Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

House on Fire
Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, the most popular
museum on Earth, has premiered in its Langley Theater some of
the best of these films. To Fly brings a catch to my throat even
after five or six viewings. I've seen religious leaders of many
denominations witness Blue Planet and be converted on the spot
to the need to protect the Earth's environment.
Not every exhibit and science museum is exemplary. A few still
are commercials for firms that have contributed money to promote
their products - how an automobile engine works or the
'cleanliness' of one fossil fuel as compared to another. Too many
museums that claim to be about science are really about technology
and medicine. Too many biology exhibits are still afraid to
mention the key idea of modern biology: evolution. Beings
'develop' or 'emerge', but never evolve. The absence of humans
from the deep fossil record is underplayed. We are shown nothing
of the anatomical and DNA near-identity between humans and
chimps or gorillas. Nothing is displayed on complex organic
molecules in space and on other worlds, nor about experiments
showing the stuff of life forming in enormous numbers in the
known atmospheres of other worlds and the presumptive atmosphere
of the early Earth. A notable exception: the Natural
History Museum of The Smithsonian Institution once had an
unforgettable exhibit on evolution. It began with two cockroaches
in a modern kitchen with open cereal boxes and other food. Left
alone for a few weeks, the place was crowded with cockroaches,
buckets of them everywhere, competing for the little food now
available, and the long-term hereditary advantage that a slightly
better adapted cockroach might have over its competitors became
crystal clear. Also, too, many planetaria are still devoted to
picking out constellations rather than travelling to other worlds,
and depicting the evolution of galaxies, stars and planets; they
also have an insect-like projector always visible which robs the sky
of its reality.
Perhaps the grandest museum exhibit can't be seen. It has no
home: George Awad is one of the leading architectural model
makers in America, specializing in skyscrapers. He is also a
dedicated student of astronomy who has made a spectacular
model of the Universe. Starting with a prosaic scene on Earth, and
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