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Science

Your breath might be bad, but it's also amazing.

New Research

Your Breath Does More Than Repulse—It Can Also Tell Doctors Whether You Have Cancer

An artificial “nose” could be the next tool for diagnosing illnesses from cancer to Crohn’s disease

Violence can spread like an epidemic among impressionable teenagers, according to new research.

New Research

Violence Among Teens Can Spread Like a Disease, Study Finds

Surveys of thousands of American teens add evidence to the theory that violence spreads in communities like a contagion

How do you know when urine too deep?

New Research

Once a Year, Scientific Journals Try to Be Funny. Not Everyone Gets the Joke

Holiday editions add a much-needed dose of humor to boring journal-ese. But is entertaining readers worth the risk of misleading them?

At the top of Dome A, an unmanned research station, is a smattering of antenna masts, small shipping containers, scientific equipment and a lot of footprints that take years for the snow and meager wind to cover up.

The Coldest, Driest, Most Remote Place on Earth Is the Best Place to Build a Radio Telescope

This remote Antarctic field station is an ice-covered arid desert, perfect for peering deep into space

A bonfire of elephant ivory burns in Kenya's Nairobi National Park in July 1989.

Ask Smithsonian 2017

Wondering What a Bonfire Does to Your Lungs? We Answer Your Burning Questions

Setting large piles of stuff aflame can have significant environmental and human health impacts

This year, the Great Barrier Reef was found to be hiding another reef beneath it.

Top Eight Ocean Stories That Made Waves in 2016

2016 wasn’t all bad: Stubborn environmental problems were livened up thanks to new solutions, “gee whiz” discoveries and mysterious orbs

Swabbing the toads to sample their microbiomes.

Meet the Colorful New Weapon Scientists Are Using to Save Toads From a Devastating Fungus

Researchers are supplementing the amphibians’ natural microbiomes with a fluorescent fungus-fighter they’ve dubbed “Purple Rain”

Besides exceptional facial hair, what could these two gentlemen have in common?

Think Big

The Hidden Connections Between Darwin and the Physicist Who Championed Entropy

These magnificently bearded men both introduced a dose of randomness and irreversibility into the universe

The better to infect you with, my dear...

New Research

For Viruses, the Best Way to Infect Baby Is Through Mama

Some viruses might take it easier on women—to get to their children

Margaret Harwood sits on the floor for this posed tableau taken on May 19, 1925. Harvia Wilson is at far left, sharing a table with Annie Cannon (too busy to look up) and Antonia Maury (left foreground). The woman at the drafting table is Cecilia Payne.

Women Who Shaped History

In “The Glass Universe,” Dava Sobel Brings the Women ‘Computers’ of Harvard Observatory to Light

Women are at the center of a new book that delights not in isolated genius, but in collaboration and cooperation

How Chemicals Left Behind on Your Phone Could Identify You

Mass spectrometry is finding a new role in forensic science

To speak, perchance to think? A long-tailed macaque opens wide in Bali, Indonesia.

New Research

What’s Really Keeping Monkeys From Speaking Their Minds? Their Minds

When it comes to language, primates have all the right vocal equipment. They just lack the brains

Don't worry, we've got you covered.

Ask Smithsonian

Trying Not to Get Sick? Science Says You’re Probably Doing It Wrong

Cold and flu viruses transfer in very different ways than we think

John Glenn, standing top right, looks at a model of the ship that took him to space with other astronauts from the Mercury space program in an undated photograph.

For a Larger-Than-Life Space Icon, John Glenn Was Remarkably Down-to-Earth

Friends and colleagues recall his abiding love for Smithsonian’s work, the history of spaceflight and peanut butter buckeyes

The Nobel Prize, named after the repentant creator of dynamite, has been awarded nearly every year since 1901.

What Does It Take to Win a Nobel Prize? Four Winners, in Their Own Words

Some answers: Messiness, ignorance and puzzles

There have been 38 facial transplants worldwide to date. Not all have survived.

Saving Face: How One Pioneering Surgeon Is Pushing the Limits of Facial Transplants

His reconstructed faces have tongues that taste and eyelids that blink. But will they withstand the test of time?

Electronic waste, shown here, is just part of the "technosphere," which comprises the totality of the stuff humans produce.

Age of Humans

Humans Have Bogged Down the Earth with 30 Trillion Metric Tons of Stuff, Study Finds

The authors say this is more proof that we are living in an Age of Humans—but not all scientists agree

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