Yesterday I went to a press preview of the newest space show at the American Museum of Natural History, in New York; "Cosmic Collisions" opens to the public on March 18. (I do love my job.) If you haven't been to the Rose Center for Earth and Space, and the new Hayden Planetarium there, make sure to put it on your list next time you visit the city; it's a wonder, both inside and out. Admission's a bit pricy, but it's one of those "you've gotta do it at least once" things.

The show is breathtaking, and even thrilling at times; the visualizations of colliding heavenly bodies are accompanied by both audible and subsonic rumbling. And the topic is not only pop-culture cool but also fairly educational (in an interesting way), focusing on how collisions of asteroids with planets and so on help evolve our universe. Of particular interest to geeks (and not just astrogeeks) is the story behind the show. Huge quantities of scientific data was parsed and processed by supercomputers in order to create highly accurate renditions of how these collisions occur.

Highly recommended.