The Natural History Museum is capable of turning in some pretty giddy exhibitions: notably, the recent-ish Fantastic Beasts: The Wonder of Nature revolved around a series of fictional magical animals invented by JK Rowling.
Fair warning, though: the venerable museum’s first ever space-based exhibition is pretty sober stuff, that steadfastly refuses to sensationalise its subject. If you want to know what an alien invasion might look like or how realistic Star Wars is then there isn’t a lot for you in Space: Could Life Exist Beyond Earth? But if you’re interested in the actual question ‘is there life out there and how would we detect it?’ then this is the exhibition for you, made with the usual sophistication and care that defines the NHM’s temporary exhibits (which are always considerably less faded and more contemporary than its permanent collections).
The entire exhibition is dimly lit, with soothing background music playing everywhere – the vibe is serene spaciousness, graceful emptiness and cosmic stillness. We begin on Earth, with the first galleries examining the extraterrestrial origins of life here. Nobody can exactly say how life on Earth first came to be, but there’s little doubt that its building blocks – carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and water – were brought to us by asteroids, of which there are several bits here, some of which you can even touch.
The carefully curated exhibition instils an appropriate amount of awe
Correctly contextualised, it’s hard not to feel awe at an object that’s 4.6 billion years old and predates our planet, or a series of colourful patterned layers some 3.5 billion years old, that constitute the evidence of some of the first microbial life to exist here. Of course, they all look and feel like rocks, but the carefully curated exhibition instils an appropriate amount of awe.
On to Mars, and the lion’s share of the fun interactive stuff. There is a giant panorama of the Red Planet that you can slap your hand on to see as a watery world some four billion years ago – it’s really quite startling. As with many of the rooms, you can take a sniff of what it might smell like there (mmm… ferrous..?). And there’s also an interactive Mars Rover game where you can control a rover as it attempts to harvest useful rock samples (I say ‘attempt’ – there is a time limit and I failed).
Later the exhibition details various missions to explore asteroids, and determine – from a great distance – what planets may be out there, whether they might be capable of supporting life, and what other means there might be of detecting an alien civilisation: you’ve heard of SETI, but have you heard of LaserSETI?
Of course, at some point you have to give the people what they want, and the last room does consist of realistic CGI animations of imaginary alien lifeforms. It is a very nice and appreciated touch, and dare I say a slightly cathartic moment, although none of the hypothetical beasties constitute intelligent life and are basically cool variants on things you might find near oceanic vents on our planet.
Lest I sound underwhelmed by Space, let me state that I absolutely wasn’t, though I was quite glad I didn’t take my primary school aged kids, who I think would probably have hankered for something more sci-fi orientated. This is an elegant and illuminating exhibition, as notable for its clear breakdown of the extraterrestrial origins of life on our planet as it is for its measured contemplation of the likelihood of us finding it.
It’s a very big universe out there, but all strangely interconnected.
