Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics

From Mica

MICA is closing

Effective June 12, 2012, MICA (as an organization and experiment) is closing. This site will remain live for a while, and as its contents migrates elsewhere, it will be announced here. Our SL sim, StellaNova, will remain open through Nov. 2012, and it is available for any legitimate scientific, scholarly, or educational purpose (this includes the VSS events).

Our public lectures will be scheduled on an ad hoc basis (see the Upcoming_Public_Events link), and may migrate to some other venue after StellaNova is no longer up. All pertinent announcements will be sent to the MICA Google email list, and the MICA in-world group.

Thank you all, and have fun!

* * *

The Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics (MICA) is a professional scientific and educational, non-profit organization based in virtual worlds [VWs]. We are currently using Second Life (SL), and the Intel's OpenSim-based world ScienceSim, and may expand to other venues as the VWs evolve.

The goals of MICA include:

• Exploration, development and promotion of VWs and virtual reality [VR] technologies for professional research in astronomy and related fields.
• Providing and developing novel social networking venues and mechanisms for scientific collaboration and communications, including professional meetings, effective telepresence, etc.
• Use of VWs and VR technologies for education and public outreach.
• Exchange of ideas and joint efforts with other scientific disciplines in promoting these goals for science and scholarship in general.

MICA is essentially an experiment to see how we can use the immersive VR technology as a scientific and scholarly platform. We see the current generation of VWs as a precursor of a future 3D Web, with a great transformative potential.

For more details, see the Research activity, Publications, or Links pages.

MICA is supported in part by the NSF grant HCC-0917814.

MICA Events

Our public popular talks are open to everybody.

Additional technical discussions and seminars are organized by the various working groups and collaborations.

Everybody can see the How to Join page for information about mailing lists and in-world groups where we send announcements of events.

• Upcoming Public Events lists the upcoming talks and public outreach events
• Popular Talks page lists a longer-term schedule and the links to the past talks
• MICA Events provides some additional information
• We are also hosting the Virtually Speaking Science series
• We welcome any other groups who would like to use our StellaNova venue for any legitimate scholarly or educational purposes.