Culture

The best fiction, nonfiction, history and sci-fi books Scientific American staff read in 2023

The explosive secret behind Saturn’s rings, a Scandinavian arrow frozen for 4,000 years, the world's deepest-known virus, and much more in this month’s Quick Hits

Letters to the editors for the July/August 2023 issue of Scientific American

These historical forgeries show what makes misinformation so successful

The Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara peoples are learning more about the missiles siloed on their lands, and that knowledge has put the preservation of their culture and heritage in even starker relief.

A year of exciting ideas and research has given us much to be grateful for

The missiles on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota make it a potential target for a nuclear attack. And that doesn’t come close to describing what the reality would be for those on the ground.

The Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota has had nuclear missile silos on its land for decades. Now the U.S. government wants to take the old weapons out and replace them with new ones, and it’s unclear how many living there know about that.

15 nuclear missiles deployed in underground concrete silos across the Fort Berthold reservation in North Dakota. It took displacement and flood to get them there.

A member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation digs into a decades-long mystery: how 15 intercontinental ballistic missiles came to be siloed on her ancestral lands.

Virtual meetings and video calls don’t quite stack up to in-person interaction—and a new study proves it

A new facial approximation brings to life an Incan girl who was killed 500 years ago as part of a sacrificial ritual