Latest articles | smithsonianmag.com

Nobody knows how the three-legged iron cauldron ended up in the River Wear.

The mysterious, shiny object has not been conclusively identified, but it might be space junk from a rocket built by the Chinese company LandSpace and launched on September 15.

The spacecraft is designed to drag two dead satellites into Earth's atmosphere, where they are expected to disintegrate.

When a seven-eared stem emerged from the ground, it seemed like a miracle.

All that's left of a gargantuan ice sheet that once covered nearly 30 percent of North America is a Delaware-size ice cap in Canada.

You’ve got questions.

The Desert Shield and Desert Storm Memorial is an oasis-like place for honoring the Americans who served and lost their lives in combat to liberate Kuwait in the early 1990s

From eavesdropping to echolocation tricks, science is giving us an inside look into how various bat species weaponize sound

Once nearly extinct, wisent adapted to life in the Bialowieza Forest.

Police have detained a 33-year-old German citizen in connection with the blaze, which gutted the infamous historic building.

The patient, a French man in his 60s with leukemia, died earlier this month.

As the Brewers take on the Rays in the Fall Classic, two art museums are engaged in a friendly bit of sports betting: The winning city (temporarily) gets a Monet from the other city's collection

The S.S.

The first-ever global assessment of these vibrant underwater ecosystems paints a grim picture: Climate change projections put 96 percent of shallow-water reefs at the highest level of threat

The new research, which has not yet been peer-reviewed but was accepted for publication, suggests that climate change is responsible for two-thirds of the deaths

Experiments with real participants—and digital twins based on them—show how a small number of bad apples can spoil the whole barrel.

The Impressionist painted "Iris" a year or two before his death, at a time when his work was becoming increasingly abstract and falling out of favor with critics.

There’s more to Private First Class Frank A.

Diane and Arlen Chase have spent a good portion of their lives uncovering the once-great city of Caracol.

In its 146th season, the Boston Symphony Orchestra is building programs around questions rather than anniversaries, from a live AI-driven world premiere to a two-week exploration with how the universe began.

Very few night skies seen from the south of France during the summer of 1889 would match the scene on van Gogh's canvas.

The standard model of particle physics works really well, but it can't explain why the universe exists.

Completed in 1958, the domed building is located on the campus of Florida Southern College, home to 13 Wright-designed buildings, the world's largest single-site collection of the architect's work

The universe formed 13.8 billion years ago, so this far-traveled burst of radio waves can help scientists learn more about the early cosmos.

Deborah Cook, costumer designer at stop-motion animation studio Laika, discusses creating tiny costumes for puppets in a fantastical world set in the forests of Portland, Oregon

Zoo staffers don’t know whether the bright green eggs are viable and will ultimately hatch into chicks.

The images from the Smithsonian Magazine Photo Contest archives will have you packing your bags for the mountains of the American Southwest

Fewer than 20 coins minted under Norwegian King Olaf II Haraldsson have ever been found.

A new book details the Russian ruler's failed courtship of the Tudor queen, who famously remained unmarried during her nearly 45-year reign

A new study claims that the pages of the Voynich Manuscript, thought to be written by several different scribes in 16th-century Europe, alternate irregularly.

Outside experts warn that more research is needed before "circadian depression" can be classified as a subtype

A 17-person crew traveled to a remote atoll in the South Pacific to investigate the so-called Taraia Object.

Home to the world’s largest public collection of his artworks, a new pavilion at Quebec's Musée National des Beaux-Arts showcases the more than 50-year career of Riopelle, who was a key member of the avant-garde Automatistes movement

On the evening of October 16, more than five million birds are estimated to have flown through Cook County, which includes Chicago.

Chiricahua National Monument in southeastern Arizona is now Chiricahua National Park, the 64th national park in the United States.

Some Americans lauded the 30-year-old bank robber as a Robin Hood-esque folk hero.

New research suggests that the ancient coffin was repurposed in the tenth or eleventh century to hold the remains of an abbot who'd overseen the London monastery

One year after the species was reclassified from “endangered” to “least concern,” green turtles in the western Indian Ocean exemplify that return—and the subtleties a global designation can miss

At first, plants below an elephant carcass die.

The riverfront opera house is Shanghai's latest cultural statement.

The sleuths spent two years digging into archives and building 3D models of 19th-century Paris.

Few women worked as professional artists in the 16th century.

When they're rolling, some snakes belonging to the Pseudorabdion genus can reach top speeds of 3.8 to 8.3 miles per hour, according to a new study

White dwarf stars are too far from Earth to be observed directly.

The Nikon Small World Competition has announced its photography winners for its 52nd annual contest.

Experts say that an oft-circulated anecdote about two royal astronomers drunkenly failing to foresee an eclipse thousands of years ago contains hints of truth

Some residents of the Peaks District in the 13th century may have experienced worse lead pollution than city-dwellers during the Industrial Revolution.

On October 10, Ron Wallace took the pumpkin king crown with a 3,156-pounder.

A coral is often a colony of tiny, genetically identical animals.

Using AI to comb through hundreds of thousands of handwritten pages of port records, historians have constructed an interactive map of Britain’s maritime trading routes.