The way the biota here is changing. So those lessons from the past are important. The Dark Universe a celebration of our ignorance. Think about it. Usually when grow an exhibit here wiese we know. And maybe theres a little bit of heres the frontier. We can measure the existence of dark matter in the universe, its 85 of all the gravity we see. We dont know whats causing it. We measure that the universe is accelerating against the collective wishes of gravity of all the galaxies. We dont know whats causing that. And theyre both dark to us. Rose we conclude with robert ed sell. His book is called the Monuments Men allied heroes, nazi thieves and the greatest Treasure Hunt in history. Its also a major Motion Picture directed by George Clooney and starring George Clooney, matt damon, bill murray and others. No matter how real book does, theres nothing that can reach a Worldwide Global aufd audience than a feature film. Theres such an epic story about world war ii thats not in Public Knowledge. But its focused on the good guys. The middle aged men who volunteer for it was so be a new kind of soldier when charged with saving rather than destroying. Rose the wonders of the American Museum of Natural History and a conversation with robert ed sell when we continue. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. The astronomers were startled to see that the flight distant galaxies was always stretched out to longer wavelengths signifying that there were all moving away from us. Rose the American Museum of Natural History in new york is visited annually by five Million People from around the world. It contains more than 32 million specimens and cultural artifacts. The museums mission is to discover, interpret, and december similar nate through Scientific Research and education knowledge about human cultures, the world, and the universe. Ellen put ther is president and has been leading that charge for 20 years. Mike novacek is the museums Senior Vice President and provost of science. Hes also curator of the paleontology department. Neil degrass tyson is the director of the Hayden Planetarium. Hes hosted nova for five seasons. His other program cosmos will premier on fox. Im pleased to have all of them at this table. Whats in there. Ive got the list of the wonderful things. Ill start with the planetarium. It holds the great Hayden Planetarium which is a 90 foot in diameter sphere that you go into and encounter the great space show. Then we have all those chroexs and 45 galleries, halls and lots of temporary shows, things like what right now, poison, power of poison and live things like butterflies. Rose ill come back to poison but theres also the most important collection of dinosaurs, mammals and other vertebra. Dinosaur bones. laughter an important distinction. Excuse me, i didnt want to laughter rose i should have said fossils is what ive said. 18 million examples of living and extinct arthropods which includes 100 species of termites and the largest collection of spiders with about one million specimens. The skeleton of a waiting for godot, a species of bird that has been do do that has been extinct for this is remarkable. And theres all kinds of collecting. Because of mikes great leadership we collect frozen tissue so we dont to kill anything anymore, you can just scrape a little tissue . A swimming whale, let it go, bring it back, put it in these vats that keep it frozen. That kind of new collecting. And also data for astrophysics but also for genomics, incredible amounts of data. Absolutely. Rose theres also the 90footlong life sized model of the blue while. The largest creature extraordinary amount of stuff. Meteorites, i havent talked about that. Where did this start . Almost from the very beginning, 1869, the museum was founded and from the very beginning we had a mission that embraced both science and education and in science it started right out with field expeditions all over the globe and i think, mike, you and your colleagues now do over a hundred expeditions a year . Yeah, were all over the world. Rose whatsen expedition that youve done recently . laughter well, mine is the best. No, not really. My colleagues are not going to like to hear that. Rose i threw that right down the middle. Thank you for the opportunity. You know, we did spend our if youre familiar with him, our 24th season in the gobi of mongolia. We cant leave because theres just too much great stuff out there. Rose what museum in the world compares to what you do . Certainly there are several other great museums of Natural History. The smithsonian in washington and, of course, the british museum. Whats unique about ours, though, is the scope, because it covers all the biological sciences, earth and planetary sciences, astrophysics but also anthropology, modern anthropology was born at the museum with france boas and Margaret Meade and most dont have that. We have 200 Research Scientists on staff. Mike heads up the whole Research Enterprise and we get to recruit wonderful people. I would say youre looking at two of the things im most proud of over the time ive been there recruiting kneale and bringing them to the Hayden Planetarium. And making mike the provost. Those have to be two good ones. Rose tell me whats changed in all of you . Whats changed over the years if you look at digitization certainly an impact. Globalization is an impact. I can speak directly from my own field. When you think about the museum as a place where you would assemble a collection and then perform scientific analysis on that collection to learn the detailed evolution of species on earth, the movement and the trend lines and cultures that have evolved culturally, in the universe when data started being taken digitally, all of a sunday the astrophysicist had a collection. And not a physical piece of a black hole, that would be dangerous to put that on display but our data became our counterpart to the naturalists collection. And over the years were now awash in data. We are so awash in data that theres a movement in my community to find a way to share the data with the public so that the public can help us reduce the data to possibly find interest things in the universe. Rose how would they do that . Its called crowd sourcing the data. So i have 45 day a set, i have parameters and i cant look at these hundred thousand galaxies but 10,000 people can look at ten galaxies and tell me, is there an extra star in it . Maybe a star blew up. What shape do the arms take . Whatever your analysis is, if you shape it if you formulate in the a way that a person who has otherwise no experience but you have your eyes, you have your brain, that can come to play and the data reduction. So its a whole new world going into the 21st century. Rose did you know that you would play the role you play in the poplarization of science . No, no. I was no. Rose one of the things that we thought he would excel at from the beginning, absolutely. Extraordinary communicator. Yeah, id heard about him before hed heard about us. Rose how did you know about him . Well, i heard some astrophysicists theres this guy, theres this really talented guy. Rose he can explain things. Yeah, he can explain things, hes not only an Outstanding Scientist but he can talk to people. Its a gift. Rose but neil loves the museum, of course i was just kidding. I was raised here in new york so the Hayden Planetarium is my First Encounter with the night sky because new yorkers dont get that. Theres no night sky in new york. Rose when you want to see the most extraordinary sense outside of the night sky, where would you go . Extraordinary rose just in its natural element without are there places . Is there a mown pain . Is there a place in which you go . We got top people finding those places in the world and we put telescopes in every one of those places. Rose i would assume so. Sglfrpl so hawaii where it doesnt have to be where my research took place but we have people in my department who do research there. And its 14,000 feet up so that even when clouds roll in theres still theyre still below you. So youre at the top of this volcanic mountain surrounded by clouds, so its you, nature beneath your feet and the universe above your head. Rose 15, 20 places like that in the world . Not even that many. Half dozen. The Andes Mountains where i did my ph. D. Research. Thats 7,000 feet. Rose whats the feeling . A communion with the heavens. It is a its a pilgrimage to the cosmos. And you know what i lament . Whats changed, youve asked me whats changed. In the old days before everything was so completely digital you actually had to go to the telescope and there would be trains, planes, and automobiles to get to the top not quite mule pack but you get to the top of the mountains it was an expedition. It was an expedition and you would live nocturnally and commune with the stars. Now its all digital so why do you have throb when you could be at the other end of the wire or at the other end of the network. So now we schedule the observing and stay in our office. Rose whats interesting to me and why your museum plays such an important role, it is that if you can get people interested in all of this and if they develop a bit of knowledge it is their currency to go forward and gather and have a lifetime of curiosity. But you have to get to a little bit of traction to understand a little bit so you want to know a lot. Listen, curiosity is the gateway to learning. Thats where we begin. Thats the whole episode. If you think about whats changed as the museum, probably whats changed the most is our role in education. In the last number of years weve added a graduate school. We are one of two museums in the world, the only one in the western hemisphere that grants a ph. D. In comparative biology. Weve gotten authority to grant a masters degree in teaching earth science. So that those are major changes. Rose without an affiliation to the university . We do these on our own. We also have affiliation bus we are the only ones who do it on a Free Standing basis. Rose whats going on online . Well, online we have a web site that gets millions of more visitors and a lot of those exhibits are free to see on that web site, charlie. You know, i would say, too, in terms of the museum in a very general way one thing thats changed is that i think museums went through a time maybe in the 70s and 60s where they began to become a little isolated from the world, the community. Yeah, you went there to see the dusty dinosaurs and a few collections and some cabinets of curiosity but there wasnt enough convergence with what the world really needed. Now were in a tremendous period of convergence. Issues about the environment, space exploration. All these things are really things that the museums can theyre important institutions of the 21st century. Were lucky to have someone on the left who had a lot of vision for that and brought us into those communities. Rose sitting next to you . laughter right, i dont mean politically. I do think mikes comment was very important because the relevance of a museum and of the whole sector is really changed. Because our work is so aligned with the major issues of our time and you see that in the exhibitions on the environment, on issues of human health, in education especially. If you build it, people come. Well, if you build it right. Rose we could talk about that a little bit, right . This is what you said . A conversation with my colleague bill moyers. You have not fully expressed your power as a voter until you have a Scientific Literacy in topics that matter for future political issues. Yeah. Yes. I mean, if youre in a democracy i think a democracy works best when everybody kind of knows what theyre voting on and knows why and knows what matters and puts into power you know, you vote people into power. The craziest thing to me is we we always complain about the people we vote into power. Well, who voted them into power . You voted them into power so a more enlightened electorate can completely transform your country as a democracy into a thriving, leading enterprise in this, the 21st century. Especially where science literacy feeds innovation in science and technology. Theyre the engines of tomorrows economy. And work force preparation. We talk about unemployment in this country. There are about three million jobs that are not filled because people arent qualified to fill them. 80 of the fastestgrowing fields like health care, i. T. , computer science, are sciencebased and theres a new study out that about 65 of the jobs that kids in Elementary School today will do havent been invented yet. And theyre likely going to be sciencebased. Thats why weve shifted so much of our focus to education. Were now training about 5,000 teachers in teaching science. Its one of the most challenged areas for teaching. And the data on american students, we rank dismally in International Studies in science preparation and performance. Down in the 20s which for a highly developed nation is an embarrassment. Rose thats why some people think we need to change our immigration policies now. That and also how we do stem Science Technology, education in general. Rose stem is Science Technology engineering and math. Right. Rose theres also this. The president said we need ways to measure how well our kids think. Not how well they can fill in a bubble on a test. Yeah, thats an important distinction between teaching people what to know and teaching people how to think. And its part of my mantra as an educator where i dont yeah, i can fill you up with information but what will you going to do with it . Do you know how to interpret it . Do you know how to think about it . Do you know how to turn it into a new idea that could move culture and Society Forward . So, yeah, theres focus on tell me what you know. And, in fact, our very culture equates that with being smart. If youre good at jeopardy that person is smart and they know all this information when, in fact, in the actual workplace what we really value is your ability to solve a problem youve never seen before. Rose and an interesting thing, some of the smartest people in corporate and private sector and the n. G. O. Sect orono how to test to find that out. And science is such a good tool for this because what we do is inquiry based learning. Science is a detective story. You try things out. You test them. And actually power of making a mistake or fail injury what leads to learning. So its a great way to think. Rose i have a great affection for questions. We noticed. laughter rose and the power of questions to put you in the right direction. General odierno was here and he said one of the problems we had in vietnam hes now army chief of staff was that we asked the wrong questions and science is about finding the right question it was famously said if you know right question you get the right answer. Rose in fact, some students today are applying for a new graduate school and they asked me what do you think is the biggest challenge if youre a graduate student and i told i think big schaj the moment the eureka moment where you go through this met morn sis where you have an insthaekt sheds one skin and takes on another where you move from what neil is saying from the fact finding kind of mode of mental attitude to to one thats creative, one thats curious, one that makes inquiry, one that asks the right questions. And thats a fundamental transformation thats required. And then i think what is working for our institution, were a hybrid. Weve got this very pure academic side, research, now these graduate programs. But we have 500,000 children coming to the museum every year in school groups, in camp groups as well as with many, many more visiting as families. Rose i was one of them. You were one of them. I was one of them. Probably we all were. Rose is it changing much . Its changed in one sense. We have a Huge International visitation. Many more international. But when you walk in you hear every language. Rose you were doing this thing on the Dark Universe. Oh, the space show. The new space show. The Dark Universe. laughter yes, yes. Rose i knew i shouldnt have asked that. Its our most audacious space show yet. Rose dark matter, dark in energy. Yes, because its a celebration of our ignorance. Think about it, usually when you go to an exhibit heres what we note. And maybe a little bit of heres the frontier. We can measure the existence of dark matter in the universe. Its 85 of the gravity we see. We dont know whats causing it. We measure the universe is accelerating against collective wishes of gravity of all the galaxies. We dont know whats causing that. And theyre both dark to us. And so its a celebration of this profound ignorance that has befallen us in recent years but you also get to see how we arrived at the knowledge of that ignorance. So how do you visualize something about which you know heartly anything. That was the challenge of the show and i think it succeeded beyonds everyones expectations. Rose do we know what dark matter is . Well, it shouldnt be called dark matter, between you and me. Its theres gravity and we dont know whats causing it so its dark gravity. So dark matter implies its some kind of matter. We dont know if its matter. Ive been on this campaign to rename dark matter fred which is something that has no rose it doesnt have a connotation. Doesnt make you think about anything because we dont know what it is and dark energy, same thing. Call it wilma, fred and wilma. Rose before what was going on in switzerland at cerne, what were they looking . They were looking for and they found whats called the higgs boson, nobel prize was