St. George's night

Finding values ​​that can unite very different countries is not an easy task, fraught with disruption and alienation, as evidenced, in particular, by the changes taking place right before our eyes in the celebration of the previously “unified” Victory Day. All the more valuable seem to be those touching traditions that do not fade away even with the onset of a new global cooling in relations between Russia and the West.

Yuri's Night - Yuri's Night, or St. George's Night, is held annually on April 12 in memory of the first manned flight into space. The tradition began in 2001 (on the fortieth anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight on Vostok 1) by Loretta Hidalgo, George T. Whitesides and Trish Garner (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri%27s_Night ) ; Yuri's Night is now celebrated around the world by hundreds of thousands of people, including Afghanistan and Antarctica. Themed parties are held at NASA centers, museums, schools, bars, private homes, etc. For organizers and sponsors, what is most important is the interest in space exploration on the part of not only adults, but also children and youth, so these events have entertaining elements ( dances and competitions) are combined with education and promotion of science.

At the suggestion of Lev Borkin, head of the Center for Himalayan Scientific Research at the St. Petersburg Union of Scientists, and Cornell University biology professor Craig Adler, we are reprinting a poster from one such event held most recently at the ScienCenter in Ithaca. Its name is unusual to our ears, it sounds almost like an oxymoron - “Science Cabaret” (Science Cabaret, http://carlsaganinstitute.org/2016/04/celebrate-yuris-night-in-ithaca-with-science-cabaret/ )

As Professor Adler says, Ithaca is a very small town located in the center of New York State, but its residents have a keen interest in astronomy and space expeditions (the city itself is best known for being home to Cornell University, which is part of the prestigious Ivy League ). One of Professor Adler's faculty colleagues, the late Carl Sagan, spent so much time and effort on popularizing astronomy and cosmonautics as probably rarely any other real scientist: he was, in particular, the host of the famous television mini-series “Cosmos,” which was shown all over the world (in Russia, Sagan’s novel “Contact” and the film based on it by Robert Zemeckis with Jodie Foster in the title role are even more popular, the astronomer, unfortunately, did not live to see its release in 1997) . Two of the most famous rovers on Mars also come from Ithaca. This project was launched in 2003 by another of Craig Adler's colleagues in the Department of Astronomy at Cornell University, Steven W. Squyres, the lead researcher for NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) project. One of the rovers is still “on the move”, and since it is controlled from Ithaca, Steve and his colleagues are forced to live like Martians - after all, the days on Mars do not coincide with those on Earth and are about forty minutes longer!

M.B.