Many people dream of being in two places at once. For Francine McCarthy, that dream is about to become a (virtual) reality.<\/p>\n
The Professor of Earth Sciences will talk to visitors at Milton\u2019s Crawford Lake<\/a> at the same time she conducts her work at Brock University, located about 100 kilometres away.<\/p>\n But the Crawford Lake Francine McCarthy will live in a box \u2014 a hologram box, to be exact.<\/p>\n McCarthy recently worked with a Toronto-based company to record answers to scripted questions about the unique lake and her work.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was an amazing opportunity to apply futuristic technology to communicating important 21st-century issues to a diverse audience,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Her holographic image will soon be part of the renovated Visitor’s Centre at\u00a0the Crawford Lake Conservation Area, where she conducted her long-running research.<\/p>\n Trapped within the sediment cores she and her team extracted from the lakebed were traces of plutonium-239, fly ash and other anthropogenic markers of the mid-20th century.<\/p>\n Also found in the layers were cultigen pollen, including corn and sunflower, evidence of Indigenous cultivation activities spanning more than 500 years. This discovery led to excavations and the reconstruction of a 15th-century Longhouse Village.<\/p>\n The lake\u2019s geologic record of planetary-scale change is so clear that an international body of experts voted to identify Crawford Lake<\/a> as the location that best shows the \u201cgolden spike,\u201d a marker that shows the boundary between the current Holocene and the proposed Anthropocene.<\/p>\n For the time being, though, Earth is still officially considered to be in the Holocene epoch.<\/p>\n Brenna Bartley, Manager of Education and Outreach at Conservation Halton, says she looks forward to McCarthy \u2014 or rather, her holographic twin \u2014 interacting with visitors.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we met Francine in person, we were impressed with her deep and personal knowledge of the sediment cores. Nothing really replaces having Francine interpret that core for you in person,\u201d Bartley says. \u201cOur dream was to get Francine in front of our public on a regular basis, and with funding from the Government of Canada\u2019s Tourism Growth Program, we are now able to make that happen.\u201d<\/p>\n She says McCarthy\u2019s hologram box will be part of an art exhibit called The Spirit of the Lake. Scheduled to launch Sunday, Feb. 1, the exhibit will showcase artworks by four First Nations artists interpreting Crawford Lake.<\/p>\n Also in the exhibit will be a hologram of Leeanne Doxtator, Conservation Halton’s Indigenous Education Co-ordinator.<\/p>\n \u201cLeeanne is a remarkable educator,\u201d says Bartley. \u201cWe thought she’d be a really wonderful spokesperson to accurately and respectfully interpret the Indigenous history of the village at Crawford Lake.\u201d<\/p>\n For her part, McCarthy says what seems to be a novelty now will likely be par for the course in five years\u2019 time.<\/p>\n \u201cTwenty-first century means of communication are much more interactive, making the participant part of the whole thing,\u201d she says. \u201cThey get to choose the questions; they don\u2019t just read a static thing that people have decided to tell them, they hear what they\u2019re interested in and aren\u2019t bothered with the rest.\u201d<\/p>\n McCarthy, who taught a science communications course in Brock\u2019s Earth and Planetary Science Communication program for the first time this year, says her image makes the science more accessible to the public.<\/p>\n \u201cThe scientist they get to see is not a stereotypic picture of a tall, bearded, European male scientist,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m a short, chubby Canadian woman who is very good at communicating to people in a way they can understand without making them feel I\u2019m talking down to them.\u201d<\/p>\n The Crawford Lake hologram display is the latest in a series of initiatives connecting the public with McCarthy and her research. Her team\u2019s work is also featured in the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM)\u2019s year-long Crawford Lake: Layers in Time display<\/a>, and the sediment core taken by her team proposed to define the Anthropocene as an epoch is now part of the Canadian Museum of Nature\u2019s<\/a> permanent collection.<\/p>\n Among her many media and public appearances, McCarthy delivered a TEDx talk<\/a> and spoke to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences at the Vatican<\/a> about the proposed Anthropocene.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Many people dream of being in two places at once. 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