Beyond Bones

By Ralph Phillips, HMNS Docent   Our modern concept of time is mainly societal and artificial.  A few of our units of time derive from natural cycles, but many are totally arbitrary.   Our day is defined as one cycle of light and dark … but starting where? Our “official” day goes from midnight to […]

Death by Natural Causes GET TICKETS  Opens for members March 9, public opening March 12, 2018 | Members see it first March 9-11, 2018 Snakes. Spiders. Sharks.  The things you fear are the least of your worries! Death by Natural Causes will introduce patrons to the range of “animal, vegetable and mineral” dangers that lurk in their […]

  Brilliant winter stars shift towards the southwest during March.  Dazzling Orion is almost due south at dusk.  His three-starred belt is halfway between reddish Betelgeuse and bluish Rigel.  Orion’s belt points up to Aldebaran in Taurus the Bull.  To Orion’s upper left are the twin stars Castor and Pollux, marking the heads of Gemini, […]

  Imagine a primeval world, a swamp, but not like any swamp you see today. A canopy of fern-like leaves towers fifty to a hundred feet above you, blotting out the sun like a blackish-green, moth eaten blanket. Remarkably thin, spindly trunks support the structure precariously. These trunks have a scaley texture, like the skin […]

Registration For HMNS X plorations Summer Camp Is Now!   Questions? Contact xplorations@hmns.org or call 713-639-4652. Don’t forget you can Refer a Friend when registering for Summer Camp, and you’ll both receive a discount! More information on that can be found here. Parent’s Guide to Xplorations Summer Camp is the basics of what you need to know! […]

  By Tim McSweeny and Dan Brooks, Ph.D. Last year Houston was devastated by Hurricane Harvey, with flooding covering streets, bayous and communities throughout Houston after the storm deposited about three feet of rain.  One of the many parts of the city affected by the storm was the colony of Free-tailed bats living under the […]

  Every aspect of our world is ultimately controlled by geologic forces far beneath our feet. Under the influence of mantle convection, mountain ranges rise, great rifts open in the earth, oceans form and then disappear. This is no exaggeration. We all learned about plate tectonics in high school; how the crust of the earth […]

Lecture – Hearth, Heart, Home: Skara Brae’s Early Stone Age Dwellings by Martin Carruthers   What was it about an ancient windswept place in the remote Orkney Islands that caused people to invest so much effort in creating one of the earliest examples of permanent homes? Skara Brae, a Stone Age village and UNESCO World […]

This sand from Flagler Beach, Florida, contains both mineral grains and shells.  The mineral grains are clear quartz, and the brown, tan, and orange grains are shells that give the beach an orange hue.  Blocks of coquina (roughly 130,000 -100,000 years old and known as the Anastasia Formation) are found offshore much of eastern Florida […]

  Every year on Valentine’s Day, we in the Cockrell Butterfly Center like to think about all our favorite insects and the methods they use to find mates. From special pheromones to elaborate mating rituals, every insect has a way to find a mate (or more often, multiple mates)!   It’s the smell that counts […]