“Documentary ‘Secrets of the Universe’ Opens at the Museum of Science & Industry,” by S.M. O’Connor

Secrets of the Universe (2019) has opened at the Museum of Science and Industry’s Giant Dome Theater in Hyde Park on the South Side of Chicago. The film follows physicist Manuel Calderón de la Barca Sánchez as he goes to the C.E.R.N.’s Large Hardon Collider (L.H.C.) and also depicts the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Observatory (L.I.G.O.). It is being screened daily at 11:00 a.m., 12:30 p.m., 2:00 p.m., and 3:30 p.m. On days with extended hours, it is screened for the last time at 5:00 p.m. Film screenings in the Giant Dome Theater are not covered by Museum Entry (general admission) tickets. A separate, timed-entry ticket is required.

Canadian documentary filmmaker Stephen Low is the director. Produced by K2 Studios in association with the Perimeter Institute and the National Science Foundation, Secrets of the Universe was filmed at the L.H.C. and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. The film debuted in July at the Smithsonian Institution’s Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

Figure 1 Credit: Secrets of the Universe Caption: This is the Large Hadron Collider, a particle collider that is the largest and most complex machine ever built by mankind.

Figure 2 Credit: Secrets of the Universe Caption: The Large Hadron Collider is buried 500 feet underground.

Figure 3 Credit: Getty Images and Secrets of the Universe Caption: The Large Hadron Colllider is approximately seventeen miles in diameter. The ring inside the circular tunnel is surrounded by superconducting electromagnets. The electromagnetic field guides two particle beams approaching the speed of light to collide at four locations around the ring where there are particle detectors: ATLAS, CMS, ALICE, and LHCb. Liquid helium chills the electromagnets at a temperature of -271.3°C.

Figure 4 Credit: Secrets of the Universe Caption: The Large Hadron Collider passed under the Swiss-French border four times. The identified woman in this picture is an engineer.

Figure 5 Credit: Secrets of the Universe Caption: This is the C.E.R.N. Building. C.E.R.N. (Conseil européen pour la recherché nucléaire) is also known, in English, as the European Organization for Nuclear Research. This picture was taken on November 1, 2012.

Figure 6 Credit: Secrets of the Universe Caption: It took ten years for C.E.R.N. to build the Large Hadron Collider. This is the ATLAS particle detector.

Figure 7 Credit: Secrets of the Universe Caption: This is Fabiola Gianotti, Director-General of C.E.R.N.

Figure 8 Credit: Secrets of the Universe Caption: This is the C.E.R.N. Control Centre. Approximately 10,000 scientists from 100 countries work in Geneva at C.E.R.N.

Credit: Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Caption: Professor Manuel Calderón de la Barca Sánchez narrates this preview of Secrets of the Universe.

IMG_0122-credit-Scott-Norsworthy_edited-e1556743440138.jpg

Figure 9 Credit: Scott Norsworthy Caption: This is the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.

In 2016, over 300,000 people visited the Museum of Science and Industry’s Omnimax® Theater, which opened in the Henry Crown Space Center in 1986.[1] In May of 2017, the Museum of Science and Industry (M.S.I.) unveiled a state-of-the-art projection system in the Omnimax® Theater, which it renamed the Giant Dome Theater to emphasize the change in projection technology. The M.S.I. was the first institution in Chicago and the second in the world to install the new system from D3D/Christie Laser Dome, a company based in north suburban Evanston, Illinois. It uses three different laser projectors to create a composite image.

The Dover Foundation supports the Giant Dome Theater. CIBC is the Giant Dome Theater Season Sponsor.

In September, there will be fifteen Illinois Free Days at the M.S.I., as I wrote about on Thursday. [On Wednesday, I wrote about thirty-three other institutions across Illinois that are participating in Smithsonian Magazine’s 2019 Museum Day®, and thus one need only download a Museum Day® ticket to get free general admission for two on Saturday, September 21, 2019.] On Illinois Free Days, Museum Entry (general admission) tickets are free for all Illinois residents who show valid proof of residence such as a driver’s license or state identification card. [2]

On most days, it is open from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., but during peak periods it is open from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Regular hours (9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.) resumed. The M.S.I. regularly makes small adjustments to this schedule, so when planning a trip there, check this Webpage and the M.S.I.’s social media for updates.

EXTENDED HOURS AND EXCEPTIONS

9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.	Saturday, August 31, 2019
9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.	Sunday, September 1, 2019 Monday, September 2, 2019 Tuesday, March 26, 2019 Wednesday, March 27, 2019 Thursday, March 28, 2019 Friday, March 29, 2019 Saturday, March 30, 2019 Sunday, March 31, 2019
11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.	Sunday, September 29, 2019
9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.	Saturday, October 5, 2019
Closed	Thursday, November 28, 2019 (Thanksgiving Day)
9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.	Friday, November 29, 2019 Saturday, November 30, 2019 Sunday, December 1, 2019 Saturday, December 7, 2019 Sunday, December 8, 2019 Saturday, December 14, 2019 Sunday, December 15, 2019 Saturday, December 21, 2019 Sunday, December 22, 2019 Monday, December 23, 2019
9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.	Tuesday, December 24, 2019 (Christmas Eve) Tuesday, December 31, 2019 (New Year’s Eve)
Closed	Wednesday, December 25, 2019 (Christmas Day)
9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.	Thursday, December 26, 2019 Friday, December 27, 2019 Saturday, December 28, 2019 Sunday, December 29, 2019 Monday, December 30, 2019
11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.	Wednesday, January 1, 2020 (New Year’s Day)
9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.	Thursday, January 2, 2020 Friday, January 3, 2020

Often stylized as the “Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago” or the “Museum of Science + Industry” the institution is located at the northern end of the Chicago Park District’s Jackson Park, on the south side of 57^th Street, between Lake Shore Drive to the east and Cornell Drive to the west, in the East Hyde Park neighborhood of the Hyde Park Community Area (Community Area #41) on the South Side of Chicago. The address is 5700 South Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60637. Founded by Sears, Roebuck & Company President Julius Rosenwald (1862-1932) in 1926, through The Commercial Club of Chicago, the Museum of Science and Industry opened in three stages between 1933 and 1940. It occupies the Palace of Fine Arts from Chicago’s first World’s Fair, the World’s Columbian Exposition (1893). The M.S.I. is open every day of the year with two exceptions: Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day. The Website is https://www.msichicago.org/ and the phone number is (773) 684-1414.

$5.00 Per Month IN THE GARDEN CITY Subscription Plan

$50.00 Per Year IN THE GARDEN CITY Subscription Plan

ENDNOTES

[1] OMNIMAX and IMAX theater technologies were developed in the 1960s by the IMAX Systems Corporation of Toronto. Known today as the IMAX Corporation, it is both a manufacturing company and a service company. It manufactures IMAX cameras and projectors, produces films, develops IMAX film, and provides postproduction services. At the time the Museum of Science and Industry built the OMNIMAX Theater in the Henry Crown Space Center, films were produced for the OMNIMAX format by the IMAX Systems Corporation, a consortium of science museum theaters, and other organizations.

[2] No further Chicago residence discounts apply on Illinois Free Days.

The Field Museum of Natural History in March, 2018

The Field Museum of Natural History’s entrance pavilions are at opposite ends of Stanley Field Hall, which has a north-south axis. The two porticos (porches) are each reached by two successive flights of stairs.

Both porticos of The Field Museum of Natural History are flanked by two small porches, which each have two caryatids (columns in the shape of maidens). On the facade, the wings are adorned with a colonnade of attached fluted Ionic columns. The building’s fluted Ionic columns have volutes (spiral-scroll-shaped crowns).

Each portico of The Field Museum is tetrastyle in antis with double-ranked fluted Ionic columns capped by volutes. An entablature crowned by a pediment rests atop the columns. The continuous frieze in each case is relatively plain. The wave-themed acroteria that crown the pediments are borrowed from the Palace of a Fine Arts, which housed The Field Museum until 1920 and now houses the Museum of Science and Industry.

The Field Museum of Natural History isn’t “just” a museum. Visitors can watch scientists at work through windows at the Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice DNA Discovery Center’s Pritzker Laboratory.

Mrs. Charles (Laura) Schweppe, a daughter and co-heiress of John Graves Shedd, the former partner of Marshall Field I who succeeded him as president of Marshall Field & Company, and who, under the guidance of Stanley Field founded the Shedd Aquarium, donated an exhibit of 100 bronze sculptures by Malvina Hoffman to The Field Museum. They represent every race, nation, and tribe in the human family (more or less). On January 9, 1933, the first group, Unity of Man, went on display.

In addition to the four figures Henry Hering (1874-1949) made for the corners of Stanley Field Hall, he also made the twelve plaster round lion head shield escutcheons that line it. These are replicas of the marble round lion head shield escutcheon he made for the pediment of the facade of The Field Museum of Natural History.

Christmas at Chicago’s Union Station

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a POLAR EXPRESS display in the Great Hall of Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a closeup of the THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is the headlamp of THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Union Station Company rail car loaded with super-size gifts is part of THE POLAR EXPRESS mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Union Station in downtown Chicago has emblems of Amtrak, Metra, and historic railroad companies whose routes they now operate like Burlington.

Cinemas sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) Helped Design

This is the Pickwick Theatre Building, an Art Deco movie palace and office building erected in downtown Park Ridge, Illinois in 1928.

The architects were Roscoe Harold Zook and William F. McCaughey. Sculptor Alfonso Iannelli, who also worked on the Adler Planetarium, contributed to this building.

In recent years, the Vlahakis family, who’ve owned the building for 50 years, have been able to turn the building into a multiplex by adding smaller theaters around the original auditorium. The latest one, with a screen four times the size of the one in the auditorium, will open in time to screen INFINITY WARS in May, if all goes well.

The Catlow Movie Theater is a cinema that opened in downtown Barrington, Illinois in 1927. The Tudor Revival style of architecture is not confined to the facade of the cinema. As with the Pickwick Theatre in Park Ridge, Illinois, sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) played a role in the design and decoration of The Catlow Movie Theater.