Word: planetarium
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Emlen's test subject was the indigo bunting, a little songbird and prodigious commuter that flies as far as 6,000 miles a year between Canada and Central America. Emlen put the birds in a planetarium and studied their reaction to fall star patterns. To his surprise, the birds seemed to ignore the artificial heavens on the planetarium dome. Outside it was spring, and the birds always tried to head north...
Something was obviously overriding the instructions provided by the planetarium stars. To test his hunch, Emlen began exposing the birds to periods of simulated daylight that lengthened faster than natural days. Within weeks he succeeded in advancing their biological clocks by six months. Though it was only spring at Cornell, the buntings showed physiological preparations for fall migration. Next Emlen exposed the birds to spring star patterns, which should have dictated a northward passage. But the birds seemed determined to fly south, as if it were fall...
...only star that they did heed was Polaris, the North Star. As long as it appeared, they retained their sense of direction. But when it was removed from the planetarium sky, they seemed hopelessly confused. From these experiments, Emlen concluded that they probably use Polaris, which is visible all year in the northern hemisphere, as a celestial beacon on both legs of their journey...
Astronomer I. M. Levitt, director of the Pels Planetarium of Philadelphia's Franklin Institute, believes that colonizers of the moon will eventually produce their own water, a contained atmosphere, food and other necessities completely from lunar materials. He envisages vegetables grown from seed, rooted in tanks of water in which the necessary lunar minerals have been dissolved. His moon colonies, complete with farm animals and factories, launch pads and lunar surface vehicles, and the comforts of home, would be located underground?in sealed-off caves and domes?to protect inhabitants against meteors, solar radiation and the extremes of lunar temperatures...
Czechoslovakia's national television network also juggled its beams from one location to another, always keeping one jump ahead of Soviet search parties. At one point, announcers were broadcasting from the city planetarium in the Moravian city of Brno. Crowed an engineer: "The Russians have plenty of tanks, but tanks cannot detect signals." Having learned just that, the Soviet commander in Moravia became so incensed at the persistent television coverage that he threatened to level the town if the station stayed on the air. Technicians thereupon switched off, temporarily. Meanwhile, cameramen were stuffing Bolex gear under their raincoats...