By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
A new exhibit at the Sternberg Museum of Natural History illustrates how tiny one-celled organisms that lived millions of years ago can help us predict the future of Earth's climate.
The traveling exhibit is titled "In Search of Earth's Secrets" it includes a large map of Earth which shows where geological core samples have been taken during the last 50 years, interactive displays, a video wall, as well as a giant inflatable ship.
Funded by the National Science Foundation, "In Search of Earth's Secrets" is a five-year project designed to create exciting “pop-up” science events in the style of pop-up restaurants, stores and art fairs.
Core samples have been taken from hundreds of locations all around the planet, including the Earth's oceans. Scientists can glean insights into prehistoric life, earthquakes and past climates based on the core samples, which can span deposits laid down millions of years ago.
"Doing anything in the deep ocean is expensive," Reese Barrick, museum director, said. "It's been running for 50 years, and it gets the most information about understanding past climate, environmental hazards and geologic history and sea level changes.
"Almost everything we know about those particular topics, comes from this program."
As the scientists study these core samples, they look for indications of one-celled organism that lived in ancient oceans. Certain organisms were more prevalent when waters were warmer and others were more dominant when temperatures were cooler.
In this way, the researchers can track how climate changed over time in the past.
They can also extrapolate what climate may do in the future and how that might affect modern life on Earth.
"You can get dates and times," Barrick said. "You can now correlate what happens to sea level when climate goes this way. Is there a lag time or a delay of 100 years or 1,000 years or is it tightly wound?
"We can correlate, sea level, climate and natural disasters, tsunamis and hurricanes. Then you can look forward and say climate's changing in this direction. What is that going to mean for our sea levels?
About 40 percent of the world's population lives within 60 miles from a coast.
"Every experiment on climate has been done in the past," Barrick said. "When we look to the future and we don't know what's going to happen, we can look to the past to what has happen and it's a pretty tight fit for what will happen."
By analyzing core samples, scientists may be able to narrow changes in climate from ten of thousands of years to maybe 100 years — within the scale of a human lifetime.
The exhibit has an example of a core sample as part of one of it's interactive displays. Iron deposits are present in these samples. When those deposits were laid down, they magnetically lined up with the planet's poles. You can run a magnet up and down the sample and see how the magnetic poles changed over the course of time.
"It tells you how we know what we know," Barrick said.
Core samples revealed the blast zone of a huge asteroid that hit the planet and likely lead to the extinction of the dinosaurs, Barrick said, standing over the area, which was highlighted on a large floor map.
The inflatable ship that accompanies this exhibit is symbolic of the scientific vessels that travels year-round collecting core samples from the oceans. Local museum staff members have the capability to connect via videoconferencing to the research vessel, so visitors can interact with working scientists.
The Sternberg is partnering with Girl Scouts on this project. Girls ages about 11 and older will be trained to be volunteer docents for the exhibit. They will help with hands-on demonstrations, as well as handing out surveys to visitors. More information will be released on this at a later date.
"They will get a change to explore the exhibit themselves and hopefully get a chance to learn about oceans," Barrick said.
The Sternberg also plans to partner with the Hays Public Library to offer events in conjunction with its reading program this summer.
The exhibit will be at the Sternberg through March 30. It will then travel across the state, but return to Sternberg this summer. The exhibit will be at The Deines Cultural Center in Russell in early April.
Watch the Sternberg website and Facebook page for more details on special events surrounding this exhibit.