Smithsonian Magazine

Scientists Say They’ve Found Preserved Dinosaur Blood in a 115-Million-Year-Old Fossil, but Not Everyone Is Convinced

Soft tissues like blood generally break down relatively quickly after death. Environmental factors can also produce red blood ...
Smithsonian Magazine

Forensic Analysis of Frozen Inca Mummies Reveals That Sacrificed Children Were Plied With Coca Leaves, Corn Beer and Ayahuasca Compounds Before Death

Five centuries after children were sacrificed on volcanic peaks in the Andes, chemical clues preserved in their hair and ...
Smithsonian Magazine

The Four-Color Theorem Has Haunted Mathematicians for Decades. It Just Got a Rare New Proof, but Some Still Long for a Simpler Solution

The famous problem asks whether a map can be filled in with only four colors such that the same color never borders itself. It has been solved with the help of computers, but some experts suggest an ...
Smithsonian Magazine

See the World’s Tallest Day of the Dead Skeleton, Made From Steel, Fiberglass, Papier-Mâché and 70,000 Marigolds

Standing a little more than 109 feet tall—roughly the height of an 11-story building—the colorful "La Catrina" figure in ...
Smithsonian Magazine

Archaeologists in Scotland Discovered the Skeleton of a Roman-Era Man Who Was Decapitated Nearly 2,000 Years Ago. Now, You Can See What He Might Have Looked Like During His ...

A digital facial reconstruction of the man, whose head was severed after his death, will soon go on view in Edinburgh. It depicts an individual in his early 50s, with graying hair and brown eyes ...
Smithsonian Magazine

See a Stunning Simulation of the Early Universe, Which Will Help Astronomers Shed Light on the Cosmic Dark Ages

The model, created by researchers at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian, and other institutions, captures how ...
Smithsonian Magazine

Native Hawaiians Descend From a Group of ‘Ultravoyagers’ Who Sailed About 4,400 Miles From Easter Island, Genetic Study Suggests

Researchers studied DNA from more than 1,000 modern-day Polynesians and found that Native Hawaiians and Easter Islanders were ...
Smithsonian Magazine

A ‘Poor Man’s Rembrandt’ for a Few Hundred Bucks? At Amsterdam’s Rembrandt House Museum, a Pop-Up Tattoo Studio Is Inking 17th-Century Masterpieces on Hu…

Visitors can choose from dozens of designs pulled from Rembrandt's works, including lions, windmills and even his ...
Smithsonian Magazine

After Observing the Sky for 22 Years, a Beloved NASA Space Telescope Is Expected to Meet a Fiery Death This Week

The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory launched in 2004 and detected thousands of astrophysical phenomena, leading to some huge ...
Smithsonian Magazine

From Hunting Hounds to Modernist Muses, Dachshunds Have Done It All. See the World’s First Art Exhibition Dedicated Exclusively to the Sausage Dog

A new exhibition in Germany traces how the low-slung breed captured the imaginations of artistic heavyweights like Pablo ...
Smithsonian Magazine

Greece Has Its Own Pompeii, and the Ruins Tell a Captivating Story of a Sophisticated, Seafaring Bronze Age Society

The Thera volcano, on modern-day Santorini, buried Akrotiri in ash in the 17th or 16th century B.C.E. The eruption was one of the largest in recorded history Aileen Weintraub | Freelance writer The ...
Smithsonian Magazine

Do Spiders Dream? These Arachnids Twitch, Curl Their Legs and Move Their Eyes When Asleep, Hinting at a Complex Brain State

A species of jumping spider appears to enter a deep sleep phase that resembles rapid eye movement (REM) in humans, the stage ...