Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Blogs

None

The Evolution of the Spacesuit

The traveling exhibition “Suited for Space” depicts spacesuits through the ages

None

Not Too Hot and Not Too Cold, These Goldilocks Planets are Just Right

At the Air and Space Museum, a new sculpture debuts, showing all of the stars with orbiting “Goldilocks planets,” those that could sustain life

None

Welcome to a Future When We Work Out on Walls

Is a club where you train on walls while sensors track your body’s performance just another fitness trend? Or is it real innovation?

Alexander Hamilton, painted by John Trumbull, c. 1806

Alexander Hamilton’s Adultery and Apology

Revelations about the treasury secretary’s sex life forced him to choose between candor and his career.

None

Last Meal on Earth: What Astronauts Eat on Launch Day

One NASA instructor’s Cubans and empanadas became a Kennedy Space Center tradition

None

Toxic Runoff Yellow and Other Paint Colors Sourced From Polluted Streams

An engineer and an artist at Ohio University team up to create paints made of sludge extracted from streams near abandoned coal mines

None

The Golden Arches of McModernism

A brief history of the McDonald’s Golden Arches and the influence of Modernist ideals

Nuclear power produces a great deal of energy–and waste.

Energy Innovation

Is Shale the Answer to America’s Nuclear Waste Woes?

With the plans for a Yucca Mountain waste repository scrapped, scientists suggest that clay-rich rocks could permanently house spent nuclear fuel

None

Sorry, Wolfgang, Fusion Foods Have Been With Us for Centuries

The banh mi, ramen and other foods considered national dishes that actually have cross-cultural beginnings

Blue fluorescence spreads through a dying nematode worm, revealing the passage of death through its body over the hour and a half prior to the organism’s complete expiration.

A Glowing Blue Death Wave Envelops Roundworms Before They Expire

Studying nematodes as life leaves them may lead to insights into exactly how death travels through the body, and, perhaps, whether we can delay it

None

Nobel Prize Winners Are Put to the Task of Drawing Their Discoveries

Volker Steger photographs Nobel laureates posing with sketches of their breakthrough findings

Tune into the National Zoo’s newly reinstalled panda cams and watch Mei Xiang and Tian Tian any time of day.

Cool New Panda Cams Deliver Panda Life in Living Color

Watch the pandas munch bamboo on 24-hour live-stream cams at the Zoo and check out new video of Mei Xiang

None

Powering the 21st Century

To Develop Tomorrow’s Engineers, Start Before They Can Tie Their Shoes

The Ramps and Pathways program encourages students to think like engineers before they’ve reached double digits

New work suggests that dolphins each have their own distinctive whistle, and respond to hearing their sound made by calling right back.

Do Dolphins Use Whistles to Call Themselves by Unique Names?

Audio experiments show that the marine mammals each have their own whistle, and respond to hearing their distinct whistle by calling right back

An Arab city of the early medieval period. Urban centers in the Middle East were of a size and wealth all but unknown in the Christian west during this period, encouraging the development of a large and diverse fraternity of criminals.

Islam’s Medieval Underworld

In the medieval period, the Middle East was home to many of the world’s wealthiest cities—and to a large proportion of its most desperate criminals

None

The Macabre Beauty of Medical Photographs

An artist-scientist duo shares nearly 100 images of modern art with a ghastly twist—they’re all close-ups of human diseases and other ailments

The National Zoo’s senior female cheetah, Tumai, died last night.

Cheetah Dies at the National Zoo

The 13-year-old Tumai gave birth to the Zoo’s first cheetah cubs in 2004

None

The Story of the First Postage Stamp

Postage stamps can reveal more than the history of a letter, they can reveal the history of a nation

None

Hangovers: The Driving Force Behind Our Favorite Foods

Overimbibing makes some people’s brains shut down, for others, it gets the innovative juices flowing

Kalelicious Smoothie Pops: A big hit at the Fancy Food Show

Food Science Brings Us Kale on a Stick and Twinkies That Last Longer

With so much interest in what’s in our meals, food innovators are focusing on making the healthy palatable.

Page 13 of 337