The OMNIMAX movie “Space Junk” will have its world premiere at the Saint Louis Science Center this weekend, January 14. The movie explores the growing problem of man-made debris orbiting the earth at super speeds, with the intent of raising public awareness of the situation and its impact on satellite communication and space travel.
Continue reading ‘Space Junk’ illustrates the growing danger in Low Earth Orbit
When Rebecca Messbarger, the daughter of Irish-Catholic parents, announced to her family at the age of nineteen that she was going to “become Italian,” neither she nor they envisioned that she would one day organize an international conference on a little known pope who was a major shaper of the Italian Enlightenment.
The conference, to be hosted jointly at the end of April by Washington University, Saint Louis University, and the Missouri Historical Society will bring together European and American scholars to discuss and interpret the accomplishments of “The Enlightenment Pope: Benedict XIV (1675-1758).” It is the first conference in the United States ever to be devoted to this historic figure.
The conference is an offshoot of Messbarger’s studies of women in the Italian Enlightenment, and especially of one woman, Anna Morandi Manzolini. Messbarger’s 2010 book on this artist, “The Lady Anatomist: The Life and Work of Anna Morandi Manzolini” has received international attention. It has been nominated for the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award honoring “an especially distinguished book in the history of art.”
