Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking will narrate the science behind the "greatest hits" of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications' Advanced Visualization Laboratory in a new outreach production debuting this month. These artful high-definition 3D animations of black holes and other phenomena will be a key component of Quantum to Cosmos: Ideas for the Future, a 10-day festival (Oct. 15-25) marking the 10th anniversary of Canada's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.

NCSA is a Perimeter Institute partner and sponsor of the Q2C 3D exhibit.

Professor Hawking is a Distinguished Research Chair at Perimeter Institute and is Honorary Festival President. He last worked with AVL in preparation for iGrid 2002 in a collaboration demonstration at his Cambridge University lab.

Following the Q2C Festival, which is expected to attract up to 40,000 attendees, the collection of educational visualizations will be on view at NCSA and edream (the Illinois Emerging Digital Research and Education in Arts Media Institute), which is dedicated to promoting arts that are conceived, created, and conveyed through digital technologies. edream and the Advanced Visualization Laboratory are led by Donna Cox.

The AVL team includes Robert Patterson, Matthew Hall, Stuart Levy, Jeff Carpenter, Alex Betts, and Deanna Spivey.