Supervolcanoes

Show Details

2/15/24

• 7:30-8:30 PM (doors open at 7 PM)
• Tickets on sale starting February 16 at Vallitix
• Cost: $8 for adults, $6 for children and seniors + Vallitix handling fee

Thanks to a grant from Chevron, the William M. Thomas Planetarium will offer a geology-related evening for the spring schedule with a showing of "Supervolcanoes" on Thursday, February 15, from 7:30 to 8:30 PM. Doors will open 30 minutes before the show starts for seating and will be closed during the one-hour program with no late admittance. Tickets are available for $8/adults and $6/seniors and children 5-12 years old from Vallitix only (tickets will NOT be sold at the door) starting February 1. The William M Thomas Planetarium is on the second floor, northwest end of the Math-Science Building, Room 112. No food, drink, or gum/candy is allowed in the planetarium. Children must be 5 years or older.

The one-hour show will begin with a short tour of the evening sky using the planetarium's Goto Chronos star projector followed by the 24-minute all-dome presentation from Spitz Creative Media called "Supervolcanoes" using our Spitz SciDome projector. Narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock, Hobbit, Imitation Game), this show looks back at rare classes of eruptions that release many thousands of times more energy, lava, and ash than Mt St Helens did in 1980 or Mt Pinitubo did in 1991. These supervolcano eruptions affect the entire planet for decades to millennia. The program moves beyond Earth to explore the impact of giant volcanic eruptions around our solar system. Audiences will fly down to Neptune's frigid moon Triton, and onto the ultimate volcanic world: Jupiter's moon Io. On a visit to a legendary North American hot spot, Yellowstone National Park, the film asks: can a supervolcano erupt in our time?

Webpage contact: Nick Strobel