Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Smart News / Smart News Science

The giant sunfish found floating near Faial Island in the Azores archipelago

This 6,000-Pound Sunfish Is the Largest Bony Fish on Record

Fishermen and boaters spotted the colossal creature floating near the Azores islands last December

Ruins found under an old deparment store may be from the friary of St. Saviours, which was founded by a Dominican order of monks in about 1256, but its exact location had always been a mystery.

Human Remains May Have Revealed the Site of a Medieval Friary

Archaeologists uncovered nearly 300 skeletons and other artifacts from beneath an old Welsh department store

Environmental investigators found radioactive waste in samples taken from the playground of Jana Elementary School.

Radioactive Waste Found on Missouri Elementary School Grounds

The contaminants can be traced back to World War II’s Manhattan Project

Hand axes made of quartzite from between 100,000 and 40,000 B.C.E. at the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen. 

Neanderthals and Modern Humans May Have Shared Ideas for Tools

Modeling research provides a “good starting point” for finding where these species overlapped

The eastern lowland gorilla saw an estimated 80 percent decline in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Kahuzi-Biega National Park between 1994 and 2019. 

Animal Populations Faced a ‘Very Sharp Decline’ Since 1970

World Wildlife Fund researchers say vertebrate populations decreased by 69 percent, on average

This image of an axolotl highlights components of its nervous system

Art Meets Science

Stunning Images Reveal the Complex Beauty of Life Under a Microscope

Nikon’s Small World Photomicrography contest winners captured a gecko hand, breast tissue cells and dozens of other minuscule moments

Two juvenile gray wolves in Washington

Six Endangered Gray Wolves Were Poisoned in Washington

Conservation groups are offering more than $51,000 for information on the killings

A mosquito larva launches its head to capture prey dangled in front of it.

Mosquito Larvae Launch Their Heads to Capture Prey

Advances in technology allowed researchers to film these cannibalistic insects hunting for the first time

Researchers believe woolly mammoths walked into North America 100,000 years ago.

Alaska Couple Finds Massive Mammoth Bone After Storm

Typhoon Merbok’s flooding and winds revealed the complete femur, lying in the mud

The skeleton of a 70-million-year-old hadrosaurus dinosaur, the same genus as the dinosaur specimen in the new study, at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada. 

Rare ‘Mummified Dinosaur’ Formed in an Unexpected Way

The prehistoric reptile’s skin may have been preserved by scavengers, research suggests

A cluster of galaxies that Slayton created in Minecraft

This 18-Year-Old Recreated the ‘Entire Universe’ in Minecraft

From the video game’s blocks, he built galaxies, a nebula, a black hole and the solar system

An Adélie penguin

Adélie Penguins Are Dwindling in East Antarctica

Researchers blame too much summer sea ice for causing a downward spiral in one colony

Frozen chemicals across the country could thaw and make their way into groundwater and surface water during winters, research suggests.

Once-Frozen Chemicals Could Pollute Water as Winters Warm

Thawing agricultural nutrients threaten streams, lakes and rivers across the country, new research suggests

European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Matthias Maurer on a spacewalk outside the International Space Station

Art Meets Science

Tom Cruise Might Become the First Civilian to Spacewalk at the ISS

Universal is game to send Cruise into space for a proposed action film, but plans aren’t official yet

Bear 747, the 2022 Fat Bear Week champion, in all his gargantuan glory. 

Bear 747 Overcomes Scandal to Win Fat Bear Week

It’s the second title in three years for the 1,400-pound behemoth dubbed “Bear Force One”

Asteroid moonlet Dimorphos as seen by the DART spacecraft 11 seconds before impact. 

NASA Successfully Altered an Asteroid’s Orbit

The agency’s DART mission exceeded expectations, marking the first time humans have changed the trajectory of a celestial body

An A.I.-generated image of the Faroe Islands inspired by Vincent van Gogh

Art Meets Science

How Would van Gogh Have Painted the Faroe Islands?

A new exhibition uses artificial intelligence to create images in the style of history’s greatest artists

Amani, the mother, with her two cubs born October 3. 

Two Cheetah Cubs Born at Smithsonian’s Conservation Biology Institute

The twins are an important addition to their vulnerable species and its dwindling gene pool

A pod of killer whales swims together in Chatham Strait, Alaska. 

Video Footage Captures Orcas Killing Great White Sharks

The predation could explain why the sharks have been locally declining in recent years

A facial reconstruction of a 17-year-old Stone Age woman

Art Meets Science

Facial Reconstruction Shows What This Stone Age Woman May Have Looked Like

Researchers found her skull in 1881, mistakingly believing it belonged to a man

Page 153 of 538