Winner Announced for Rose Center Anniversary Video Contest

Tuesday, October 05 12:44 pm

The results are in! We asked you to show us in a video how science has inspired you. Congratulations to Luke, whose video “LHC” won him a weekend for two in New York City to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Frederick Phineas & Sandra Priest Rose Center for Earth and Space!

Luke’s prize-winning video explains the purpose and promise of the Large Hadron Collider with a mix of humor and awe. “Science is and always will be a journey of discovery, inquiry, and curiosity,” Luke says in the narration to his video. “We get to ask the universe fundamental questions about itself, and we can only hope that it answers back.”

Also now available on YouTube are the first runner-up, “Space is Awesome,” a charming account of a two-year-old’s love for astronomy, and the second runner-up, “Robots,” based on the news that researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have taught robots how to deceive.

Join us this Sunday to celebrate the Rose Center’s anniversary at a day-long event featuring live concerts and performances, hands-on activities, presentations by Museum scientists, and a special appearance by NASA astronaut Michael Massimino—all this and more, free with Museum admission.

Stay on into the evening for a special Asimov Debate: Is Earth Unique?, moderated by Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium Neil deGrasse Tyson and a panel of experts who will consider whether other planets might have the unique conditions needed to support life. The discovery announced last week of Gliese 581 g, an extrasolar planet in the just-right-for-liquid-water “Goldilocks zone” in relation to its star, is sure to enliven the conversation, raise lots of questions, and maybe even inspire another video or two!

Mike Shara Discusses Next 50 Years of Space Flight

Thursday, September 30 12:05 pm

Museum Curator Mike Shara of the Department of Astrophysics will lead SciCafe: The Next 50 Years of Space Flight at the Museum on Wednesday, October 6.  He recently answered some questions about his upcoming discussion.

Where do you see our space program in 10, 20, and 50 years into the future?

Suborbital space tourism will almost certainly be a reality in 10 years, and orbiting hotels are quite possible in 20 years. The Chinese are likely to have a lunar base in 20 years. Humans will have landed on Mars, and perhaps set up a science base in 50 years. We will know with certainty, by then, if there is microbial life on Mars and Europa.

Where would you like to see NASA send a manned mission next: the Moon, Mars, or an asteroid?

All three. There is much valuable science to be done at each.

What do you see in the future for suborbital tourism?

Falling costs and rising numbers of tourists. Dozens the first year, hundreds the third year, then tens of thousands of people annually. I can hardly wait.

You’ve undertaken a survey to inventory all 10,000 presupernova stars in the Milky Way. Why?

This is a test of stellar evolution theory, something as basic to astrophysics as Darwinian evolution is to biology.  This theory predicts that “Wolf-Rayet” stars, which are so luminous that they are evaporating themselves, must give rise to supernova explosions. By finding every one of these stars in the Milky Way — and in nearby galaxies, too — and by getting a spectrum of every one of them (i.e., their “DNA”), we will know, when the next supernova explodes, if our evolution theory has predictive power or if it must be modified.

What have you learned from this?

That searching for a needle in a field full of haystacks is hard. There are 100,000,000,000 stars in the Milky Way. Only one in 10 million is a presupernova star. But we’ve got a list of 400 confirmed stars and thousands more candidates.

What is a stellar collision and what have you learned about them?

Stars actually crash into other stars in the centers of the densest star clusters. These collisions can be destructive or amalgamative and make some of the rarest stars in the universe.

NASA’s Mercury MESSENGER Mission PI Sean Solomon Will Speak At The Museum July 26

Friday, July 23 8:38 am

Since NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft was launched on a mission to study Mercury in 2004, it has returned stunning photographs of the innermost planet gathered during a series of flybys. (For a recent New York Times story about the surprising discoveries the spacecraft has already made, click here).  Sean Solomon, principal investigator of MESSENGER, will be at the Museum on Monday, July 26, to speak about the new insights gleaned about Mercury’s high-density composition, its geological history, and its magnetic field in a special lecture. He will also discuss what’s next for MESSENGER, which is slated to enter Mercury’s orbit in March 2011. For some of the images retrieved from the mission so far, check out the gallery below.

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Lift off from Cape Canaveral, Florida occurred in August, 2004, launching the MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) spacecraft on a 4.9-billion-mile journey to Mercury. The spacecraft, which was built for NASA by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, flew by Earth, Venus, and Mercury several times and will have circled the Sun 15 times before going into orbit around Mercury in March 2011. Credit: National Aeronautics and Space Administration or NASA

Hubble IMAX Film Opens at the Museum July 3

Thursday, July 01 3:39 pm

For nearly 20 years, the Hubble Space Telescope has been our window onto the cosmos, providing scientists with unparalleled views of Earth’s celestial neighborhood and extraordinary images of galaxies billions of light years away. Now, the dazzling IMAX film Hubble, which takes viewers on a Hubble servicing mission with the crew of Atlantis STS-125, comes to the big screen at the American Museum of Natural History’s Samuel J. and Ethel LeFrak Theater.

Narrated by Leonard DiCaprio, this stunning 43-minute feature lets audiences accompany space-walking astronauts as they attempt some of the most difficult tasks in NASA’s history in addition to experiencing firsthand Hubble’s striking images from the heart of the Orion Nebula and the Milky Way galaxy.

Check out this Hubble webisode to see how astronauts get dressed for work, and click here to view the trailer, check showtimes, and buy tickets.

New Astrobulletin Feature Investigates Dark Mystery

Wednesday, March 24 3:46 pm

The Expanding Universe, a spectacular new seven-minute video produced by the American Museum of Natural History for the AstroBulletin, investigates one of the major mysteries confronting astrophysicists today: why is the universe expanding at a steadily increasing rate? When astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe was expanding in 1929, scientists assumed that the gravitational attraction between galaxies would slow the expansion rate of the universe. But in 1998, two teams of scientists discovered that the expansion rate was not slowing down but was, in fact, accelerating. Could the mysterious “dark energy” be responsible, or perhaps some aspect of gravity we have yet to understand? The Expanding Universe interviews two leading scientists, Alex Filippenko, of the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California’s Lick Observatory, and Josh Frieman, of the theoretical astrophysics group at Fermilab, to untangle this cosmic mystery.

Click to view ‘The Expanding Universe’

The Expanding Universe is just the latest feature produced for the AstroBulletin, a large high-definition screen in the Frederick Phineas and Sandra Priest Rose Center for Earth and Space where visitors can see the latest discoveries in astrophysics. AMNH scientists collaborated with a group of Museum video producers, computer designers, writers, and educators to produce The Expanding Universe, which is presented as part of a year-long Museum celebration commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Rose Center and marking the 75th anniversary of the opening of the original Hayden Planetarium. The AstroBulletin is one of four award-winning Science Bulletin video productions—visually stunning updates on the latest in astrophysics, Earth sciences, biodiversity, and human biology—displayed on high-definition screens in four permanent halls in the Museum. Additionally, Science Bulletins are available online.

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