Imax

The Maryland Science Center, once a brick bumper on the corner pocket of the Inner Harbor, is attracting big crowds, and officials there are deep into planning for a multimillion-dollar expansion.The project, dubbed "MSC 21," won't be announced officially for several months. But Gregory Andorfer, the center's executive director, confirmed that "it's going to happen.""Science and technology literacy is so important that we can't leave it to a 20-year-old science center," he said Friday.Planners expect the addition will double the 45,000 square feet of available exhibit space.

The casting couldn't be better. There's a strong, spirited beauty from Spain, a soulful young man of the Far East following in his father's heroic footsteps, and a honeymooning mountaineering stud from America, with his anxious bride waiting at base camp.The scenery's not bad either -- wide-screen shots of the world's highest mountains. And the story line of man vs. nature is as elemental as they come.But the ingredient that has turned the 44-minute IMAX film "Everest" into a cinematic sensation is a stroke of ill fortune neither scripted nor wanted by the filmmakers.

Mario Andretti laughs."Martini is the star of the movie," he says. "He's getting fan mail. Three letters last week, addressed to Martini Andretti."Andretti continues with affection."

Driving cars at 150 or 200 miles an hour, with some hope of living to tell about it, is one hellaciously dangerous, complex and expensive way to earn a living.That's made abundantly clear in the Maryland Science Center's newest home-grown exhibit, "Racecar: The Science of Speed," which opens today and continues into May.The most amazing thing may be that anybody races at all.Every mile and every minute you're on the track, the forces of physics are working to throw you into a body cast, while the power of chemistry is waiting to combine your flesh with oxygen and blow you away as heat and smoke.

On a scale between infinite space and infinitesimal particles dwell creatures called humans. They are drops in the cosmic well. But despite their paltry insignificance in the great scheme of things, these beings are so wondrous that they can take us from universe to quark in a mere 35 minutes.That is the journey we undertake in "Cosmic Voyage," the new IMAX film playing at the Maryland Science Center as part of its "To the Stars" theme in this Baltimore bicentennial. Writer, director and producer Bayley Silleck makes us feel tiny in his depictions of the vastness of the cosmos, but he also exhilarates with this vision of our mysterious beginnings and our place in the universe.

A new study has given Ocean City a larger-than-life idea to help revitalize the resort's aging downtown: an IMAX theater anchoring an entertainment complex on the site now occupied by the U.S. Coast Guard station.The proposal for an oversize-screen theater with special visual and sound effects, similar to the one in Baltimore's Inner Harbor, was outlined in a consultants' report presented to the mayor and council of Ocean City this week.The report suggests making the IMAX theater part of an entertainment complex with a theme restaurant, another unspecified entertainment facility and stores.

Like explosions? Space invaders? Three-hundred-pound basketball players?Your latest special effects blockbuster may feature one or two of the above, but rarely all three.The Maryland Science Center IMAX's latest presentation, "Special Effects," solves that problem and is the ultimate antidote for special effects fanatics as well as average moviegoers who can't help but think, "How did they do that?"Such special effects wonders as "Star Wars," "Jumanji" and the recently released "Independence Day" are used as stunning study guides.

Bob Sheets is the man at the center of the storm and the man at the center of "Stormchasers," the IMAX film opening at the Maryland Science Center today.He recalls that in 1965, he looked at a senior meteorologist, a man in his mid-50s, and concluded: "Gee, I'm just in my 20s. If an old guy like that can do it, so can I."That was shortly after Dr. Sheets had joined the National Hurricane Research Laboratory, and he'd just been invited to fly into a storm named Betsy."I didn't even know I was going to be flying planes into hurricanes," he laughs.

Very few humans appear in "Africa: The Serengeti," the new film at the Maryland Science Center's IMAX theater. It's a good thing.The wildebeests, zebras, lions, buzzards, hyenas and other exotic species that make this area of Africa "a place on Earth where it is still the morning of life," as narrator James Earl Jones asserts, can easily carry the show. And they do.If you've ever wanted to get up close and personal with a rhinoceros or hippopotamus without putting yourself in mortal peril, extreme close-ups on the huge screen of the IMAX process do the job.The film, which opened yesterday, offers magnificent vistas, a fair assembly of wildlife facts, a modestly optimistic environmental note, some potentially disorienting aerial photography that no IMAX film can do without, and lots of that other staple of wildlife films: cute, cuddly baby animals.

"Destiny in Space" begins with the image of Earth, spinning alone in the vast nothingness of space. The planet looks like a cerulean-blue marble speckled with bits of white, and it shines brightly as if lit from within.This breathtaking view of Earth is seen from the perspective of a space traveler. But which one? That of one of our astronauts? Or is there someone out there watching us?"Destiny in Space," the third in a trilogy of IMAX films about space exploration, will open today at the Maryland Science Center.