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Since 2019, the Clarke Center and partners at UC San Diego and Space Tango have been sending human “brains-in-a-dish” to the International Space Station to assess microgravity’s effect on neural development — and maybe prospects for life beyond Earth. From the science fiction of Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke to the cinematic worlds of Star Wars and galaxies far, far away, humans have imagined life in space. But among the myriad challenges to colonizing other worlds lie fundamental questions of biology: Can a human embryo grow naturally outside the nurturing embrace of Earth? Will the brain form normally? How does weightlessness alter the basic, gravity-defined rules of human development? After a succesful first mission, a three-year, nearly $5 million award from NASA has allowed researchers at UC San Diego to develop a new integrated space stem cell orbital research laboratory within the International Space Station (ISS) and launch three collaborative research projects within it, including cutting-edge research on blood cancers, immune reactivation syndromes, and brain stem cell regeneration and repair, as well as advanced engineering development to enable the ISS orbital stem cell lab.
The Clarke Center and Director Erik Viirre co-organized Mission: AstroAccess, a historic project to study to make space inclusive for all. Dr. Viirre served as medical director for zero gravity flights with a group of 12 disabled scientists, veterans, students, athletes, and artists to answer key questions about disability and space flight: In a weightless, microgravity environment like space, what do ability and disability look like? How can someone with partial sight or impaired mobility navigate in a confined space like the space station? As scientists and innovators continue to push the boundaries of spaceflight and the possibility of human life on other planets, how can we build space infrastructure that is inclusive of all humans? The AstroAccess project is led by a group of scientists, engineers, and social workers with a common goal: inclusive space exploration. In the United States, 26% of the population has a disability, yet people with disabilities make up only 8.4% of the country’s employed scientists and engineers. AstroAccess wants to make STEM, and space, accessible to this large portion of the population.
Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell’s experience seeing the Earth from space completely reshaped his imagination, making him see how precious life on our planet is. Scientists have called this the “Overview Effect,” and Mitchell isn’t the only one to experience it. So we are studying a virtual reality recreation of the Edgar Mitchell spaceflight, now installed at the new Design & Innovation Building, for its capacity to produce shifts in mindset and behavior—its ability to harness and reshape imagination, using the inspiration of flight outside of Earth’s protective atmosphere. The Edgar Mitchell VR experience invites users to join the Apollo 14 Astronaut on his mission to the Moon and into his most intimate moment of connection to life itself. As you journey through space, you hear Edgar’s voice guide you through the dissolving of any and all boundaries within our consciousness to the universal connection we humans share. In concert with stunning images of the cosmos, historic NASA audio, carefully crafted sound design, sensation inducing haptic gear, and epic music, the Edgar Mitchell VR Experience takes users on meditative, visceral experience of transcendence. This project is enabled by the support of Claudia Welss and in partnership with the Institute for Noetic Sciences.
The Simons Observatory (SO) is a ground-based cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiment situated on Cerrro Toco, 5300 m (17,000 feet) above the Atacama Desert in Chile. It will make precise and detailed observations of the CMB, the heat left over from the hot, early days of the history of the Universe. These SO observations promise to provide breakthrough discoveries in fundamental physics, cosmology and astrophysics. Director by Dr. Brian Keating (Associate Director, Clarke Center, and Chancellor’s Professor of Physics at UC San Diego), the observatory is formed out of a collaboration between the Simons Foundation, the founding universities (University of Pennsylvania; Princeton University; the University of California, San Diego; the University of California, Berkeley; and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) and collaborating institutions across the globe.
Practitioners of the emergent field of Speculative Futures Studies use speculative forms – including, but not limited to, art, literature, and theory- to confront the legacies of imperialism, colonialism, and racism in order to imagine and enact more sustainable and just futures.
Science explains it, but
art may be the key to finding it.
The Speculative Futures Collective seeks to cultivate research with faculty, graduate students, and community members using speculative cultural forms and theories to collaborate on the future of education, ecology, gender, sexuality, and race.
Practitioners of the emergent field of Speculative Futures Studies use speculative forms – including, but not limited to, art, literature, and theory- to confront the legacies of imperialism, colonialism, and racism in order to imagine and enact more sustainable and just futures.
Science explains it, but
art may be the key to finding it.
The Speculative Futures Collective seeks to cultivate research with faculty, graduate students, and community members using speculative cultural forms and theories to collaborate on the future of education, ecology, gender, sexuality, and race.
Unlike intelligence, memory, and creativity, there is an alarming lack of coherent theory and a thin empirical literature on imagination. Why alarming? Imagination may be one of the most important keys to human flourishing and human progress, with spiritual and evolutionary adaptive benefit.
The science of imagination needs a guide for the future.
The Atlas of Imagination is the guide, focusing coherent theoretical models of imagination to drive further investigation and the tools needed for the empirical study of the neurodiversity of imagination.
Unlike intelligence, memory, and creativity, there is an alarming lack of coherent theory and a thin empirical literature on imagination. Why alarming? Imagination may be one of the most important keys to human flourishing and human progress, with spiritual and evolutionary adaptive benefit.
The science of imagination needs
a guide for the future.
The Atlas of Imagination is the guide, focusing coherent theoretical models of imagination to drive further investigation and the tools needed for the empirical study of the neurodiversity of imagination.
The Clarke Center is a research-and-practice hub, where the best insights from the neuroscience of imagination are connected with the latest in technology and put to use to unlock the transformative power of imagination across age groups, and communities to tackle the most pressing issues facing the planet.
Imagination discovers
new possibilities within the impossible.
Imagination is at the root of empathy and compassion. Imagination gives rise to hope. We aim to unleash the power of imagination to tackle the most pressing issues facing life on Earth – to envision and build a more equitable an sustainable world.
