Category: Astronomy, physic, …

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The Institute of the Cosmos: Museum and Timeline

www.cosmos.art

Emma Willard, The Temple of Time, 1846.

The museum occupies a central place within the cosmist worldview as an institution dedicated to the preservation, conservation, and restoration of the past. It is a singular place in human society where a broken appliance, a damaged picture, a ceramic shard, or an unfinished poem are not discarded, but systematically preserved and maintained. The cosmist museum is encyclopedic and nonviolent. As a collection of everything, its mission is to restore life, not take it. Nikolai Fedorov writes that the museum is related to the school and the observatory. The ancestral memory it preserves in the form of artifacts, botanical specimens, animal and human remains is mirrored in the constellations of the stars. The museum is related to ancient temples and the knowledge it transmits is astronomical. According to Fedorov, the museum will be the site of resurrection once museological technologies of restoration are radicalized to restore life. “If a repository may be compared to a grave, then reading, or more precisely research, is a kind of exhumation, while an exhibition is, as it were, a resurrection.”[1]

The museum of the Institute of the Cosmos is comprised of an infinite number of rooms. Each room contains a permanent exhibit. We invite you to visit Room #12, containing an exhibition by Arseny Zhilyaev, signed by the algorithmic artist Robert Pasternak. The room presents a suite of sculptures devised by Robert Pasternak in the distant future, in an attempt to understand its origins, which are closer to our present time. Based on satellites, rockets and space stations developed during the early days of space exploration, these sculptures can be downloaded and printed on a 3D printer. 

More rooms will open in the near future, with projects by artists and curators including Victor Skersis, Jonas Staal, Ahmet Ögüt, Iman Issa, Pierre Huyghe, Bahar Noorizadeh, Nikolay Smirnov, Liam Gillick, Maha Maamun, Emilija Škarnulytė​, Oleksiy Radynski, Boris Groys and others.

The Timeline of Russian Cosmism is a chronological mapping of key developments in art, literature, poetry, science, politics, technology, philosophy and numerous other fields, as they pertain to cosmism. Researched and edited by Anastasia Gacheva, Marina Simakova, Arseny Zhilyaev and Anton Vidokle, the timeline traces the influence of cosmist thought on culture and society, starting with the sighting of the comet 3d/Biela, which triggered the global panic of the 1820s, to the present day. The timeline is ongoing: more entries will be added expanding its content as we move into the future and rediscover the past.

[1] Nikolai Fedorov, The Museum, its Meaning and Mission, originally published in 1906

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CERN – Universe of Particles

How can the invisible be made visible and how can a truly abstract and complex subject be made accessible for all?
Today’s throws us back to the world’s largest research centre of particle physics: CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire). Visitors are immersed into a world without boundaries and dimensions. They become part of the subatomic level and the vast expansion of our solar system. Interactive display stations provide information about research facilities, the worldwide network, research methods, new technologies, discoveries and the scientists.

Design and scenography: Atelier Brückner

Photography: Michael Jungblut
Photography: Michael Jungblut
Photography: Michael Jungblut
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Deep Space Atomic Clock

NASA’s Deep Space Atomic Clock is a critical step toward enabling spacecraft to safely, independently navigate in deep space rather than rely on the time-consuming process of receiving directions from Earth. Developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, the clock is the first timekeeper stable enough to map a spacecraft’s trajectory in deep space and small enough to be housed onboard. The technology demonstration is validating a miniaturized, ultra-precise mercury-ion atomic clock orders of magnitude more stable than what’s used on spacecraft today.  

Concept of the system
Tom Cwik, the head of JPL’s Space Technology Program (left) and Allen Farrington, JPL Deep Space Atomic Clock Project Manager, view the integrated Atomic Clock Payload on General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems US’s Orbital Test Bed Spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
One of three free posters celebrating NASA’s Deep Space Atomic Clock. The mission will demonstrate technology that would allow a spacecraft to calculate its own trajectory rather than waiting for that information to come from Earth. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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Towards a definition of time / Precise time measurement: atomic clocks and their applications

Towards a definition of time
Lecture by Prof. Gaetano Mileti (co-founder of the Time and Frequency Laboratory of the University of Neuchâtel) at the SIHH 2019, Watches & Wonders Geneva (in English)

The philosophers and astronomers who came before us probed the stars and studied their light to understand the universe and observe the passage of time. They learned to measure time in intervals of years, months, days, hours, often as a period or cycle. Nowadays, we are also using light in the same quest for precision and knowledge, but can we proclaim having found universal time?

Precise time measurement: atomic clocks and their applications
Lecture by Prof. Pierre Thomann (co-founder of the Time and Frequency Laboratory of the University of Neuchâtel) at the University of Geneva, in 2011 (in French)

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Einstein – Hawking. The Universe Unveiled

Arte. Documentary by Michael Lachmann (UK, 2019, 52mn)

https://youtu.be/LDHxAyzac3Y

Could Einstein and Hawking together have reconciled relativity and quantum mechanics? This captivating documentary mirrors the discoveries of the two greatest minds in modern physics who revolutionized our vision of the Universe. This first part looks at the work of Albert Einstein (1879-1955).
Relativity, the Universe seen as a space-time continuum and attraction as a distortion of this continuum caused by stars and planets… This first part looks at the work of Albert Einstein (1879-1955). They are put into perspective by astrophysicists, in particular those of the Laser Interferometry Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), which brings together 900 scientists from around the world. How do researchers today view the ideas of the Swiss-American genius?

https://youtu.be/564A-IPbQt0
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What is time? | The Magic of the Cosmos

Part 1 | ARTE

https://youtu.be/Ps_1-MbwaBw

It was Albert Einstein who first shattered Isaac Newton’s hypothesis of a universal time and explained that it is in fact a subjective experience. An episode in a captivating documentary series on the mysteries of the cosmos.
If man has been trying to measure time with increasing precision for thousands of years, it would be difficult to define it, as it is still one of the greatest mysteries of physics. For the perception of its continuous flow is nothing but an illusion. Albert Einstein was the first to shatter Isaac Newton’s hypothesis of a universal time and explain that it is in fact a subjective experience. Why is this? Simply because movement in space affects its flow. Einstein thus reveals the fundamental connection between space and time, inducing in passing that past, present and future exist in the same way and without distinction!
The magic of the cosmos
Episode 1: The Illusion of Time
Documentary series by Randall MacLowry (United States, 2011, 53mn)

Part 2 | ARTE

https://youtu.be/-KlbMsP1Vls

Space separates two galaxies as well as two atoms. Author of the book “The Magic of the Cosmos”, published in 2004, the physicist Brian Greene reveals that it is a dynamic fabric that can stretch, twist, deform and undulate under the effects of gravity. Even stranger still is the recent discovery of a mysterious ingredient that is said to make up 70% of the universe and which physicists call “dark energy”. Even if they admit its existence, they still don’t know what it is. Examining space on infinitely small scales only makes the mystery even deeper.
3D animated sequences prove that our ability to reason quickly reaches its limits and struggles to influence our behaviour. Mundane objects such as matches and chairs allow for surprising experiments when handled by researchers. To prove the validity of their theses, researchers don’t hesitate to jump on a surfboard or study the methods of magicians. All of these are reasons to worry sometimes, especially when we learn that our brains make decisions seven seconds before we are aware of them! A fascinating journey to the four corners of the world, from Australia to Germany via the United States and Sweden, to observe our neurons in all their states..
The magic of the cosmos
Episode 2: What Is Space
Documentary series by Randall MacLowry (United States, 2011, 53mn)

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The Story of Physics Animated in 4 Minutes: From Galileo and Newton, to Einstein

Article on Open Culture

No matter how well you remember your physics classes, you most likely don’t remember learning any stories in them. Theories and equations, yes, but not stories — yet each of those theories and equations has a story behind it, as does the entire scientific enterprise of physics they constitute. The video above from the BBC’s Dara Ó Briain’s Science Club provides an overview of the latter story in an animated four minutes, making it ideal for youngsters just starting to learn about physics. It will also do the job for those of us not-so-youngsters circling back to get a better grasp of physics, its discoveries and driving questions.