Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Magazine

Phoenix glows even after 10 p.m. one April night in this image made with a camera sensitive to infrared light, which is generated by heat and invisible to the naked eye. Researchers call the city an “urban heat island.”

The Reality of a Hotter World is Already Here

As global warming makes sizzling temperatures more common, will human beings be able to keep their cool? New research suggests not

A neurosurgeon’s view during a brain operation: The head is held in place and covered with an adhesive drape containing iodine, which prevents infections and explains the orange tint.

Inside the Science of an Amazing New Surgery Called Deep Brain Stimulation

The most futuristic medical treatment ever imagined is now a reality

How America’s Leading Science Fiction Authors Are Shaping Your Future

The literary genre isn’t meant to predict the future, but implausible ideas that fire inventors’ imaginations often, amazingly, come true

Less than a mile from the South Pole, the Dark Sector Lab’s Bicep2 telescope (at left) searches for signs of inflation.

Listening to the Big Bang

Just-reported ripples in space may open a window on the very beginning of the universe

An Iraq war veteran with PTSD has trouble with motivation.

Will Scientists Soon be Able to Erase Our Most Traumatic Memories?

PTSD treatments could soon extend beyond therapy

When a sodium-filled model of the Earth’s outer core spins at full speed, it could generate a dynamo.

What Will Happen When the Earth’s Magnetic Field Begins to Reverse?

On the University of Maryland campus, a giant whirligig tries to predict the planet’s next big flip

This Reversible Painting Flips Your Expectations of Art

A painter looks at her canvas from a new perspective

Crawling bare ivy on wall.

How to Bring a Devastated Forest Back to Life

Humans have damaged the world’s forests, but not irreparably

None

From the Editor

From the Editor

Patrick Stewart on His Craft, 21st-Century Science and Robot Ethics

The actor whose leading roles in “Star Trek” and X-Men have taken him into the far future, reflects on where present-day society is headed

John Coltrane (left) “took it further than any [other] tenor saxophone player,” says photographer Chuck Stewart.

New Photos of John Coltrane Rediscovered 50 Years After They Were Shot

During the recording of A Love Supreme in 1964, Chuck Stewart caught the jazz legend in his element

None

Discussion

From our readers

None

Mark Twain’s Dream

A new poem by Carol Muske-Dukes

For Twain, the “magnificent Mississippi, rolling its mile-wide tide” was the stuff of dreams (the St. Louis waterfront today).

American South

How the Mississippi River Made Mark Twain—and Vice Versa

No novelist captured the muddy waterway and its people like the creator of Huckleberry Finn, as a journey along the river makes clear

The Forum was among the many sights in Rome that amazed Copley, who said he was “feasting my eyes.”

When Colonial America’s Greatest Painter Took His Brush to Europe

John Singleton Copley left for Europe on the eve of the American Revolution. A historian and her teenage son made the trip to see why

From the National Air and Space Museum / Udvar-Hazy Center.

The Story of NASA’s Jet-Propulsion Backpack

Thirty years ago, astronauts set out on the first untethered space odyssey

Kamakura Shirts owner Yoshio Sadasue opened a New York store on Madison Avenue.

How Japan Copied American Culture and Made it Better

If you’re looking for some of America’s best bourbon, denim and burgers, go to Japan, where designers are re-engineering our culture in loving detail

The Amazon Women: Is There Any Truth Behind the Myth?

Strong and brave, the Amazons were a force to be reckoned with in Greek mythology—but did the fierce female warriors really exist?

Fold the momo and pinch it closed.

How Manchester’s Burgeoning Bhutanese Population Is Pursuing the American Dream

An unlikely place for immigrants from central Asia, New Hampshire is an ideal adopted homeland

Building a War of 1812 Warship

This summer, a ship named after naval hero Oliver Hazard Perry will set sail

Page 81 of 95