New York ’s American Museum of Natural History is widely known as that huge building with great sometime stuffed beast within . And the giant whale ! But behind the scenes are facility doing some of the most amazing science , ever . Let ’s glance .
We assume a trip-up inside the museum ’s mazy back corridors — hallways stuffed with ancient artifacts and rarified specie samples , like something from Indiana Jones . For a musty old hallway , it ’s pretty damn awe - inspiring . But the hallways are nothing — behind the doors , scientists are pushing the bounds of not just human knowledge , but the entire direction of biological endeavor . elbow room - filling x - re scanner , microscopes to scan asteroids , and a database filling itself with every exclusive animation thing , ever . The museum ’s doing a lot more than shove dead Leo .
Andnext hebdomad , you ’ll have a prospect to check all of it out with us — exclusive access , an open bar , and some of the chic people in the world .
https://gizmodo.com/party-with-gizmodo-at-the-american-museum-of-natural-hi-5830404
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The Imaging Power-Machines that Convert Dead Lizards to 3D and Make Dissection Obsolete
The microscope you used in high school day and college is nothing . The museum ’s pose laser microscope from NASA , elephantine x - ray chamber , and lenses with 500,000x magnification . Yes , you read that rightfulness .
They ’re all find at the museum ’s imaging center , where researchers get better looks at numb things and space chunks than have ever been seen before . The auto above ? It bombards specimens with ex - rays , capturing 2,000 image per scan , and make hybridisation sections that can be reassembled into intricate 3D models .
No need to maim the critter with a scalpel .
This NASA optical maser microscope , capable of enormously detailed 6000×6000 scan with item down to 2 nanometers , probes everything from captured comet dust trapped in aerogel to spider vaginas ( that ’s how they tell apart species ! ) .
Ambrose Monell Collection for Molecular and Microbial Research—The Real Noah’s Ark
Part of the museum ’s mission is n’t just exploring the microscopic corner ( and vaginas ) of creatures , but of maintain them . And that does n’t mean formaldehyde . It imply massive cryogenic storage tanks , which currently hold 70,000 different species — and have the capacity to hold one million . The giant tanks are cooled with liquid atomic number 7 , and pack to the top with racks that harbor barcoded sample tubes no larger than a pen pileus . But at heart is precious genetical material , from microbes to giant — an frozen criminal record of what lives on our major planet .
And it ’s important to keep something so delicate secure . So the museum uses virtually undestroyable thermoses , capable of delay sufficiently frosty for an entire calendar month in the fount of Manhattan disaster .
Morphbank—Wikipedia for Every Single Thing That’s Ever Lived. Ever.
Provost Michael Novachek has some pretty low plans for the museum . He ’s heading up a worldwide effort to categorize every single anatomical feature of speech of every single organism that ’s walk , cower , flown , or otherwise traversed the globe . Dead fossile fragments . live , flap thing . All of it . The task , Morphbank , appropriate scientist at universities and museums around the world—12 teams in all — to collaborate , flesh out the catalog of life-time . The goal ? A matrix for every ramification of the Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree of life , so that anyone in the world would have immediate admission to every anatomical trait of every animal , ever . Say , the telescoping neck of a peculiar lounge lizard , or a particular bird ’s claw . Everything , open , free , straightaway .
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