Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Science / Our Planet

None

Finding Science in the Art of Arcimboldo

None

La Nina Brings Flooding to Australia

None

Green Sahara May Have Provided Route out of Africa for Early Humans

Bulldozed ash at a Louisiana coal-fired power plant.

Devastation From Above

J. Henry Fair’s aerial photographs of industrial sites provoke a strange mix of admiration and concern

None

Biodiversity Losses Could Be Bad for Your Health

None

Spilled Paint or Iranian Desert?

Town Brook, the once main water supply for Pilgrims in 1621 has been ailing for decades due to multiple dams constructed along the 1.5-mile stream.

The Waterway That Brought the Pilgrims to Plymouth

Town Brook gave sustenance to the Plymouth’s early settlers, but years of dam building have endangered the struggling stream

None

Rare Earth Elements Not Rare, Just Playing Hard to Get

None

Peak Oil: Is It Time to Worry?

None

Looking for New Discoveries in Old Data

None

Comparing Apples and Oranges

None

Did Broken Buoys Fail to Warn Victims of the Mentawai Tsunami?

None

It’s Easy to Ignore Climate Change

None

Palm Trees in Ireland?

None

Ocean More Diverse than Expected, Census Finds

None

Why Climate Change Brings Both More and Less Water

None

Picture of the Week: Daisy Wears Spots, Woos Pollinators

Reservoirs along the river may never rise to previous levels. Utah's Lake Powell has a "bathtub ring" that rises at least 70 feet above the water.

The Colorado River Runs Dry

Dams, irrigation and now climate change have drastically reduced the once-mighty river. Is it a sign of things to come?

A fossil collector since childhood, Bob Hazen has come up with new scenarios for life's beginnings on earth billions of years ago.

The Origins of Life

A mineralogist believes he’s discovered how life’s early building blocks connected four billion years ago

None

Colorado River One of Many Imperiled Waterways

Page 81 of 106