Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Smart News / Smart News Science

Vindija Cave in Croatia where some of the samples were collected

New Research

Scientists Extract DNA From Ancient Humans Out of Cave Dirt

The new technique promises to transform the study of the hominid family tree

Thank luciferin for mushrooms' mysterious glow.

New Research

The Secret Behind Bioluminescent Mushrooms’ Magic Glow

Scientists use chemistry to account for an astonishing phenomenon

New Research

Dog Genome Project Reveals Secrets of Canine Family Tree

Researchers have been barking up the same tree for over 20 years

Raw image of the storm on Saturn's north pole

Trending Today

Cassini Sends Back First Images From Its Saturn Dives

The stream of raw images include new pictures of the strange hexagonal storm swirling around its north pole

An artist's rendering imagines what Cassini must have looked like as it headed on the first of a series of orbits between Saturn and its rings.

Trending Today

Cassini Makes a Daring Dive

The spacecraft is out of contact as it begins a series of dramatic orbits between Saturn and its rings

Munch's artistic freakout may have been inspired by mother-of-pearl clouds.

Art Meets Science

“The Scream” Might Have Been Inspired By a Rare Type of Cloud

Did mother-of-pearl clouds stoke a painter’s angst?

The surface of mastodon bone showing half impact notch on a segment of femur.

New Research

Remarkable New Evidence for Human Activity in North America 130,000 Years Ago

Researchers say prehistoric mastodon bones bear human-made markings

A piece of plastic after 10 worms nibbled it for 30 minutes

New Research

This Caterpillar Can Eat Plastic

The find could lead to new techniques for breaking down our ever-growing plastic waste

Everything's better at night.

Cool Finds

Time-Lapse Video Captures the Breathtaking Glow of Hawaii’s Night Sky

Skyglow allows you to revel in an increasingly rare sight: a starry night

An artist's rendering of a meteor passing over the British Isles in 1783. Unlike the L'Aigle meteor a few decades later, the meteorites from this event were not witnessed falling to the ground, and thus meteorites remained a scientific mystery for another 20 years.

Scientists Didn’t Believe in Meteorites Until 1803

The l’Aigle meteorite fall involved more than 3,000 pieces of rock and numerous witnesses, and it changed everything

Homo floresiensis

New Research

The “Hobbits” Could Be Much Older Than Once Thought

The Flores hobbits’ ancestor may have ventured out of Africa much earlier than previously thought

A baby in Ghana rests underneath a mosquito net. Ghana will become one of three African countries to pilot the new malaria vaccine in 2018.

Trending Today

Hundreds of Thousands of Babies Will Receive World’s First Malaria Vaccine

The pilot program will focus on Kenya, Ghana and Malawi—countries at the center of the global malaria crisis

An artist's rendering of the James Webb Space Telescope.

Meet the Successor to Hubble That Will Peer Through Time

NASA’s next giant space telescope is due to launch next year

Peggy Whitson's latest record is one of many she's held during her inspiring career.

Trending Today

Astronaut Peggy Whitson Breaks NASA Record for Most Days in Space

She has spent 534 cumulative days (and counting) in orbit

Meet Steve—a strange band of light first spotted by amateur skywatchers.

New Research

Amateur Skywatchers Spot New Atmospheric Phenomenon

Its name is Steve, and it’s more common than you might think

This map of London shows it around the time of John Gaunt's work.

People Have Been Using Big Data Since the 1600s

A humble hatmaker was among the first to compile data on how Londoners lived—and died

Naked Mole-Rats Can Survive for 18 Minutes Without Oxygen

Just when you thought the wrinkly creatures couldn’t get any stranger

A surfer at Huntington Beach in Southern California

New Research

California May Lose Popular Surfing Spots to Rising Seas

A changing climate may make iconic breaks disappear

Microplastics mixed in with plankton from an Arctic Ocean sample

New Research

Ocean Currents Are Sweeping Billions of Tiny Plastic Bits to the Arctic

Currents are acting like a conveyor belt for plastic, dumping the bits in pristine northern waters

NASA technicians and engineers place a tent over the folded-up James Webb Space Telescope to protect it from dust and dirt once it leaves the "clean room" and proceeds to acoustic and vibrational testing.

Watch Scientists Freeze and Shake the James Webb Space Telescope

The largest space telescope ever built has a few last tests to pass

Page 362 of 537