At four years old, Daniel Miller became one of the youngest people in the state of Texas ever to testify in court -- against his own mother, for sexual assault. As an adult, he struggles for stability, but finds hope in physics. (Warning: this story contains disturbing and potentially triggering events.)

Daniel R. Miller is a Ph.D. student and research assistant at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. Using large telescopes in the Chilean Andes to observe our Universe as it was 12 billion years ago along with state-of-the-art high performance computer simulations, he works at the intersection of observational and theoretical astrophysics on subjects including cosmology, cosmic structure, and reionization. He also spent several years doing research in plasma physics and controlled nuclear fusion on the MIT Alcator C-Mod experimental tokamak reactor. When not thinking strictly about physics, he may be found in the Future of Life Institute working on potential existential risks including climate change, nuclear proliferation, and artificial intelligence.

This story originally aired on August 8, 2014.