The Last Illusionist

HanbalAmir

Every illusion has a trick behind it.

In the sky, in the economy, in a glass. I write about poverty, about the universe, about tasty cocktails and delicious food, and I ask the questions most people stopped asking.

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Portrait of Hanbal Amir
Made of stardust · touch it
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The trick

What you see is not what is happening.

Move the lens over the text. That is how I look at everything.

The universe is a question.

Poverty is next door.

A cocktail is chemistry.

That man is thinking.

2017First card printed
4Worlds to write about
5Open questions
∞Corrections welcome
What I write about

Four worlds, one curious mind.

They look unrelated. They are not: each one is about what lies behind the surface.

01
A single empty enamel bowl and three coins in a beam of light

Poverty

The illusion that it is someone else's problem. Articles on the people the numbers leave out, and on what each of us can actually do.

Take the test →
02
An antique brass orrery in front of deep space

Science

Energy, gravity, light and the edge of the universe. Open questions about the answers we were taught to repeat.

See the ideas →
03
An amber whiskey sour on a black marble bar

Tasty cocktails

Chemistry you can drink. Balance, proportion and the small tricks that turn a mix into a memory.

Mix one →
04
A slow-cooked spiced stew with rice, coriander and lime

Delicious food

Flavour is memory. Dishes worth sharing, and the stories of where they come from.

Ask for a recipe →
Question 01 · Energy

Without particles, no energy?

What we are told

E = mc². A tiny amount of mass hides an enormous amount of energy, and it works both ways.

What I ask

Mass into energy, yes: every star proves it. But if energy always needs something to carry it, is energy anything at all without particles?

Correct me if I am wrong →
DirectionMass → Energy ✓
Question 02 · Gravity

Does the Sun pull, or bend space?

What we are told

Newton: gravity is a force that pulls. Einstein: mass curves space, and planets simply follow the curve.

What I ask

Do we really need the curve? Switch between both pictures and drag the Sun yourself.

Correct me if I am wrong →
ModelSpace that curves
Question 03 · The edge

Our world, inside a shield?

What we are told

The cosmic microwave background is the oldest light there is, released about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. It reaches us from every direction.

What I ask

What if that glow is a real shell around our world? I place it between 500 and 6,000 gigaparsecs away. Slide to feel the distance.

Correct me if I am wrong →
Shield at 2,000 Gpc6.5 trillion light-years
Question 04 · Light

Light that stretches and squeezes.

What we are told

A star moving away stretches its light towards red. One coming closer squeezes it towards blue. That is how we measure the universe.

What I ask

Light travels for billions of years, splits, meets obstacles. Are we sure all that redness comes from motion alone?

Correct me if I am wrong →
The star isstill
Question 05 · Travel

A hybrid saucer for deep space.

What we are told

The stars are too far. With rockets as we know them, the nearest one is tens of thousands of years away.

What I ask

If space is not what we think, perhaps the way to cross it is not either. My concept: a hybrid flying saucer for the long road between stars. Engineers, dreamers, sceptics: tear it apart.

Correct me if I am wrong →
Concept render of the Deep Space Hybrid Flying Saucer
ConceptDeep Space Hybrid Flying Saucer
The articles · Originals

Signed, dated, shared.

Since 2017 I have put my questions on paper. These are my articles, exactly as I made them. Open any of them to read it full size.

Hybrid Flying SaucersAutonomous saucers with quantum locking. Golden-Eye in Space.Question 05 →
Artificial Particles IIWhat if particles could be built, split and cloned?Question 01 →
Gravity · Newton vs EinsteinA force, or curved spacetime? Both are partially correct.Question 02 →
Particle StructureThe Dharmachakra at nanoscale: how particles regroup and disperse.Question 01 →
OrbitsMercury, Venus and the Sun: whose orbit is it, really?Question 02 →
AstronomersWhat space does to the people who come back from it.
Read all 210 articles → Watch the videos ↗

Every article, signed and dated, with its own link to share.

The illusion test · Poverty

How many people live on less than $3 a day?

Make your guess before you look it up. Most people's answer says more about them than about the world.

Your guess 100 million people
01 billion2 billion

Source: World Bank, international poverty line of $3.00 a day (2021 prices), 2025 projections. Estimates vary slightly between reports.

Each dot is 1 in 100 people on Earth.

The bar · Tasty cocktails

A cocktail is chemistry you can drink.

Strong, sour, sweet. Get the proportions right and almost any spirit sings. Find the balance yourself.

1.5 : 1 : 2

Hanbal Amir as a young man Hanbal Amir today
The story

Same eyes. More questions.

“Without particles, no energy. Without questions, no progress.”

Years apart, one habit has never changed: looking twice at what everyone else takes for granted. Since October 2017 I have shared those questions openly, always signed the same way.

Man's World magazine cover, special edition, featuring Hanbal Amir
As seen on

A man of many talents.

A special edition, with a wink. Taking yourself seriously is overrated; taking your questions seriously is not.

Report

“It's not always easy being perfect.”

Our new hero

This man can do it all.

Expert advice

25 ways of being successful.

The card · Where it started · 1 October 2017

One card. Everything on it.

Four passions, a flying saucer and two thinkers guarding it all. Tap the points to jump to each idea.

Hanbal Amir's original card from 2017 with diagrams about space, energy and light
Contact

Correct me if I am wrong.

A question, an objection, a recipe, a collaboration. Every message gets read, and the best corrections become articles.

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