The Secret Science Club presents Cognitive Neuroscientist David Carmel, Wednesday, February 22, 8 PM @ the Bell House, FREE!

There are things known, and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception . . . 

Our sensory organs are what connect us to our environment, allowing for our survival, relationships, and experiences. But how is all this sensory data — light, shadow, the motion of molecules — interpreted? Do your eyes ever deceive you? Is your mind playing tricks? Neuroscientist David Carmel of NYU’s Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science uses brain imaging and behavioral experiments to explore how the brain constructs our perception of the world and how those perceptions can be manipulated. He also addresses the latest scientific research on consciousness, which attempts to answer the question, “How does brain activity make humans self-aware?”

Before & After

--Groove to wet-wired tunes

--Stick around for the sensational Q&A

--Try our synapse-stimulating cocktail of the night, the Gray Matter

This brain-boggling edition of the Secret Science Club meets Wednesday, February 22, 2012, at 8 pm @ the Bell House, 149 7th St. (between 2nd and 3rd avenues) in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Subway: F or G to 4th Ave; R to 9th St. Doors open at 7:30 pm. Please bring ID: 21+. 

Free! Just bring your smart self.

The Secret Science Club presents Astrophysicist and Cosmologist David Hogg, Wednesday, January 18, 8 PM @ the Bell House, FREE!

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, contains at least 200 billion stars and 50 billion planets. It is just one of about 350 billion galaxies in the known Universe.  And astronomers believe that closer observation and mapping of our own stellar neighborhood may help unfold the story behind the Universe’s evolution.

Cosmologist David Hogg peers into the night sky and asks:

--What can new space missions and digital surveys tell us about Dark Matter and Dark Energy?

--What came before the Big Bang?

--How are Black Holes detected? And how do we know the Universe is expanding?

The co-author of over 100 scientific papers, Dr. Hogg is an associate professor at NYU’s Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, and works with the Gaia Space Mission, an international effort to create the largest and most precise ever 3-D chart of the Milky Way, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III, and the citizen science project, Astrometry.net.

Before & After

--Groove to heavenly sounds

--Stick around for the scintillating Q&A

--Try our cosmic cocktail of the night, the Red Shift

The Secret Science Club meets Wednesday, January 18 at 8 pm @ the Bell House, 149 7th St. (between 2nd and 3rd avenues) in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Subway: F or G to 4th Ave; R to 9^th St. Doors open at 7:30 pm. Please bring ID: 21+

Free! Just bring your smart self!

Hot off the presses: Check us out in this NY Times article, "Continuing Education, at the Bar." Cheers!

Calling All Creatures . . . The Secret Science Club presents the 6th-annual "Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest," Friday, December 9, 8 PM @ the Bell House, $7

Just in time for the holidays . . . the beasts are back!

The Secret Science Club presents the 6th-annual “Carnivorous Nights TAXIDERMY CONTEST,” 
Friday, December 9, 8 pm @ the Bell House, $7

Calling all science geeks, nature freaks, and rogue geniuses! Your stuffed squirrel got game? Got a beaver in your brownstone? Bring your beloved beast to the Bell House and enter it to win!

Eligible to enter: Taxidermy (bought, found, or homemade), biological oddities, articulated skeletons, skulls, jarred specimens—and beyond, way beyond.

Show off your moose head, snake skeleton, rabbit relics, and other amazing specimens. Compete for prizes and glory. Share your taxidermy (and its tale) with the world.

The contest will be judged by our panel of savage taxidermy enthusiasts, including Robert Marbury of the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists and feline wrangler Dorian Devins, co-founder and curator of the Secret Science Club.

Plus!

--Groove to furry tunes & video

--See an illustrated lecture on (yes!) taxidermy

--Imbibe ferocious specialty drinks! (They’ll bring out the animal in you.)

Entrants: Contact secretscienceclub@gmail.com to pre-register. 

Spectators: Don’t miss a beastly second of this wild night!

Tickets: Advance tickets are available for purchase here.

This fiercely special edition of the Secret Science Club meets Friday, December 9 @ the Bell House, 149 7^th St. (between 2^nd and 3^rd avenues) in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Subway: F or G to 4th Ave; R to 9^th St. Doors open at 7:30 pm. Please bring ID: 21+. $7 cover.

The Secret Science Club presents Fossil Hunter, Paleoanthropologist, and Human Evolution Expert William Harcourt-Smith, Monday, November 21, 8PM @ the Bell House, FREE!

Step into the Way-Back Machine . . . the Secret Science Club is heading back tens of thousands of years to explore the mysteries of human origins! 

As a species, Homo sapiens is a mere 250,000 years old (give or take). Around 100,000 years ago, we walked out of our homeland in Africa and proceeded to populate the entire world. Now, we're the only species of human left. So how did we evolve into our freakishly amazing selves? And what about the other humans? What were our ancestors and extinct relatives like?

Just returned from Kenya and the northern Sudan, paleoanthropologist William Harcourt-Smith of the American Museum of Natural History and Lehman College lectures on recently discovered hominid and primate species, new research on human evolution and our family tree, and his expeditions to a 20-million-year-old fossil site. Dig it!

Before & After

--Groove to primordial sounds

--Stick around for the scintillating Q&A

--Try our Darwinian cocktail of the night, the Fossil Evidence

--Special guests: Australopithecus sediba, Homo neanderthalensis and Homo floresiensis!

This (r)evolutionary edition of the Secret Science Club meets Monday, November 21 @ the Bell House, 149 7^th St. (between 2^nd and 3^rd avenues) in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Subway: F or G to 4th Ave; R to 9^th St. Doors open at 7:30 pm. Please bring ID: 21+

Free! Just bring your smart self.

The Secret Science Club presents a live screening of NOVA's "The Fabric of the Cosmos," with special guest astronomer Munier Salem, Wednesday, November 9, 8 PM, FREE!

Grab your gravity boots, hold on to your wigs and keys, and have us pour you a cosmic cocktail . . .

The Secret Science Club shatters the space-time continuum with a special live screening of physicist Brian Greene’s NOVA: The Fabric of the Cosmos---The Illusion of Time. 

Is “time” nothing more than a product of our imaginations? Join us as we hurtle 50 years into the future, then step into a wormhole to travel back to the Big Bang—where the ultimate secrets of time may be hidden.

PLUS! Blast off into the stratosphere with an awesome pre-screening lecture and Q&A on the "Anatomy of the Universe" with Munier Salem of Columbia University's Astronomy Public Outreach Program

Before & After

--Groove to tunes from another dimension

--Imbibe a rocket-fueled cosmic cocktail! (It’ll knock you into orbit . . .)

--Enter our spacey trivia contest and score celestial prizes

This intergalactic edition of the Secret Science Club meets Wednesday, November 9, 8 pm @ the Bell House, 149 7th St. (between 2nd and 3rd avenues) in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Subway: F or G to 4th Ave; R to 9th St.

Doors open at 7:30 pm. Please bring ID: 21+.

No cover! Just bring your smart self.

Special thanks to NOVA and the WGBH Educational Foundation

Image of the Tarantula Nebula courtesy of the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI/NASA)

The Secret Science Club hosts the Imagine Science Film Festival and a NIGHT OF SCI-TASTIC CINEMA @ the Bell House, Monday, October 17, 8 PM, FREE!

SPECIAL EVENT: The Secret Science Club is teaming up with the Imagine Science Film Festival for “Controlled Experiment,” a night of science-inspired short films. Documentary. Music Video. Animation. Don’t miss some of the festival’s coolest, most futuristic entries, including Transgenic Spider Goats, Stanley Milgram: The City and The Self, Protein Expression, E. Chromi, Creature Cast: Footage From the Deep, Fossil Carrion Feeders, and Four Letter Words.

Plus!
--Groove to cinematic sounds and live music by Victoire
--Sample our animated cocktail of the night, the Stop Motion
--Meet filmmakers and ISFF artistic director Alexis Gambis

When: Monday, October 17, 8 pm 

Where: The Bell House, 149 7th St. (between 2nd and 3rd avenues) in Gowanus, Brooklyn.

FREE! Just bring your smart self. Doors open at 7:30 PM. 21+.

The Imagine Science Film Festival runs from October 14 to 21 at venues all around the city. Visit here for a complete listing of events.

The Secret Science Club Goes Off the Grid with Ecologist Eric Sanderson, Thursday, October 13, 8 PM at the Bell House, FREE!

The Secret Science Club presents NYC's wild past and wilder future with landscape ecologist and Mannahatta author Eric Sanderson

What was here before New York City? Ecologist Eric Sanderson wanted to know—and his curiosity turned into a decade-long environmental and cartographic investigation. To discover what Manhattan looked like 400 years ago, he mined through historic documents and scientific data—and plugged every hard-won bit of information into computer models. The resulting 3D maps and visualizations revealed a lost world of diverse ecosystems. Forests covering what’s now Times Square. Beavers in Greenwich Village. Wolves pacing the Lower East Side.

Now, with Manhattan under his belt, Dr. Sanderson has expanded his project to embrace all five boroughs and to explore, not only the city’s past, but also its future. He asks:

--What will NYC’s ecological footprint look like in the year 2411—400 years from now?

--What remains of forgotten ecosystems? Do ghost-like streams still run?

--How can citizens, scientists, planners, designers, architects, and artists reintegrate and re-connect with nature in the city?

--What wildness pulses beneath the Secret Science Club’s Bell House lair? Does the city’s lost wilderness lurk beneath your neighborhood?

Eric Sanderson is a Senior Conservation Ecologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society, author of Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City, and founder of the Welikia Project, which aims to explore, digitize, and map Gotham's wild history.

Before & After

--Groove to geo-referenced tunes

--Sample the cartographic cocktail of the night, the “Urbanist”

--Stick around for the uncharted Q&A

This edition of the Secret Science Club meets Thursday, October 13 at 8 pm @ the Bell House, 149 7th St. (between 2nd and 3rd avenues) in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Subway: F or G to 4th Ave; R to 9th St.

Doors open at 7:30 pm. Please bring ID: 21+

Free! Just bring your smart self.

COMING UP… On Monday, October 17, 8 pm @ the Bell House, the Secret Science Club teams up with the Imagine Science Film Festival for “Controlled Experiment,” a night of science-themed short films, including Transgenic Spider Goats, Stanley Milgram: The City and The Self, Protein Expression, E. Chromi, Creature Cast: Footage From the Deep, and Four Letter Words.