Main Stage

12:00 p.m. Summer Ash A Brief History of Sunshine

Try and forget all you know or have learned about the universe for a second. Imagine what you might think of this glowing orb in the sky if you were seeing it for the first time. Is it moving?...or are you? How far away is it? What is it made of? For as long as humans could formulate questions like these, we’ve been trying to answer them. In this talk we’ll travel through history to reveal how we know what we know about our host star and what we still have yet to learn. You’ll never look at the sun the same way again.

1:00 p.m. Vi Hart Geometric Stars Are Made Of People

Come be a star! We'll learn to create beautiful mathematical patterns, like many-sided stars, by arranging neon lines into giant people-powered shapes. This short talk will be followed by a directed workshop, then some time to experiment and improvise. By working together, we can draw mathematical doodles across the landscape!

2:45 p.m. Paul O'Connor The Dark Side of the Universe

In the last twenty years we have learned that the universe consists mostly of two substances—dark energy and dark matter—neither of which fits into the rest of our understanding of the physical world. Dark energy, in particular, offers the tantalizing possibility of reconciling the physics of the very small with that of the very large. Experimental physicist Paul O'Connor will describe how these dark constituents came to be discovered, and the remarkable new instrument he and others are building to study their properties.

3:45 p.m. Joshua Foer A Minor History of Time Without Clocks

On August 21, the gears of the solar system will click into place in a manner that is rare—but not unpredictable. The eclipse is a reminder that we live in a clockwork universe, and that our measurements of time’s passage here on Earth are always ultimately tied to observations of the heavens. For millennia, we’ve been building strange machines to tell time directly from the rhythms of nature. From sunflower clocks to moon dials, we’re going to explore the eccentric history of natural timepieces.

4:30 p.m. Michael Lemonick Cosmic Stuff Moving in Front of Other Cosmic Stuff—Eclipses are Just the Start

The Moon moving in front of the Sun is a truly dramatic event—but modern astronomy is rich with other examples of celestial objects lining up. The dimming of stars beyond the Sun has revealed the existence of thousands of exoplanets, invisible until they passed between us and them. The occultation of background stars by asteroids give us clues to those rocky objects' sizes and shapes. The warping of spacetime by (relatively) nearby galaxies distorts the images of more distant galaxies and quasars, letting astronomers map the location of dark matter and measure the size of the universe. Objects obscuring other objects—an especially apt phenomenon for lovers of Atlas Obscura—turns out to be one of the most powerful tools in astronomy. Michael Lemonick offers a guided tour of that heavenly toolbox.

5:30 p.m. Clara Moskowitz Ghostly Particles from the Sun

Trillions of tiny particles called neutrinos are passing through your body every second, and most of them come from the sun. They are so insubstantial that they pass right through the space between your atoms without a trace. Yet these ghostly particles are one of the hottest topics in physics today because their strange behavior could reveal the existence of previously unheard of forces or phenomena. Clara Moskowitz will explain how the sun creates these particles and how scientists studying solar neutrinos uncovered their strangest property: a weird ability to shape-shift. Learn why such behavior was so mystifying to the physicists who discovered it, how it could reveal new fundamental truths about nature, and what experiments are going on now to understand these puzzling particles.

6:25 p.m. Daniel Whiteson & Jorge Cham We Have No Idea

“We Have No Idea” is a fun, interactive presentation about everything we DON'T know about the Universe, from the origin of our Cosmos to the Dark Matter that surrounds us. No scientific knowledge required, just a sense of curiosity and humor!

7:40 p.m. Christopher Intagliata A Relatively Important Eclipse

In May 1919, scientists set out for Sobral, in northern Brazil, and Príncipe, an island off the west coast of Africa, to photograph the momentarily starry sky during a total eclipse. Their aim was to test whether the Sun’s gravity would indeed bend light rays from faraway stars, as predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity. In the brief minutes of darkness on May 29, astronomers at both sites observed the Hyades star cluster as the eclipsed disc of the Sun passed by, and after analyzing the data, declared Einstein correct—forever changing physics and our understanding of the universe.

8:00 p.m. Matt Hill, National Parks at Night After Dark in National Parks

Under moon and stars, America's National Parks are transformed into a time-bending playground for photographing the night skies. Join Matt Hill for a look at what happens when the lights go out and the shutter opens.

8:40 p.m. Summer Ash The Summer Sky

A short tour of the highlights of the summer sky including constellations, currently visible planets, and deep space objects of interest. Summer Ash’s evening presentation will include GIFs and some fun facts to help you look at the universe a little differently from time to time.

9:15 p.m. Psychic Ills



10:20 p.m. Helado Negro

