Dr. Bruce Campbell, a geophysicist at the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, is at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, W. Va., to make a radar map of the Moon. In this video, made in September 2009, Dr. Campbell explains some of the work involved in putting together a detailed radar map of the Moon and why he finds the geology of the Moon so fascinating. [...more]
Fluorite is well known and prized for its rich variety of colors, most commonly pale green, purple, yellow, orange, blue, pink and colorless. “We acquired this specimen because it is a very nice quality fluorite with an attractive color and it is large enough to be exhibited,” Curator Jeff Post says. [...more]
Smithsonian Institution Libraries has recently acquired a rare first edition of Darwin's Geological Observations on the Volcanic Islands, Visited During the Voyage of the H.M.S. Beagle.
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The Hope Diamond’s red glow has long been considered a unique property of that stone. Most blue diamonds produce a bluish-white phosphorescence if exposed to ultraviolet light. The few other diamonds known to emit red phosphorescence were commonly assumed to have been from the even larger original stone from which the Hope was cut.
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In southeastern Greenland, two rivers of ice named Helheim and Kangerdlugssuaq flow in spurts and starts toward the coast. They are much like any other glacier, except each carries a network of scientific instruments that monitor their movements to the millimeter.
Geodesist James Davis, of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, in Cambridge, Mass., and his colleagues have [...] [...more]
For those who think that global warming is a 21st-century phenomenon, Scott Wing, a scientist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, has news about the past. [...more]
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