Live talk

Was this the world’s first smartphone? A mechanical planetarium? Or something even more amazing? Over 2,000 years ago, a ship sank off the coast of Greece carrying a strange and beautiful, bronze machine. Hidden for centuries underwater, the discovery of the Antikythera Mechanism has stunned scientists around the world. It could track the movements of the sun, moon, and planets - and even predict eclipses! Some call it the 8th Wonder of the Ancient World. Others say it’s the first computer ever made. But how does it work? Find out at Fiske!

What can you learn about the Sun while flying by at ~400,000 miles per hour, so close to the surface that parts of your spacecraft are glowing? A lot! Join us on a journey to the Sun and back again with NASA's Parker Solar Probe mission.

We trust that our water is clean, but what if the real risks come from invisible chemical mixtures we don’t fully understand? From wildfire ash and industrial runoff to pharmaceuticals and plastic by-products, today’s water pollution is shaped by complex, interacting contaminants that challenge traditional science and regulation. This talk explores how tools from analytical chemistry and toxicology help detect these hidden threats, and how public perception, policy, and environmental justice influence our understanding of what “safe water” really means.

As humans, our memories of the past influence how we behave in the present. But nature, too, has memories. Past events, like fires, storms, droughts, and other catastrophes can determine how ecosystems look and function, well into the future. We refer to this as ecological memory. One type of ecological memory are the physical remains of dead organisms left after these catastrophic events occur. In particular, we can think about the remains of foundation species—iconic and abundant organisms like trees, grasses, corals, or oysters that build the very frameworks of the ecosystems we know and love. When these organisms die, their influence lives on as their remnant structures actively shape the way ecosystems recover, or do not.

This show will dazzle you with the beauty of the cosmos!

Join us for an introduction to the night sky, the observable planets, the stars, and constellations.

Everything glows. Everything emits light. Explore how astronomers use all kinds of light to observe planets orbiting other stars.

Join us for a friendly tour of some of the weird planets out there in the Universe and a celebration of the ways modern exoplanet science makes use of phenomena most people can experience on Earth: light, color, rainbows, eclipses, and curiosity.

A mere century ago, Martians were thought to be real—not fictional—creatures. “Mars is inhabited by a highly civilized and intelligent race of beings,” proclaimed Alexander Graham Bell after astronomers discovered what looked like irrigation canals on the red planet. Join best-selling Boulder author, David Baron for a fast-paced, highly illustrated talk about this strange case of mass delusion.