Science and fiction meet in new exhibit

Posted on Thu, Nov. 16, 2006

MATT SEDENSKY
Associated Press

MIAMI - The museum's dim lights and otherworldly sounds let you know that something is different. A quick glance and you realize those surrounding you have inverted pear-shaped heads and egglike eyes of green.

The stuff of fiction has invaded the walls of science.

The Miami Museum of Science and Planetarium opens its doors Saturday to "The Science of Aliens," the first North American stop of the British-born exhibit that pairs popular and scientific visions of outer-space life. The show, which also opened this week at Cite de la Science et de l'Industrie in Paris, encourages visitors to consider that unearthly species may not be such an incredible idea.

As museum president Gillian Thomas puts it: "We're trying to stretch people's imaginations of what science could be."

Could, of course, is the operative word.

The exhibit presents varied curious-looking Earth dwellers and compares the severe conditions such creatures are able to survive on this planet with environments elsewhere in the solar system. If they can make it here, can't they make it anywhere?

"We want people to know life on other planets is possible," said Hugo van Maasakkers, project manager for the "Science of ..." series of exhibits. "But it wouldn't be so strange from the things we already have around us."

Whether those potential alien life forms would jibe with the images promulgated in popular culture is another question, one hinted at near the entrance of "Science of Aliens."

The first of the exhibit's four zones is dedicated to the visions of aliens imagined in such movies as "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial," "Star Wars" and "Alien." There are two-headed teddy bears and clips of the TV show "Futurama," and a mirrored feature that allows visitors to view what they might look like as an alien.

It is all decidedly unscientific.

Thomas maintains that it's a perfect foray into serious discussion of life outside Earth, one thousands have taken since "The Science of Aliens" launched two years ago at the London Science Museum.

"All science fiction isn't just based on nothing. It's really based on science," Thomas said. "I think science fiction is an important way of getting people to be more comfortable with science."

The exhibit goes on to show alien-looking life that exists on our own planet and scientists' visions of worlds elsewhere in the galaxy. The most impressive interactive elements are two touch-screen displays that allow guests to discover imagined alien creatures from a fast-moving predator called a gulphog to a five-hearted specimen called a stinger fan.

Before visitors leave, they're invited to construct a message, purportedly to be sent out of this galaxy with the author's photograph attached. But the image that perhaps conveys the message of the exhibit best is on a wall in an understated display with no sound or flashing lights.

It is a panoramic view of the galaxy, with a tiny yellow circle locating the solar system that's home to Earth.

"You are here," it informs with a tiny yellow circle.

But are we all alone?