What is Science On a Sphere® (SOS)?
SOS inventor Dr. Alexander "Sandy" MacDonald (left) with Dr. Max Mayfield, former director of the NOAA National Hurricane Center with Science On a Sphere®Science On a Sphere® was invented by Dr. Alexander "Sandy" MacDonald, the director of the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, CO and OAR Deputy Assistant Administrator for NOAA Research Laboratories and Cooperative Institutes. Dr. MacDonald came up with the concept for Science On a Sphere® in 1995 as an outgrowth of other visualization projects he was directing within the former Forecast Systems Laboratory.
An early prototype of Science On a Sphere® was built in 1995, followed by an earnest effort to develop a complete system beginning in the year 2000. David Himes is the lead software engineer on the project, who along with others, engineered, developed, and integrated all of the software and hardware components used to create a Science On a Sphere® system. A patent was awarded to NOAA for Science On a Sphere® in August 2005, with Dr. MacDonald credited as the inventor.
Science On a Sphere® is a large visualization system that uses computers and video projectors to display animated data onto the outside of a sphere. Said another way, SOS is an animated globe that can show dynamic, animated images of the atmosphere, oceans, and land of a planet. NOAA primarily uses SOS as an education and outreach tool to describe the environmental processes of Earth.
Science On a Sphere® was initially developed as a way to explore environmental data using new visualization techniques. It became quickly obvious that when combined with the narration and supporting educational material, a well-crafted visualization provides a unique and powerful teaching tool. Over the past several years, NOAA has been using SOS to support educational initiatives, primarily in informal education venues, such as those found in science centers and museums. Visit NOAA's Office of Education website.
Science On a Sphere® is built from standard hardware components and at its very basics is composed of off the shelf PCs, video projectors, wires, and a sphere. The PCs run a version of RedHat Linux. When installed in a room, the sphere is generally suspended from above and surrounded at the corners of the room by four video projectors. A display computer that is responsible for its quadrant of the sphere drives each video projector and all of the display computers are controlled centrally by a fifth computer. Data is pulled from the disk, manipulated, re-projected and synchronized back onto the sphere.
While the interactions between all of the hardware pieces are complicated, using the system is easy and straightforward. The system comes pre-programmed with various data sets that show the Earth's land, oceans, and atmosphere, to name just a few. The data sets are organized through play lists. An SOS play list is analogous to the MP3 player concept of a play list. A play list is a simple text file that has a name and it contains the names of the various visualizations on the system. Play lists are used as a way to conveniently organize your SOS visualizations. Once a play list is created, it can be loaded and used to give presentations. The items in a play list can be randomly selected or played in sequence. The system allows for an unattended (or automatic) mode of operation or it can be controlled via a wireless bluetooth remote.Please visit the SOS FAQ for more information.