To illustrate how familiar phenomena on Earth is connected across the universe by basic physical laws, a NASA exhibit, “Here, There, and Everywhere,” will be at the International Falls Public Library from Dec. 6, 2012 – Jan. 3, 2013. The exhibit is open to the public.

The main feature behind this project, known as HTE, is a series of visual comparisons that span from the planet’s human scale to some of the largest structures in the cosmos. The panels in each of the exhibit’s topics give examples, with explanatory text, of the same physical processes occurring on vastly different scales.

“We want to help people explore how interconnected everything in science is,” said Kimberly Arcand, who leads the HTE project through the Chandra X-ray Center in Massachusetts. “By studying the universe, we are also often learning about important physics here on Earth, and vice versa.”

There are six physics subjects in the HTE exhibit including shadows, wind, electric discharge, bow waves, lensing and the collisional excitation of atoms.

“Our daily experiences reveal much about how our world works, and thinking about everyday examples helps form our basic understanding of physics,” said Patrick Slane, an astrophysicist involved with the project. “This exhibit will help show that these laws of physics have universal relevance.”

The HTE exhibit is intended to be informative and engaging for many ages and backgrounds. For those who would like additional information and more context for the material, go online to http://hte.si.edu. A poster version of HTE also is available for local teachers while supplies last. Contact Diane Adams at the library for more information.

HTE was conceived, designed and generated by a team at the Chandra X-ray Center, which is part of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, MA. The Chandra X-ray Observatory is NASA’s flagship mission for X-ray astronomy and one of the “Great Observatories” along with the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the now de-orbited Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, according to a news release.