Oyster larvae find their homes by responding to the unique sounds of a reef

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Rediscovering the American Art of Baskets

“A Measure of the Earth: A Cole-Ware Collection of American Baskets” opens at Renwick Gallery

101 Objects that Made America: America in the World

Pulled from the Smithsonian collections, these items range millennia, from pre-historic dinosaurs to the very first supercomputer

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What the Buffalo Tells Us About the American Spirit

Playwright David Mamet writes that whether roaming free or stuffed, this symbol of the West tells a thousand stories

Author David Sibley writes in our 101 Objects Special Issue: As a young man John James Audubon was obsessed with birds, and he had a vision for a completely different kind of book. He would paint birds as he saw them in the wild "alive and moving," and paint every species actual size. He travelled the U.S Frontier on foot and horseback seeking birds of every species known to science. He wrote of his time in Kentucky, around 1810, "I shot, I drew, I looked on nature only; my days were happy beyond human conception, and beyond this I really cared not." As Jonathan Rosen points out in The Life of the Skies, these paintings promoted a romantic vision of the wilderness of the New World, to be viewed by people who would never see these birds in real life. Perhaps that is one reason Audubon found more success in England than in the young United States, and why his work still holds its appeal today, as the wilderness he knew and loved recedes further into the past. Read more of Sibley's essay.

How James Audubon Captured the Romance of the New World

An amateur naturalist’s unparalleled artworks still inspire conservationists and collectors alike

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How the West Was Drawn

Explorer John Wesley Powell filled in “great blank spaces” on the map – at times buoyed by a life preserver

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