Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Smart News

An artist's illustration of Kepler-444 and its five planets

New Research

These Five Earth-sized Planets Are Super Old

Kepler-444 is 11.2 billion years old and its five planets could tell us about planet formation in the early universe

Miguel de Cervantes is best known for creating Don Quixote, a whimsical knight.

Cool Finds

Did Archaeologists Just Find Miguel de Cervantes, 400 Years After His Death?

A centuries-old crypt could hold the answer to the mystery of Cervantes’ missing remains

New Research

Sugar Is Causing Girls to Get Their Periods Sooner

Why shunning soda might help reduce premature puberty rates

Early Homo sapiens, a skull of which is shown here, may have coexisted with the primitive human whose jawbone was recently discovered by a fisherman off the coast of Taiwan

New Research

Did Fishermen Find Evidence of an Unknown Group of Primitive Humans?

A fossilized jawbone pulled from the seafloor near Taiwan may be from an ancient type of hominin new to science

New Research

23 Kids’ Peanut Allergies Were Cured, At Least Temporarily

A probiotic may be the key to fighting allergies to peanut proteins

Jean Valentine, a former Bombe machine operator, shows a drum of the machine in Bletchley Park Museum in Bletchley, England.

Cool Finds

Women Were Key to WWII Code-Breaking at Bletchley Park

Female operators and mathematicians play a greater role in the history of computers and code-breaking than most realize

Cool Finds

Mostly the Old And Ill Ate Breakfast Until the Rise of the Working Man

Romans disdained the meal, few ate it in the Middle Ages, but most eat breakfast now

Cool Finds

Hive Mind: A Swarm of Microprobes Could Tell Us More About Jupiter

The miniature probes will gather atmospheric data before bursting into flames

It might sound like a gas guzzler inside, but that truck's purr could be pretend.

Trending Today

Impressed by a Big Truck’s Beefy Rev? It Could Be an Illusion

Fake engine noise is a reality for today’s more efficient trucks

The naturally mummified body of Ötzi is seen in a cooling chamber at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano.

New Research

The 61 Tattoos of Ötzi, the 5,300-Year-Old “Iceman”

Scientists have mapped the body art of one of archeology’s biggest super stars in hopes to better understand the role tattoos played in early civilization

New Research

Pollutants Are Making Polar Bears’ Penis Bones More Likely to Break

An industrial chemical contaminating the Arctic is further threatening a species already facing dire challenges

Teens from the Njarainjari Aboriginal Community walk in the shallows of Lake Albert in Southern Australia

New Research

Australian Stories Capture 10,000-Year-Old Climate History

Aboriginal groups from coast to coast describe walking to places that are now islands

Cool Finds

The Mystery of the Continuously Functioning Battery From 1840

A battery at the University of Oxford has been incessantly ringing two bells for 175 years—but no one knows exactly why it’s lasted so long

None

Use This Map to Track the Snowfall and Social Media Buzz Around the Northeast Blizzard

Weather alerts and media streams can keep you up to date on the full extent of the nor’easter

William Gillette's lost Sherlock Holmes film was an unsolved mystery—until now.

Cool Finds

Mystery Solved: Footage From a Long-Lost Silent Sherlock Holmes Is Found

William Gillette is responsible for how we see Sherlock Holmes—but the loss of his single silent film was an unsolved mystery

Cool Finds

Evidence of a Seating Plan Discovered at the Colosseum

Restoration efforts reveal the red-painted numbers that would help ancient Romans find their status-dictated seats

New Research

It’s Easy to Make People Like Healthy Food…Just Rewire Their Brains

A new study imaged brains of women of different weights and found dramatic differences in how their brains responded to food

A stone relief carving of soldiers made in Assyria and now in the British Museum.

New Research

Ancient Assyrian Soldiers Were Haunted by War, Too

A new study finds evidence of trauma experienced by soldiers returning home from combat over 3,000 years ago

Cool Finds

How One 138-Page Book Inspired the Creation of the Boy Scouts

How a little military textbook evolved into a movement that would captivate generations of young men

Charles Darwin statue at London’s Natural History Museum

Cool Finds

Darwin May Have Experienced Extreme Anxiety

Many attempts have been made to diagnose Darwin’s illness, here’s a well-argued possibility

Page 875 of 1116