The , simply known as the , is a museum created by Japan's

Science and Technology Agency Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

. It was opened in 2001. It is situated in a purpose-built building in the

Odaiba today is a large artificial island in Tokyo Bay, Japan, across the Rainbow Bridge from central Tokyo. Odaiba was initially built in this area for defensive purposes in the 1850s. Reclaimed land offshore Shinagawa was dramatically expanded duri ...

District of Tokyo. It can be reached by the

Yurikamome , formerly the , is an automated guideway transit service operated by ''Yurikamome, Inc.'', connecting Shimbashi to Toyosu, via the artificial island of Odaiba in Tokyo, Japan, a market in which it competes with the Rinkai Line. The line is ...

driverless fully automated transit system from downtown Tokyo in about 15 minutes.

Exhibits

Highlights include real-time displays of data from a huge array of

seismometer A seismometer is an instrument that responds to ground noises and shaking such as caused by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and explosions. They are usually combined with a timing device and a recording device to form a seismograph. The outpu ...

s across Japan which shows the country gently vibrating. The occasional

earthquake An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from ...

s for which Japan is noted show up as larger movements. Visitors can search the on-line database of recent earthquake activity. A section of rock core taken across the

Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary The Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) boundary, formerly known as the Cretaceous–Tertiary (K–T) boundary, is a geological signature, usually a thin band of rock containing much more iridium than other bands. The K–Pg boundary marks the end of ...

(K–T boundary) records a major meteorite impact event that is believed to have led to the final demise of the dinosaurs. Asimo, the

Honda is a Japanese public multinational conglomerate manufacturer of automobiles, motorcycles, and power equipment, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Honda has been the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer since 1959, reaching a product ...

robot A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the control may be embedded within. Robots may b ...

is one of the star attractions along with the model

maglev train Maglev (derived from ''magnetic levitation''), is a system of train transportation that uses two sets of electromagnets: one set to repel and push the train up off the track, and another set to move the elevated train ahead, taking advantage ...

Geo-Cosmos

The prominent Geo-Cosmos high resolution globe displays near real-time events of global weather patterns, ocean temperatures and vegetation cover among other geographic, scientificThe National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan)
Miraikan.jst.go.jp (2014-06-01). Retrieved on 2015-05-09. and socioeconomic topics. The Geo-Cosmos spherical screen consists of 10,362 OLED panels, each 96 x96 mm in size. The first and only one of its kind was rebuilt in 2010 and re-introduced in its current form in June 2011, after the Tohoku earthquake caused the museum to close for three months. US President

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...

visited Miraikan on April 24, 2014, addressing Japanese students in front of the Geo-Cosmos display. Noting the uniqueness of the display, he said: "As far as I know, we don't have one of those cool globes..." The Geo-Cosmos along with Geo-Palette and Geo-Scope is part of the Tsunagari permanent exhibition.

Geo-Palette

Miraikan adopted a unique map projection called

AuthaGraph projection AuthaGraph is an approximately equal-area world map projection invented by Japanese architect Hajime Narukawa in 1999. The map is made by equally dividing a spherical surface into 96 triangles, transferring it to a tetrahedron while maintaining ...

as its official world mapping tool. AuthaGraph projection was developed by Japanese architect

Hajime Narukawa is a Japanese architect. He was born in 1971 in Kawasaki-City, Kanagawa and lives and practices in Tokyo. Biography Narukawa graduated in 1994 from the Shibaura Institute of Technology, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts with a master' ...

in 1999. "This projection method transfers a 3-dimentional sphere into a 2-dimensional rectangle while maintaining areas proportions. Using this method, the 'AuthaGraph world map' succeeds in transferring an image of the spherical Earth to a flat surface while evenly distributing distortion."

Special exhibitions

Every year between three and six specially curated exhibitions are produced and shown, with science and art often overlapping. They dealt with a wide range of topics from "Toilet - Human Waste and Earth's Future" to the "Making of the Tokyo Sky Tree" and "Terminator Exhibition - Battle or Coexistence? Robots and Our Future". In 2012, the special exhibition "The Story of the End of the World: 73 Questions We Must Answer" dealt with the Tohoku earthquake and its aftermath.Shea, Michael (2014)
The Story of the End of the World: An Alternative Approach to the Future at the Japanese Museum of Science and Innovation
''The Unfamiliar'' 4(1): 56–62. Multilingual staff conduct demonstrations about leading edge Japanese science. Miraikan is led by Japanese astronaut

Mamoru Mohri , AM is a Japanese scientist, a former NASDA astronaut, and a veteran of two NASA Space Shuttle missions. He is the first Japanese astronaut who was part of an official Japanese space program. The first Japanese person in space, Toyohiro Aki ...

Gallery

File:Nihon-Kagaku-Miraikan,Koto-ward,Tokyo,Japan.JPG, Nihon Kagaku Miraikan File:Geo-Cosmos Miraikan cropped.jpg, Geo-Cosmos File:President Obama Talks to Japanese Astronaut and Students - Flickr - East Asia and Pacific Media Hub (1).jpg, US President Obama talks to Japanese Astronaut under the Geo-Cosmos, 2014

References

External links

* https://vimeo.com/118784283

Sources

Miraikan website in Japanese

Miraikan website in English
{{Authority control Buildings and structures in Koto, Tokyo Odaiba Museums in Tokyo Science museums in Japan Museums established in 2001 2001 establishments in Japan