The film Armageddon is fiction; it suggests that humanity was in mortal danger until heroic actions saved us. Did you know that there are people who observe and secure improved orbits for near-Earth asteroids EVERY DAY? Their efforts have eliminated the chances of an extinction-level asteroid impact with Earth over the next 100 years or so. Did the film spur action that helped achieve this incredible decrease in risk? Was this due to increased public consciousness of the risk? Continue reading “Science in Film: Lessons from the Movie Armageddon”
All of North America will enjoy a total eclipse of the sun on August 21, 2017. Those in the path of totality, where the moon completely covers the face of the sun and only the corona is visible, will experience a total solar eclipse–temperatures will suddenly drop, and wildlife will go eerily silent. This path of totality will stretch from Salem, Oregon to Charleston, South Carolina. The last time the Lower 48 experienced a total solar eclipse was 1979; the next one traveling coast to coast won’t be until 2045. Continue reading “Prepare for the Solar Eclipse”
Since 2012 astronomer José Francisco Salgado has been photographing the Northern Lights from Canada, Alaska, and Iceland, as part of his work communicating science through the arts. So far, his Northern Lights films set to music have been presented with orchestras in 13 cities in four countries and have reached a combined audience of 130,000 people. Continue reading “In Awe of the Northern Lights”
Chicago Council on Science and Technology and the Chicago Public Library, Harold Washington Center present
Just in time for opening day!
Dr Alan Nathan spent a career doing experimental nuclear physics, where he studied the high-speed collisions of subatomic particles. Continue reading “The Physics of Baseball”
QM2017 Public Lecture in collaboration with C2ST
For the first second of time, long before the emergence of planets, stars, or galaxies, our universe was a hot primordial soup of “elementary” particles like quarks. Encoded in this formless, shapeless quark soup were the imprints of events from an even earlier epoch—the very beginning of the universe. Continue reading “From Quarks to the Cosmos”
