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“IT’S AMAZING HOW we consistently grow our visitor numbers and never grow our space. It’s a scientific conundrum but it continues to happen.”
With over 400,000 visitors last year and as it’s about to enter its 10th year, the Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin looks to continue its momentum as it launched its programme for 2018 yesterday.
“It’s a big year next year. We’re turning 10, it’s hard to believe that we’ve been here for so long. It’s so exciting,” Lynn Scarff, director of the gallery told TheJournal.ie.
Scarff said that she really wanted to do the gallery justice in its 10th year and have creative and innovative shows on display, which also brought with them elements of the society we currently live in.
“The thing that the Science Gallery always tries to do with our themes is to connect and surprise,” Scarff said.
“We’re always looking at themes which resonate with big questions that are happening in a social, a political or an economic context,” she said.
It’s not necessarily that we’re trying to develop something that takes a deep dive into a particular science, but instead something that really offers a new perspective on something that we’re going through collectively at the moment.
In 2018, the free-to-enter Dublin gallery will feature three exhibitions, which Scarff said will “explore some of the biggest challenges of our time.”
They are…
The Fake exhibition kicks off 2018 for the Science Gallery.
It will pose the question of our understanding of deception – why do we fake certain aspects of our lives and how can we spot a lie?
“Fake is obviously really important given what is happening in the world, particularly in terms of politics but also in terms of how we value things and how we attribute the value of things,” Scarff said.
Fake runs from 2 March to 3 June.
From terraforming planets to tracking microbes on geothermal vents, this exhibition will explore “life at the edges”.
Scarff said that this exhibition will look at the impact of climate change, extreme environments and how we could, for example, potentially live in space.
“Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time. The Science Gallery would never do a show called Climate Change, so we’re always trying to take an approach which allows us to ask the questions about climate change in a more compelling way,” Scarff said.
Life At The Edges runs from 22 June to 30 August.
The final exhibition of 2018 at the Science Gallery, Intimacy, will examine the science and art of connection between humans, bringing together neuroscience, behaviour, belief and trust.
“We’ll be exploring whether we’ve forgotten how to be intimate and not necessarily in a sexual way, but actually in terms of friendship and the power of them,” Scarff said.
We’ve lost the ability as humans to have conversations when we’re coming from polar opposite opinions. Intimacy is really probing that in some ways about how those human connections are really critical.
Intimacy runs from 19 October 2018 to 3 February 2019.
The Science Gallery is located on Pearse Street, Dublin. For more information about upcoming events visit the gallery’s website here.
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It would be nice to surprise us with something outside Dublin .
@Donal Carey: Well it is the science gallery in TCD which happens to be in Dublin.
I would like to submit an image and a quote to the ‘Fake’ exhibition.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0112/JuSa2000_tezel.gif
That is time lapse of the faster Earth overtaking the slower moving outer planets Jupiter and Saturn causing them to temporarily fall behind in view. It is the main point of Copernicus in demonstrating that the Earth moves and the Sun is the centre of the solar system based on direct/retrograde motions.
Here is the fake perspective that destroyed the reasoning of Copernicus in the matter of direct/retrogrades -
“For to the earth planetary motions appear sometimes direct, sometimes
stationary, nay, and sometimes retrograde. But from the sun they are
always seen direct,…” Newton
Anyone good enough to spot what is really wrong with that statement from Newton as opposed what the images show ?.
@Gerald Kelleher: never stationary?
@Doz: No but I see what you mean. The old geocentric astronomers thought the planets moved in loops around a stationary Earth as the planets appeared to move in one direction against the background stars, then stop and go backwards (retrograde) before resuming a forward motion (direct). It looked like this in modern imaging -
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100613.html
Copernicus came along and explained that these periodic changes in direction were really the Earth moving and overtaking the slower moving outer planets so we see the motions of the planets directly from a moving Earth and therefore infer the Sun is stationary and central to all planets. It only really makes sense in terms of time lapse -
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap011220.html
It gets interesting after this if it is not already interesting.
Imagine Nigel Farage running amok in astronomy and that gives readers some idea what happened when Newton deconstructed astronomical insights and rebuilt him to suit himself. The thing is that extracting the falsehoods from the work of Copernicus or Kepler is not at all difficult and is enjoyable with familiarity
The original Sun-centred astronomers gauged the motion of the planets against the background stars and saw they moved in direct/retrograde motion and what they seen as loops. Once Copernicus explained that it was due to the Earth’s orbital motion they could gauge variations such as variable orbital speeds. Modern imaging allows observers to appreciate the loops -
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap160915.html
In the 16th century they created graphics instead of the same thing and most notable Kepler -
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Kepler_Mars_retrograde.jpg
“Copernicus, by attributing a single annual motion to the earth,
entirely rids the planets of these extremely intricate coils leading
the individual planets into their respective orbits ,quite bare and
very nearly circular. In the period of time shown in the diagram, Mars
traverses one and the same orbit as many times as the ‘garlands’ you
see looped towards the center,with one extra, making nine times, while
at the same time the Earth repeats its circle sixteen times ” Kepler
Newton thinks if you plonk the Sun in the centre of the diagram that the looping motions disappear and that is why he conjured up a true/ apparent motion based on a stupid notion of direct/retrogrades.
Again, it is not that difficult for reasonable people even when they are so hard to find.
have your say