The mysteries of black holes, including what it would be like to fall into one, will be explored during two June shows at the University of Colorado at Boulder's Fiske Planetarium.
CU-Boulder Professor Andrew Hamilton will present "Black Holes," a show intended for a general audience, on June 16 at 8 p.m. On June 17 at 9:30 a.m., he will present the CU Wizards show "Black Holes," which is geared toward students in grades five through nine. Both shows will be in the planetarium.
Hamilton's June 16 show will include recent Hubble Space Telescope observations of possible black holes in distant galaxies. He also will discuss evidence of black holes in the Milky Way galaxy, and describe what they are. At the end of the show, he will take the audience on a simulated trip into a black hole.
The CU Wizards show will feature an artificial black hole where volunteers from the audience will leap off a treadmill onto a crash mat to illustrate falling into a black hole. They will learn why nothing can get out of a black hole and what would actually happen to a person who fell into one. The audience also will make tornadoes on stage.
"Black Holes" is the final presentation of the 2005-06 CU Wizards series. The educational series introduces young science enthusiasts to topics in astronomy, chemistry and physics.
Black holes are believed to form when huge stars use up all of their nuclear fuel and collapse. The mass of each gigantic star is so great that even light can't escape its gravitational field.
Hamilton is a professor in CU-Boulder's astrophysical and planetary sciences department and studies black holes, cosmology, supernovae and relativity. He was the science director for the planetarium show "Black Holes: The Other Side of Infinity," which opened at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in February. The show is being distributed worldwide by Spitz Inc. and was funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation.
For more information about black holes visit Hamilton's Web site at casa.colorado.edu/~ajsh/schw.shtml.
Admission for the June 16 show is $6 for adults, $5 for students with valid identification and $3.50 for children and seniors. The CU Wizards presentation is free. Sommers-Bausch Observatory, adjacent to the planetarium, is open to the public following the June 16 show, weather permitting. Admission to the observatory is free.
For more information about the CU Wizards call (303) 492-5011 or visit .
For more information about Fiske Planetarium and other shows and programs it offers, call (303) 492-5001 or visit the Web site at fiske.colorado.edu/.