February 09
2017
Multimedia «Globe» has appeared in NSU
Geological and geophysical faculty of NSU is working on the creation of the modern Museum of Earth History. Particularly for this purpose geologists have acquired a unique multimedia projection complex with a spherical screen.
— With this screen we can demonstrate the external structure of the Earth, the current processes of earthquakes, volcanism, the boundaries of lithospheric plates and their relative movement to each other (indicating their speed) and many more, — says Nikolay Matushkin, deputy head of the science department of geological and geophysical faculty of NSU. — The spherical screen will be used in work with students and visitors of the museum. It allows us to demonstrate the processes and phenomena occurring on our planet more clearly.

A complex with a spherical screen for the visualization of scientific data has arrived at the NSU from the Geophysical Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences (GC RAS, Moscow).

— Demonstration centers with a spherical screen are widely used in leading museums of the world, such as the Museum of Science in Chicago, the Natural History Museum in London, the Hong Kong Space Museum, etc. Development of demonstration center with a spherical screen was performed in Russia for the first time and has no analogues in Russia. — When we received this equipment, there were no other such complexes in Russia, - says Oleg Nikiforov, senior researcher at the GC RAS.

The demonstration complex consists of a spherical screen, a digital multimedia projector installed in a metal casing, an optical system consisting of a lens unit, and a workstation with specialized software — ORBUS, developed at GC RAS. The diameter of the spherical screen is 100 cm.

— The most advantageous, of course, in this display, looks everything, which is related to the shape of the sphere: data about the Earth, the planets of the solar system. For example, a presentation of earthquakes in real time. To do this, we use the USGS US Geological Survey site, which records earthquakes occurring all over the world. We take data for the last ten days and show them in an accelerated mode so that viewers do not spend hours in front of the screen waiting for the picture to come, — says Oleg Nikiforov.

The point where the earthquake happened recently, comes from the depths of the sphere to the foreground with characteristics: magnitude, place, time, coordinates. Similarly, a presentation of weather data in real time uses information from the OpenWeatherMap website.

The «Globe» will stand in the future Museum of Earth History. In total, the Museum of the History of the Earth has four halls, where will be geological collections, skeletons of prehistoric animals, instruments, models and models of terrain, volcanoes, etc. The opening of the museum is planned for the fall of 2017.