Bright Horizons 9

SCIENCE IN NEW YORK CITY
Saturday, May 7, 2011

Spring in Manhattan. Totally awesome. No matter how you approach your visit to the city, it surprises, inspires, and stimulates you. Museums, fabulous dining, ultimate urban walks, historic sites, performing arts, city park pleasures, and people watching abound and get you into the flow of New York. Join Scientific American on our optional pre-cruise science day in New York City.

Wake up in the city that never sleeps, and we’ll meet at 9am at the Rose Center for Earth and Space (above) at the American Museum of Natural History for a private insider’s tour. Get the inside scoop on research being done at the Rose Center — our day here includes a behind-the scenes tour of their telescope/optics labs; a spaceshow/journey to the stars in the Hayden Planetarium; a private 40-minute lecture about the Hubble Space Telescope from our host, Dr. Michael Shara; and finally we’ll gain a new perspective on space with the Scales of the Universe. Our five-hour day at the Rose Center includes a catered lunch. After our astronomy sojourn, we’ll reconvene in lower mid-town Manhattan, at the Scientific American headquarters, for an early evening social reception, with dinner to folllow, with Scientific American staffers.
 

Hayden Planetarium, midtown Manhattan

 

During our visit, the Curator of the Einstein exhibit, Michael M. Shara, Ph.D. will deliver the following lectures:

Einstein’s Revolution
He was daring, wildly ingenious, passionately curious. He saw a beam of light and imagined riding it; he looked up at the sky and envisioned that space-time was curved. Albert Einstein reinterpreted the inner workings of nature, the very essence of light, time, energy and gravity. His insights fundamentally changed the way we look at the universe — and made him the most famous scientist of the 20th century.

We know Einstein as a visionary physicist, but he was also a passionate humanitarian and anti-war activist. Born a German Jew, Einstein truly considered himself a citizen of the world. His celebrity status enabled him to speak out — on global issues from pacifism to racism, anti-Semitism to nuclear disarmament. “My life is a simple thing that would interest no one,” he once claimed. But in fact, his letters, notebooks and manuscripts tell a dramatically different story.

Einstein saw the universe as a puzzle, and he delighted in trying to solve its mysteries. All he needed to contemplate the cosmos was his most valuable scientific tool — his imagination.
 

10 Discoveries from the Hubble Space Telescope
In the 20 years it has been in orbit, Hubble has revolutionized our understanding of how the universe works. Images from the telescope have become iconic forms of modern art. And lurking in each image is new science. Dr. Shara will describe 10 remarkable discoveries made with the Hubble, and show how its images reveal something we’ve never seen or understood before.
 

(Optional tour price: $395. Includes transportation, entrance fees, lunch at the Rose Center, cocktail reception and dinner at Scientific American headquarters. This tour is limited to 25 people.)