Serving the themed entertainment community

Latest News

  • San Diego Zoo Safari Park gorillas recovering from SARS-CoV-2
  • Looking forward, WhiteWater redefines leadership team
  • Mad Systems announces addition of Toni Losier to business development team
  • Museums Evolving conference goes virtual for second year in a row due to COVID-19 pandemic
  • Whitney Hines joins Luci Creative as Senior Project Manager
  • David Gillig joins San Diego Zoo Global as chief philanthropy officer
  • Design Silverfish uses Christie projectors to immerse visitors in South Korean culture
  • Ocubo selects AV Stumpfl’s PIXERA media server software for Immersivus 3D art installation in Lisbon
  • Home
  • Opportunity Hub
    • Leads & Opportunities
    • Webinar Calendar
    • Submit a Webinar
  • News
    • COVID-19
  • Issues
    • 2020
      • #85 – Looking forward to the future
      • #84 – Everything the industry has to offer
      • #83 – Waterparks and more!
      • #82 – Solving Problems with Innovation
      • #81 COVID-19 and beyond
      • IPM guide to AV 2020
    • 2019
      • #80 – IAAPA 2019
      • #79.5 – IAAPA Expo 2019 Preview
      • #79 Europe and Waterparks
      • #78 – Asia/Tech
      • #77 – The Best in Themed Entertainment
    • 2018
      • #76 – Year End/Trade Show Round-up
      • #75 – IAAPA 2018
      • #74 – EME/Waterparks
      • #73 – Asia and Technology
      • #72 – Dubai/Museums
      • #71 – MENA/Entertainment
    • 2017
      • #70 – IAAPA 2017
      • #69 – Game Changers
      • #68 Going Global: Technology on the International Stage
      • #67 – Experience Design: Many Faces Many Places
      • #66 Theatrical Influence and Convergence
    • 2016
      • #65 IAAPA 2016
      • #64 Waterpark, Zoo & Aquarium 2016
      • #63 Technology 2016
      • #62 International
      • #61 Museums and Expanding Markets
    • 2015
      • #60 – IAAPA 2015
      • #59 – Zoos/Aquaria and Waterparks 2015
      • #58 – Technology 2015
      • #57 – International 2015
      • #56 – Museums 2015
    • 2014
      • #55 – IAAPA 2014 / Tenth Anniversary
      • #54 – Waterparks, Zoos and Aquariums 2014
      • #53 – Technology 2014
      • #52 – International 2014
      • #51 – Museums 2014
    • 2013
      • #46 – Museums 2013
      • #47 – International 2013
      • #48 – Technology 2013
      • #49 – Waterparks 2013
      • #50 – IAAPA 2013
      • 2013 Wrap-Up
    • 2012
      • #45 – IAAPA & WWA Wrap-Up
      • #44 – IAAPA
      • #43 – Waterparks
      • #42 – Technology
      • #41 – International
      • #40 – Museums
  • Subscribe
  • Advertise
  • About
    • About InPark
    • Privacy Policy
  • IPM books
    • Screens to scenes: Christie’s visual technology
    • Tales from the Expo
    • Themed entertainment in academia
  • follow
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Linked
    • Youtube

Berlin’s Zeiss-Großplanetarium hosts world premiere for the latest collaboration between Spitz, NCSA, and Thomas Lucas Productions – “Birth of Planet Earth”

Mar 28, 2019 Joe Kleiman Homepage Slider, Museums, News, Technology & Media Comments Off on Berlin’s Zeiss-Großplanetarium hosts world premiere for the latest collaboration between Spitz, NCSA, and Thomas Lucas Productions – “Birth of Planet Earth”


Berlin’s Zeiss-Großplanetarium hosts world premiere for the latest collaboration between Spitz, NCSA, and Thomas Lucas Productions – “Birth of Planet Earth”

ABOVE: A Mars-sized object named Theia supposedly crossed Earth’s orbit around 4.5 billion years ago. Credit: Spitz Creative Media

Birth of Planet Earth, a new 24-minute giant screen science documentary for digital fulldome cinemas, had its global premiere at the Zeiss-Großplanetarium in Berlin this month. The film is a co-production of Spitz Creative Media, the Advanced Visualization Lab at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, and Thomas Lucas Productions, Inc., in association with Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville, Georgia.

Countless supernova explosions have seeded our galaxy with planet-building elements. Credit: Nathan Goldbaum, National Center for Supercomputing Applications; Mark Krumholz, Australian National University; John Forbes, Harvard Institute for Theory and Computation. Visualization by Advanced Visualization Lab, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, U. of Illinois.

According to Tim Florian Horn, Director of Zeiss-Großplanetarium: “Birth of Planet Earth looks at the very beginning of our planet and the unique requirements that enabled life to evolve. The new program helps us to develop a better understanding of the history of our very own existence on this pale blue dot we call home. It marks the beginning of a major program initiative focusing on the ‘System Earth’ at Zeiss-Großplanetarium in 2019.”

A dense, rotating clump within a giant cloud of gas and dust, collapsing under its own gravity, starts the formation of our Sun and its planets. Credit: Kevin Walsh, Southwest Research Institute; CRIMSON Beowulf Cluster at Observatoire de la Cote d’Azur; Alessandro Morbidelli, Sean Raymond, David O’Brien, Avi Mandell; Aaron Boley, U. of British Columbia;  Alexei Kritsuk and Michael Norman, U. of California, San Diego.  Visualization by Advanced Visualization Lab, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, U. of Illinois.

Narrated by Richard Dormer (Game of Thrones, Fortitude) and distributed by Spitz, Inc. and Evans & Sutherland, Birth of Planet Earth is now available for booking by planetariums, museums and educational institutions.

Birth of Planet Earth is the latest in a series of collaborations between Spitz, the AVL, and producer/director Thomas Lucas. It joins a library of successful prior collaborations, including Black Holes: The Other Side of Infinity, Dynamic Earth, and Solar Superstorms. According to Director Lucas, “Birth of Planet Earth allows us to successfully fuse high-end animation techniques from the team at Spitz Creative Media with supercomputer-produced scientific visualizations from the AVL.”

Dust grains that orbit the newborn Sun will clump together to form pebbles, rocks and planetoids. Credit: Spitz Creative Media.

Dr. Donna Cox, Director of the AVL since 2006, is a pioneer in the use of scientific data as a storytelling tool for television, fulldome, and IMAX documentaries. In 2017, Dr. Cox was honored for lifetime achievement by IMERSA, the fulldome visualization society. Under the CADENS (Centrality of Advanced Digitally ENabled Science) grant from the National Science Foundation, Cox’s team aims to increase digital literacy and inform the general public about computational and data-enabled scientific discovery. Cox and her team worked with leading researchers to produce many of the scientific numerical visualizations seen in Birth of Planet Earth.

Early one-celled bacteria could survive by capturing the energy of sunlight.  Later, using similar chemical machinery, plants evolved; they helped re-oxygenate the planet and power life on Earth.  Credit: Klaus Schulten, Melih Sener, John Stone, Neil Hunter, Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Visualization by Advanced Visualization Lab, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, U. of Illinois, Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, University of Sheffield.

“In one scene of Birth of Planet Earth,” said Dr. Cox, “AVL worked with a team of biophysicists to show a numerical model of photosynthesis and how early-Earth bacteria harvests energy from the Sun. This model uses supercomputers to calculate the complex atomic processes that enabled life on planet Earth to evolve and spread.”

The show portrays the rise of photosynthesis as part of a broader effort to present current theories about how events in the solar system positioned Earth for being a home to life. In another scene brought to vivid life by AVL, Earth collides with a neighboring proto-planet, Theia, resulting in the formation of our Moon. According to Cox: “Dr. Robin Canup of the Southwest Research Institute computed the astrophysics for the formation of the earth-moon system. Her numerical model, informed by moon rock analysis and physics, generates numbers that describe the physical dynamism of the collision that formed the moon.”

In the first 24 hours, some of the collision debris coalesces into what will become the Moon.  Remaining material will swirl around Earth for as much as a century, gradually accumulating onto the Moon, or falling back to Earth. Credit: Robin Canup, Southwest Research Institute. Visualization by Advanced Visualization Lab, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, U. of Illinois.

Birth of Planet Earth is an engaging show for audiences of all ages that complements the extensive, award-winning fulldome library available from Spitz Creative Media. Recommended for grades five and up, the film will be accompanied by teacher guides and STEM curriculum resources that encourage student engagement on concepts set forth in Birth of Planet Earth. These materials are being prepared by the staff of the Smithsonian-affiliated Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville, Georgia.

In addition to Berlin, Birth of Planet Earth has been booked in a number of planetariums and science centers throughout North America and in Europe. Additional foreign language soundtracks are currently in production. Birth of Planet Earth is now available for booking in 4K dome master format, with an 8K dome version and extended 4K television version available later this year.

The gravity of Jupiter (outermost orbit) destabilizes the orbits of early inner planets.   Many collide with each other; some are ejected from the solar system.  Credit: Kevin Walsh, Southwest Research Institute; CRIMSON Beowulf Cluster at Observatoire de la Cote d’Azur; Alessandro Morbidelli, Sean Raymond, David O’Brien, Avi Mandell. Visualization by Advanced Visualization Lab, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, U. of Illinois.

PRODUCTION PARTNERS

The Advanced Visualization Laboratory’s (AVL) mission is to communicate science, inspiring audiences to learn about scientific concepts through capturing the thrill of scientific discovery and wonder of complex systems. Working in close collaboration with domain scientists, AVL creates high-resolution, cinematic, data-driven scientific visualizations. The lab is part of the University of Illinois’s National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), which is dedicated to providing powerful computers and expert support to help thousands of scientists and engineers across the country improve our world.

Thomas Lucas Productions, Inc. is a film editing and production company based in Armonk, New York. With productions that range from the vastness of space, to the depths of the ocean, to the center of volcanoes in amazing resolution, TLP is dedicated to making documentaries of the very highest quality.

Spitz Creative Media partnerships have resulted in some of the most successful fulldome films in circulation, including Dynamic Earth, Supervolcanoes, Solar Superstorms, Faster than Light and The Zula Patrol, now screening in hundreds of planetariums worldwide. The extensive Spitz fulldome content library also features such premium titles as the Denver Museum of Nature & Science production Black Holes: The Other Side of Infinity. Spitz is headquartered in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania USA, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Evans & Sutherland Computer Corporation.

For bookings, contact:

Mike Bruno, Spitz Creative Media: mbruno@spitzinc.com

Jenn Davis, Evans & Sutherland: jdavis@es.com

Website: Spitz: https://www.spitzcreativemedia.com/shows/birth-of-planet-earth/

Evans & Sutherland: https://www.es.com/Shows/BirthOfPlanetEarth

NCSA: http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/enabling/vis/cadens/documentary/birth_of_planet_earth

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Print

  • Berlin, donna cox, E&S, evans sutherland, fulldome, NCSA, spitz, Spitz Creative Media, thomas lucas, Zeiss-Großplanetarium
  • tweet
Related articles
  • Omniversum replaces giant screen film projector with Europe’s first ESX projection system from E&S
    Omniversum replaces giant screen film...

    Comments Off on Omniversum replaces giant screen film projector with Europe’s first ESX projection system from E&S

  • Elevate Entertainment acquiring Evans & Sutherland and Spitz
    Elevate Entertainment acquiring Evans...

    Comments Off on Elevate Entertainment acquiring Evans & Sutherland and Spitz

  • Screens to scenes: the multi-faceted elements of Christie’s visual technology
    Screens to scenes: the multi-faceted...

    Comments Off on Screens to scenes: the multi-faceted elements of Christie’s visual technology

  • M&Ms experiential stores to open in Berlin, Mall of America, and Disney Springs
    M&Ms experiential stores to open...

    Comments Off on M&Ms experiential stores to open in Berlin, Mall of America, and Disney Springs

More in this category
  • Making sense of Diversity & Inclusion in themed entertainment
    Making sense of Diversity &...

    Jan 25, 2021 Comments Off on Making sense of Diversity & Inclusion in themed entertainment

  • San Diego Zoo Safari Park gorillas recovering from SARS-CoV-2
    San Diego Zoo Safari Park gorillas...

    Jan 25, 2021 Comments Off on San Diego Zoo Safari Park gorillas recovering from SARS-CoV-2

  • Looking forward, WhiteWater redefines leadership team
    Looking forward, WhiteWater redefines...

    Jan 22, 2021 Comments Off on Looking forward, WhiteWater redefines leadership team

  • Mad Systems announces addition of Toni Losier to business development team
    Mad Systems announces addition of Toni...

    Jan 21, 2021 Comments Off on Mad Systems announces addition of Toni Losier to business development team


Quick Takes

My Tweets

Latest Issue

Leads & Opportunities

  • Cedar Fair seeks Corporate Director, Communications
    Cedar Fair seeks Corporate Director, Communications

    Dec 29, 2020 Comments Off on Cedar Fair seeks Corporate Director, Communications

    The position will lead strategy development and execution...
  • Pursuit seeks Financial Analyst, FP&A
    Pursuit seeks Financial Analyst, FP&A

    Dec 28, 2020 Comments Off on Pursuit seeks Financial Analyst, FP&A

    This role will focus on all aspects of financial planning...
  • AOA seeks Show Set Designer
    AOA seeks Show Set Designer

    Dec 26, 2020 Comments Off on AOA seeks Show Set Designer

    There will be a great deal of freedom, which will be...
  • Visualization firm THE THIRD FLOOR has openings for a variety of positions
    Visualization firm THE THIRD FLOOR has openings for a...

    Dec 09, 2020 Comments Off on Visualization firm THE THIRD FLOOR has openings for a variety of positions

    THE THIRD FLOOR is currently seeking Postvis Generalists,...
  • CineVenture seeks 3D character animator
    CineVenture seeks 3D character animator

    Dec 09, 2020 Comments Off on CineVenture seeks 3D character animator

    CineVenture develops high-end content for the global...

Top Posts

  • SCAD THEDscapes Immersion Challenge showcases student team designs for variety of environments and venues
    SCAD THEDscapes Immersion Challenge showcases student team designs for variety of environments and venues
  • Looking forward, WhiteWater redefines leadership team
    Looking forward, WhiteWater redefines leadership team
  • Sally Brings the Animal Animatronics of Five Nights at Freddy's to Life in New Attraction Concept
    Sally Brings the Animal Animatronics of Five Nights at Freddy's to Life in New Attraction Concept
  • Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex opens newest attraction designed to inspire the youngest space explorers
    Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex opens newest attraction designed to inspire the youngest space explorers
  • San Diego Zoo Safari Park gorillas recovering from SARS-CoV-2
    San Diego Zoo Safari Park gorillas recovering from SARS-CoV-2
  • Former Great Wolf Lodge CEO Kim Schaefer to Lead Two Bit Circus' LBE Business
    Former Great Wolf Lodge CEO Kim Schaefer to Lead Two Bit Circus' LBE Business
  • Lighthouse ArtSpace Chicago to open with US premiere of Immersive Van Gogh
    Lighthouse ArtSpace Chicago to open with US premiere of Immersive Van Gogh

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube
  • Instagram

Categories

  • IPM Interviews
  • Theme Parks
  • Museums
  • Water Parks
  • Attractions
    • Haunts
    • Zoos & Aquariums
  • World markets
    • Asia
    • Europe & Middle East
    • Latin America & Mexico
    • North America
  • Technology & Media
  • Business
    • Events
    • People
  • World Expos

InPark Magazine

2349 E Ohio Ave
Milwaukee, WI 53207 USA
262.412.7107
mpalicki@inparkmagazine.com

View our Privacy Policy

Copyright 2018 InPark Magazine / All rights reserved
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube
  • Instagram