Author: Charles Humphreys

Knowledge about aliens might be as dangerous as the aliens themselves.

Even with its explanatory power, Big Bang theory takes its place in a long line of myths.

In the Mist, a film about a Canary Island forest, opens the archives of Earth’s history.

British soldiers in a WWI trenchAustralian War Memorial Just over 100 years ago, on the 28th of June, 1914, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary was assassinated in Sarajevo. That set into motion a chain of events that, within several weeks, culminated in the European great powers declaring war on each other. The resulting conflict […]

One physicist’s radical reinterpretation of the cosmic microwave background.

This is the final installment of a five-part series. First read Part 1 , Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 to get caught up.  Correction: The text about tests that can be done 10 weeks into pregnancy was changed to clarify the difference between CVS—an invasive test that is available now and can determine whether […]

A researcher who works through painting tells her story.

I was puzzled by the artist’s photographs of my home in the Amazon—then I looked again.

Two months ago, we learned of landmark evidence bolstering the theory of inflation, a period very soon after the Big Bang when the Universe expanded at a terrific rate, stretching out and smoothing its lumps, and making it remarkably consistent on large scales. A recent study confirms that, even 13.8 billion years after the […]

Hallucinating yourself can be both a symptom and a tool.