Our Planet: Environmental News | Smithsonian Magazine

Bizarre Bee-havior in the Battle Against the Giant Hornet

To protect their hive from an invading hornet, Asian honeybees gang up and surround it, forming a “hot defensive bee ball”

March 19, 2012

One Time Zone for the World?

An astrophysicist and an economist want to fix our clocks and our calendars

March 16, 2012

Is it Too Late for Sustainable Development?

Dennis Meadows thinks so. Forty years after his book The Limits to Growth, he explains why

March 15, 2012

A microbiologist collects a manure sample

Mysterious Exploding Foam is Bursting Barns

One explosion raised a barn roof several feet in the air and blew the hog farmer 30 or 40 feet from the door

March 14, 2012

Outdoor ice skating is deeply ingrained in Canadian culture.

Climate Change’s Latest Victim: Ice Hockey

For outdoor ice rinks, hockey season has gotten shorter in the past 50 years

March 5, 2012

Ice cores from a lake in Norway. Image from Science/AAAS

Trees Weathered the Ice Age

Pine and spruce trees managed to survive in certain spots in Scandinavia, according to DNA analyses

March 2, 2012

Svalbard Global Seed Vault Turns Four

Four years ago this week, researchers opened the “Doomsday Vault” to store frozen seeds in case of disaster

February 29, 2012

The Islamic Empire (top) and Baghdad (bottom), circa 770-910 AD

Arabic Manuscripts: It Used To Snow in Iraq

Baghdad was the bustling capital of the vast Islamic Empire a thousand years ago, when the city’s climate was much different than today

February 27, 2012

A photograph (A) and outline (B) of the human-like drawing

Oldest American Rock Art Found in Brazil

The petroglyph, with a head, hands and “oversized phallus” is around 10,000 years old

February 23, 2012

The microwave field around the objects without (left) and with the cloaking material (right).

Scientists Move Closer to Creating an Invisibility Cloak

As far as the microwaves were concerned, the 7-inch-long tube did not exist — is true invisibility that far away?

February 16, 2012

To go backward in time, start at the far right side of this Cosmic Web poster, which represents the universe as it is today, scattered with galaxies. As you move to the left, you see earlier stages of the universe in which dark matter—a mysterious substance astronomers can detect only indirectly—was structured as webs and filaments. Before that, closer to the Big Bang, dark matter was dominated by tides and voids.

The Best Science Visualizations of the Year

Browse through the winning images that turn scientific exploration into art

February 15, 2012

What Happens Before a Volcano Blows?

Volcanologists thought that the buildup to an eruption would take centuries. But this report adds to a suspicion that it can happen faster than expected

February 7, 2012

Meet Lucy Jones, “the Earthquake Lady”

As part of her plan to prepare Americans for the next “big one,” the seismologist tackles the dangerous phenomenon of denial

February 2012

This Week’s Breathtaking Aurora Borealis

Recent solar storms have triggered northern lights of unprecedented color and intensity

January 25, 2012

What Is Enriched Uranium?

Naturally occurring uranium doesn’t have enough of the fissile isotope U-235 to set off a nuclear reaction, but scientists found ways to increase the stuff

January 10, 2012