One of the world's leading architects, Daniel Libeskind, is to be visit Scotland to take part in talks and a new exhibition about the explosive formations of the universe.
The land artist, historian and theorist Charles Jencks, who swirling landforms can be seen at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and the Jupiter Artland art park, has invited Libeskind, best known for the Jewish Museum in Berlin and for leading the reconstruction of the World Trade Center site in Manhattan, to speak as part of a series of events in the small town of Sanquhar in Dumfries and Galloway.
The architect will be taking part in the event with the cosmologist Carlos Frenk, Dr Noam Libeskind, also a scientist, and Jencks - known also as co-founder of the Maggie's Cancer Care Centres - at a gallery in Sanquhar.
The talks are part of the wider Cosmic Collisions event at the Crawick Multiverse, a nearby large art work and attraction designed by Jencks.
The exhibition will include previously unseen preparatory drawings by New York-based Libeskind showing how spiral galaxies inspired his new £11.5m Centre for Fundamental Physics at Durham University.
The exhibition also features a new series of work by Jencks including a section entitled Sex in the Universe.
Jencks, who designed the 55-acre Crawick Multiverse artland between Sanquhar and Kirkconnel, said: "Daniel Libeskind is a good friend and he and I have many affinities, and he really is at the cutting edge of the modern paradigm of architecture."
Jencks said the event is inspired by the collision of spiral galaxies, events that should be catastrophic but instead, he said, are the the most creative convulsions in the universe, with the creation of many stars and attendant planets.
Jencks said these collisions are the "greatest reproductive act" in existence.
He added: "Cosmic collisions can be catastrophic and creative, ugly and beautiful. It was one of these explosive encounters that ended the reign of the dinosaurs and allowed the rise of mammals, and ultimately our own species.
“Collisions happen at every level with meteors and comets striking planets, and stars and whole galaxies being driven into each other in a vast cosmic dance which is being choreographed by the power of gravity over billions of years.
“When spiral galaxies collide they bring billions of new, fast-burning stars into being, as well as many of the conditions for life itself."
He added: "It is wonderful that Daniel and Noam Libeskind, Carlos Frenk and our other special guests are coming to Sanquhar from all over the world to share their fascination and insights into issues that get right to the heart of creation and how it happens.”
Other highlights will include a cube created by the astrophysicist Dr Noam Libeskind which maps the 100,000 large galaxies to which our Milky Way belongs.
There will be a “galaxy-making machine” supplied by Professor Frenk, Ogden Professor of Computational Cosmology at Durham University.
Frenk is among the four astrophysicists credited with one of the most important theories in the field. They worked out that the universe is full of cold dark matter.
The exhibition launches on Friday 23 June as part of the annual summer solstice festival at the Merz Gallery, Sanquhar.
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