A brown bear hunts for salmon in Silver Salmon Creek.

Smithsonian Journeys Travel Quarterly: Alaska

Where and How to (Safely) Bear Watch in Alaska

Attacks à la Revenant are a statistical blip. An Alaska expert outlines the dos and don’ts of sharing wilderness with the state’s 133,000 bears

A map of gravity variations on the Earth's seafloor, which mostly correspond to underwater ridges and the edges of Earth's tectonic plates.

Journey to the Center of Earth

Study Says Earth’s Plate Tectonics May Be Just a Phase

New models suggest that earth’s plates could grind to a halt in about five billion years.

Expanding human populations in India have pushed tigers into small, isolated habitats—and resulted in some unusual behaviors.

Anthropocene

Sorry, Tiger Dudes: Your Ladies Are Faking It

India’s tigresses may be feigning interest in sex as the result of shrinking habitat and overlapping territories

A mudskipper clings to a rocky embankment.

Awkward Robots Show How Tails Propelled First Land Walkers to New Heights

A 3D-printed bot designed to move like amphibious fish suggests that the first land animals needed tails to climb slippery slopes

Galaxy GN-z11 seen in its youth by the Hubble telescope. GN-z11 is shown as it existed 13.4 billion years in the past, just 400 million years after the Big Bang.

Life in the Cosmos

If Telescopes Are Time Machines, the JWST Will Take Us the Furthest Back Yet

The James Webb Space Telescope promises to peer back into the making of the first galaxies

Kim Stanley Robinson

Age of Humans

Podcast: Kim Stanley Robinson Says ‘Either You’re An Environmentalist, Or You’re Not Paying Attention’

Award-winning writer Kim Stanley Robinson discusses sci-fi’s role in helping us understand the world.

An artist's concept of a moon-sized body slamming into a Mercury-sized world in another solar system. High speed collisions like this were more likely to occur in systems with gas giants, but they took place early in a planet's life, allowing time for the world to recover. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Space Hub

How a Young Jupiter Acted as Both Protector and Destroyer

Like a boisterous older sibling, the gas giant both beat up and protected young Earth

Why Brown Bears Are Misunderstood

Historically feared by humans, brown bears were once aggressively hunted in the contiguous U.S.

The FarmBot Genesis Brings Precision Agriculture to Your Own Backyard

Developed by a team from California, this machine plants seeds, pulls weeds and waters plants individually

Young Syrian refugees play with donated paper and pens in the former Oxy transit camp in Lesvos, Greece.

Child Refugees Pose Unique Challenge for Mental Health Practitioners

As the crisis deepens, mental health experts move from questions of short-term survival to ones of longer-term rehabilitation

An artist's rendition of Juno in orbit around Jupiter. The craft is powered entirely by the sun's rays.

Space Hub

It’s Official: We Are Now in Orbit Around Jupiter

After a nerve-wracking entry, NASA spacecraft Juno successfully entered the gas giant’s orbit

Statue in front yard, Chalmette neighborhood

Age of Humans

Plastic is Forever: The Art of Mass Consumption

For International Bag Free Day, an intimate look at American mass consumption through the eyes of photographer Chris Jordan

What Ultra High Speed Penguin Footage Reveals About Pliosaurus

How did the pliosaurus, a 45-foot-long underwater prehistoric predator, keep up with its prey? A biomechanics expert finds answers by observing the penguin

Do Insects Have Consciousness?

A new theory has scientists buzzing

Ask Smithsonian

What’s the Difference Between Invasive and Nonnative Species? Plus, More Questions From Our Readers

You asked, we answered

A schematic design of the upcoming “Icebergs” installation for the National Building Museum

Age of Humans

A Maze of Palatial Icebergs Has Floated Into a Washington, D.C. Museum

The new exhibition touches on design, landscape architecture, the life of icebergs and climate change

A prototype gene gun developed by Dennis McCabe and Brian Martinell in 1986 delivered new genetic material into the cells of plants.

Age of Humans

How Roundup Ready Soybeans Rocked the Food Economy

This 1980s-era “gene gun” fired the shot heard around the world

None

Age of Humans

Video: The Past, Present and Future of Agriculture

Globalization and new technologies have given us more control and more power over our food than ever before. What’s next?

For the first time in 32 years, the Smithsonian's National Zoo’s celebrated the arrival of a sea lion pup.

Proud Sea Lion Mom Shows Off Her New Pup in These Adorable Pictures From the Zoo

Calli, the 11-year-old sea lion gave birth on June 26; mother and pup are bonding and doing well

Scott Kelly works on the International Space Station during a nearly eight-hour spacewalk in November 2015.

Space Hub

Space: News and Features About Astronomy and Spaceflight

Get your daily fix of astronomy and spaceflight, from Smithsonian.com and Air&Space magazine

Page 178 of 456