International Big History Association

02/23/2026

We're all just atoms that became briefly aware of themselves and immediately started complaining.

02/21/2026

Emergence, the IBHA Newsletter

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vRD_0o8nYryrAf6uk7vd7t87NflqLQSyMcLH0_qkZqzk16z44-DtK-2yiT4nD4ObHmdXpWyTgee3REO/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000&pli=1&slide=id.g38695025c9b_0_0

https://drive.google.com/file/d/13_kb0hwvM2cojW8lPIvEW4NgpES9Mzz2/view

02/11/2026

Physics can be such a killjoy. Or not.
"The Physics That Makes Interstellar Travel Impossible"

Richard Feynman’s physics reveals why Aliens cannot reach Earth. From the absolute limit of the Speed of Light to the Fermi Paradox, discover why Interstella...

02/01/2026

On March 23, 2178, Pluto will finish one complete orbit around the Sun for the first time since its discovery by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930. With an orbital period of about 248 Earth years, Pluto’s journey around the Sun is extraordinarily long and highly elliptical, ranging from about 30 to nearly 50 astronomical units. Since its discovery, Pluto has not yet completed even a single “year” by human reckoning.

This matters because Pluto’s slow orbit highlights how different the outer Solar System is from the familiar inner planets. Its long, tilted, and eccentric path reflects the chaotic early history of planetary migration beyond Neptune. Observations from missions like New Horizons show that Pluto is not a static ice ball but a geologically and atmospherically active world, even at extreme distances from the Sun. Completing its first post-discovery orbit underscores how brief human observation is compared to the vast dynamical timescales governing distant solar system bodies.

Source
NASA, New Horizons Mission, Astronomical Almanac, Nature Astronomy

01/15/2026

Please join us!
Webinar: Tuesday, Jan 20, Noon ET

Exploring Energy Rate Density as a Quantitative Complexity Metric
Martin van Duin

Zoom Link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89923901081?pwd=BRDfjPcNo1AUmeGMHUJZIIguAIcPzl.1

01/04/2026

Does Spinoza have a point?

I’ll admit that consciousness seems more comprehensible to me as an emergent property of complexity as neurons develop.

📖 RECOMMENDED LITERATURE FOR YOU TO LEARN EVEN MORE ABOUT THIS!Use my affiliate links to suport the channel.📖 Spinoza: Complete Works👉🏻 https://amzn.to/4...

01/01/2026

El noveno número de la revista Macrohistoria ofrece un conjunto de artículos diverso, tanto por la temporalidad que abarcan como por la naturaleza de los problemas de investigación que atienden. De formas diferentes, los artículos trabajan tensiones entre las formas locales de comprender el mundo y su relación con influencias extranjeras, formas de comprender y ordenar la sociedad, la política y la economía. Desde propuestas de empresarios locales a reflexiones sobre el pasado de las élites intelectuales, la pregunta por la identidad y el lugar de América Latina en el mundo atraviesa todos sus artículos.

Publicado: 30-12-2025

Macrohistoria es una revista académica de acceso abierto enfocada en la historia global y latinoamericana, con artículos originales revisados por pares.

01/01/2026

“Two and a half million years ago, when our distant relative Homo habilis was foraging for food across the Tanzanian savannah, a beam of light left the Andromeda Galaxy and began its journey across the Universe. As that light beam raced across space at the speed of light, generations of pre-humans and humans lived and died; whole species evolved and became extinct, until one member of that unbroken lineage, me, happened to gaze up into the sky below the constellation we call Cassiopeia and focus that beam of light onto his retina. A two-and-a- half-billion-year journey ends by creating an electrical impulse in a nerve fibre, triggering a cascade of wonder in a complex organ called the human brain that didn’t exist anywhere in the Universe when the journey began.”

— Brian Cox

12/20/2025

Wow, check out this awesome drone picture of the Winter Solstice sunset alignment at Stonehenge yesterday! The Winter Solstice is tomorrow, but the sunset is almost exactly in the same location today and tomorrow - which reflects the name we gave the Solstice itself. That's because "Sol" means "Sun", and "Stice" means "Stop". A Solstice is literally the only time that the sun "stops", and sets/rises in nearly the same place over several days. (Thanks Jon!)

From here:
Stonehenge Dronescapes
https://www.facebook.com/stonehengedronescapes?__cft__[0]=AZZGqjrB2MeAfkZ8D99HqvdSLQXYAZ3GL7kfMX6baDNXkGY6vZSNzT_R8q00-uu9U-FfUqI2y1dyz6PnAwDwh7yasw6MFItevF4AmjUzEwDB3tfk215f8dYhm1qnCZ71toeNDlj9pAoE3Rveex25K5noMRxmccyB3n-5jTDX5ys4PxiUg4XV0g7st62-31uHemrY6kIPjmMLd95seR2rLWMcp1Zwcxyz6MGMFnp6RLB4Hg&__tn__=%2CdC%2CP-y-R
is feeling blessed.
The Winter Solstice sunset alignment at Stonehenge today☀️
What an absolute perfect sky to record the alignment, it's not often we get such perfect conditions and with the weather looking like clouds for the next few days so this is as close as we will probably get 🤩
The Winter Solstice in 2025 occurs on Sunday, December 21, at approximately 3:03 PM GMT (Greenwich Mean Time), marking the shortest day and longest night in the Northern Hemisphere, when the Sun is furthest from the overhead point for that region. This exact moment signifies the beginning of astronomical winter, with the Sun reaching its southernmost point in the sky.

12/19/2025

A nature photographer seeking shots of bearded vultures and red deer in the Italian Alps discovered a cache of dinosaur footprints that scientists are calling “remarkable.”

The finding in Stelvio National Park, near the Swiss border, that was unveiled Tuesday consists of thousands of fossilized footprints more than 200 million years old. The tracks, some of them stretching for hundreds of yards, are so well preserved that marks of toes and claws are visible.

While working on a project in the Italian region of Lombardy, in mid-September, the photographer, Elio Della Ferrera, spotted “something strange” through a telephoto lens. He had worked on paleontological projects and said he knew he was onto something.

Mr. Della Ferrera wanted a closer look. Fighting dense thickets of trees without trails to guide him, he hiked for two hours or so up steep slopes. It took “a lot of effort,” he said. “The last few hundred meters are really difficult to cover because they are vertical, and there is this crumbly layer on top of a hard bottom layer.”

“But I arrived right there, in front of these footprints.”

The tracks are thought to have been made by prosauropods, plant-eating dinosaurs with long necks from the late stages of the Triassic Period who are ancestors of the brontosaurus.

Mr. Della Ferrera believed he could well have seen and photographed the site before without realizing what it was. “I probably saw them in the past, and even took some photographs, but then I threw them away because at the time I was concentrated on taking beautiful pictures for competitions and other projects,” he said in an interview.

This time, he knew what he was looking at.
He said he estimated seeing about 2,400 prints on one vertical surface. “It is an incredible thing,” he said.

Two hundred million years ago, prosauropods walked the earth. They left something behind.

12/14/2025

This podcast is with Paula and Sam Guarnaccia, whose Emergent Universe Oratorio was performed at the 2018 IBHA conference.

Paula Guarnaccia's primary work is in partnership with her husband, the composer, Sam Guarnaccia. Together they created the Emergent Universe Oratorio Project which is a choral orchestral musical rendering of the story of our evolving Universe to the present day. It was inspired both by the work of Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Berry. Paula Guarnaccia is the current Treasurer of the American Teilhard Association. She has been an active member of ATA since 2012. Her background is in administration in both higher education and healthcare.

Sam Guarnaccia is a composer, classical guitarist, scholar, and founder/director of Sam Guarnaccia Music. He studied privately at the Royal Conservatory of Madrid and received a Master of Fine Arts in Guitar performance from the California Institute of the Arts. He created and, for ten years, taught and directed the guitar program of the University of Denver’s renowned Lamont School of Music. He has also taught and instituted programs at Middlebury College and the University of Vermont, as Spanish scholar, player/performer, and composer.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hHN5P0hjHhY&pp=0gcJCR4Bo7VqN5tD&fbclid=IwRlRTSAOq_9JleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEesi-yTp3gxU_OGoHOt6_TX_GTcuj6k2B9Mp37qTmWkb0iCmhK3q9XEB-o3dI_aem_Z8X9GgtrATHJoeSc7LNWlw

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHx0AeNv1KqTv4bpv3nw7Smi0Yeb3NKK9&si=o2nR0XwEO1N84g80

The Emergent Universe Oratorio Composed by Sam Guarnaccia and performed by the Main Line Symphony Orchestra at St. Thomas of Villanova Church on the campus o...