The University of Texas at Arlington
Office of Media Relations

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media contact: Sue Stevens, (817) 272-3317, sstevens@uta.edu
ARLINGTON—“Cosmic CSI: Looking for Life in the Universe,” an original new show developed with a grant from NASA, is opening this week at The Planetarium at UT Arlington.

The production takes its cue from “CSI,” its spin-off series, “CSI: Miami” and “CSI: NY” and numerous other television shows featuring sharp-minded investigators armed with high-powered forensic gadgetry that have burst into popular culture in the last few years. The new planetarium show takes the investigation out of our solar system, using tools that were non-existent just a few years ago, to search for life in the universe. It investigates planets around nearby stars, extreme life forms on planet Earth and future missions to answer that great galactic question. . .got life?

The search has a dual focus, said Dr. Manfred Cuntz, associate professor of physics at the University.

“Scientists are making progress in finding life in the universe by using new search methods to identify planets in habitable zones around many different types of stars,” Cuntz said. “At the same time, scientists are finding that life, in very simple forms, can survive and even thrive in conditions never thought possible, like organisms that live at temperature of 210 degrees Fahrenheit or more in hot vents or at temperature of less than 10 degrees in Antarctica.”

Planetarium Director Bob Bonadurer said the show was developed with the help of an Education Public Outreach supplemental grant connected to an earlier research grant awarded to Cuntz to work with FUSE, a NASA-supported astrophysics mission launched in June 1999 to explore the universe using the technique of high-resolution spectroscopy in the far-ultraviolet spectral region.

Cuntz said he did not originally anticipate that his and his fellow scientists’ findings would form the basis for an entertaining and educational planetarium show. But when the new, technologically superior planetarium opened on campus last March, the potential became obvious. The show was created by planetarium staff in collaboration with Cuntz, and is narrated by Glenn Morshower, an actor and a native Texan, who hasplayed parts in shows like “24,” “CSI” and “Star Trek”

Cosmic CSI is showing at 7 p.m. Friday and 1 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays in the planetarium, 700 Planetarium Place. For more information, call (817) 272-0123.

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