Science experienced many first-of-a-kind feats this year. These are the groundbreaking achievements that grabbed our attention. Glowing threads of gas, galaxies and dark matter provided the first ...

We’ve now seen farther, deeper and more clearly into space than ever before. A stellar birthplace, a nebula surrounding a dying star, a group of closely interacting galaxies, the first spectrum of an ...

From “experimental archaeology” to the mysterious appeal of exploration, the wide-ranging subjects detailed in these titles captivated Smithsonian magazine’s science contributors this year Joe Spring, ...