Smithsonian Magazine

Did This Duke Poison His Brother? A New DNA Analysis May Solve the Centuries-Old Medici Mystery

Researchers found evidence of malaria in Francesco I de' Medici's bones, leading them to argue "with scientific certainty" ...
Smithsonian Magazine

New Images Reveal That This Asteroid Is Actually Two Conjoined Space Rocks. They Form a Peanut-Shaped Object Called a ‘Contact Binary’

A flyby conducted by the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa2 uncovered the asteroid's strange shape. Data gathered by the probe ...
Smithsonian Magazine

The City of Boston Discovered One of the Oldest Known Gravestones of a Free Black American, Who Shared a Name With the Massachusetts Capital

Also known as Sebastian, he died in 1729 and is buried alongside Samuel Adams, John Hancock and Paul Revere. His life tells a ...
Smithsonian Magazine

‘Like an Explosion in a Glass Factory’: Frank Gehry’s Seven-Ton ‘Icehenge’ Desk That Once Graced a Skyscraper Lobby Is Up for Auction

Designed for the Inland Steel Building in Chicago, the desk is made from more than a dozen blocks of jagged, green-tinted ...
Smithsonian Magazine

How OK Go Has Revolutionized the Music Video

OK Go, Damian Kulash Jr. and Trish Sie | Smithsonian Magazine’s 2016 American Ingenuity Award Winners for Visual Arts ...
Smithsonian Magazine

Sperm Whales Living in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea Seem to Have Developed a Distinct Dialect From Those in the West

All Mediterranean sperm whales were thought to be part of one cultural group, identifiable by a unique pattern of clicks, or ...
Smithsonian Magazine

Our Ancestors Loved Shell Trinkets, Just Like Neanderthals. New Research Suggests It’s a Sign of Shared Culture Across Species

Based on artifacts found in a limestone cave on the Mediterranean coast, scientists think the two species might have shared ...
Smithsonian Magazine

The Arctic Ocean May Have Passed a Crucial Tipping Point That Could Harm Food Webs and Worsen Climate Change

Sea ice loss seems to have triggered a decline in the nutrient nitrate, affecting the tiny organisms that form the ...
Smithsonian Magazine

Soumya Gayatri

Soumya Gayatri is a journalist from India, currently based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. She writes about travel, architecture, ...
Smithsonian Magazine

George Washington

Bernardo de Gálvez indirectly contributed to the Continental Army’s victory at the 1781 Siege of Yorktown. A rare painting of ...
Smithsonian Magazine

You Can Help Migrating Fish Traverse a Dutch Canal By Ringing This Digital ‘Doorbell’

A fish appears on the live stream from the Netherlands' Weerdsluis lock in Utrecht. visdeurbel.nl In 2020, ecologist Mark van Heukelum was strolling through Utrecht in the Netherlands, when he noticed ...
Smithsonian Magazine

A Pair of 2,000-Year-Old Gold Rings, One Engraved With Indian Script, Was Discovered in an Iron Age Burial Ground in Thailand

A gold ring unearthed at the Don Yai Thong archeological site in Thailand is engraved with what experts think is Brahmi, an ...