Overcome the physical limits of space and time? Easy: if you allow yourself to dream of the most incredible technologies that will change the face of our world and everyday life in the future.
Imagine: people move around the city on flying gravitational scooters, in cinemas, when watching 5D movies, viewers smell and experience the full effect of presence, and travelers move to other planets using a high-speed space elevator. speed. And so that all these innovations do not seem so fabulous, confirmation that all these ideas may one day become our reality can be found not only in the books of science fiction writers – the Strugatsky brothers or Kir Bulychev (some of his predictions have already come true). ! ), but also in the technological discoveries of our time. All the evidence is in the exhibition “Captains of the Future: Terra Futura”.
The fantasies associated with flights in the skies and the conquest of the unknown have accompanied humanity throughout its history. It seems that today we are not so far from the times when space tourism will become a common practice for the inhabitants of planet Earth. It’s time to stock up on basic knowledge – let’s go to the exhibition for them.
The interactive section “Space” illustrates all the stages of the conquest of the Universe: from the launch of the first satellite to a full life in space stations. It is impossible not to be impressed, for example, by the fact that people have learned not only to create specialized food for spaceflight, but also to produce it directly in space. The Mir station operates the world’s first Svet space greenhouse, where various types of lettuce, radishes and wheat have been grown. I wonder what this space radish tastes like.
Would you like to live in an aerial city, where houses and entire neighborhoods rise above the ground? The avant-garde architect El Lissitzky, for example, really wanted to do it, so in the 20s of the last century he came up with “horizontal skyscrapers” – buildings in which the main volume was located on high supports and literally floated in the sky. air. Seven skyscrapers, which the author himself called “transcendental irons”, were to be located on the Boulevard Ring in the center of Moscow. The project was not realized but it inspired many architects from all over the world to amazing engineering structures.
The ambitious architect Viktor Kalmykov went even further and in 1930 presented the Saturn project. He decided to create a circular city around the globe, which would rotate at the speed of the Earth’s rotation and would remain stationary on the equator. At the top of the ring it was planned to place a runway for aircraft. Below: levels with residential and public buildings. The installation of structures was supposed to be carried out using aircraft. Even our contemporary Elon Musk would envy such bold ideas.
Physicist Alexander Stepanovich Popov dreamed of transmitting information over long distances without the help of wires. This dream turned science upside down and changed the face of our civilization. In 1895, at a meeting of the Russian Physical and Chemical Society, Popov presented a device for receiving and recording electromagnetic oscillations – a “lightning detector”. It is he who is considered the world’s first radio receiver. This discovery laid the foundation for the creation of other technologies in demand in the modern world: radar, navigation, the Internet.
Or, for example, is it possible today to imagine modern life without an iron? We will learn at the exhibition: the world’s first electric iron was invented in 1882. After 40 years, they released an improved model with thermostatic control: these irons heated to the desired temperature, depending on the type of fabric chosen. In the second half of the 20th century, a steam function appeared in electric irons; Since then, the evolution of home appliances has been rapidly gaining momentum. Today, the most modern models have an automatic self-cleaning function, a button slot, an automatic shut-off system and other useful features for comfortable and safe ironing.
Photography is definitely the technology that allows us to see in the most realistic detail what the world was like in the distant past. One of the first supporters of color photography in the world was our compatriot, scientist-inventor, photographer and chemist Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky. At the beginning of the 20th century, Prokudin-Gorsky discovered a new method of creating color photographs: color separation. Using the simplest black-and-white photographic plates and a special camera of his own invention, Prokudin-Gorsky took the same view three times through three different filters: red, blue, and green. He then made transparencies for the projector, which showed a color image on the screen.
The Prokudin-Gorsky collection of color photographs includes more than 3,500 photographs with views of different cities of the Russian Empire. It is thanks to him that today we can admire the colorful photographic portrait of Leo Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana or Fyodor Chaliapin in the image of Mephistopheles.
The exhibition is open until January 31.
