Chile's high Atacama Desert is one of those rare places where the earth seems to touch the sky. Located 10,000 feet above sea level, the desert's remoteness and the extraordinary fact that it is the driest place on earth, with zero percent humidity, give it some of the clearest skies on the planet. Astronomers come from all over the globe to peer through the world's biggest telescopes to the very edge of time and space, hoping to discover the secrets of the cosmos. But the Atacama holds other secrets underfoot. Its dry soil has preserved layers of human remains, from pre-Columbian mummies, to the bones of 19th-century explorers, to the corpses of political prisoners "disappeared" by the Chilean army under General Augusto Pinochet after the military coup of September 1973.
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