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Unsolved Universe: Inside the Series

Screening and Live Q&A

Wednesday, April 29, 2026

6:30 pm

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$10 Regular • $9 Friends • $7.50 Students and Seniors

Duration: 90 mins

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Join us for an evening of film and conversation that explores how we come to understand the universe, across time, disciplines, and ways of knowing. Presented between International Astronomy Day and Space Day, this program brings together contemporary scientific storytelling and the Museum’s broader engagement with the history of astronomy.

The evening features two episodes from Unsolved Universe: Pieces of the Past, which follows a high-stakes mission to retrieve material from an asteroid in search of clues about the origins of life on Earth, and Weird Worlds, which traces the discovery of planets beyond our solar system that challenge long-held assumptions about how planetary systems form.

Each screening will be followed by a live Q&A with series creators Craig Colby and Ivan Semeniuk, offering insight into the research, storytelling, and scientific questions that shape the series.

In dialogue with the Museum’s collections — including objects such as the astrolabe and astronomy manuscripts — the program invites reflection on how different cultures and periods have sought to observe, measure, and make meaning of the cosmos.

Unsolved Universe: Pieces of the Past

Space is more than a destination — it is our doorway to the deepest mysteries of the unsolved universe, from the origin of the cosmos to the possibility of life beyond our solar system. Each episode will explore one central question — Was there ever life on Mars? What is spraying into space from one of Saturn’s tiny moons? What is Pluto? — then reveal the steps scientists have taken to find answers. It’s a deep space detective story that has challenged humanity’s greatest minds.

Watch the series

About the Filmmakers

Ivan Semeniuk

Executive Producer, Writer, Producer, and Host

Learn about Ivan Semeniuk

Ivan Semeniuk

Ivan Semeniuk is a journalist, broadcaster and presenter who has spent the past three decades chronicling humanity’s exploration of the universe. His reporting has taken him from mountaintop observatories to the high Arctic and given him a front row seat to some of the most consequential space missions in history.

As science reporter for the Globe and Mail, Ivan is well known to readers across Canada and around the world for the breadth and accessibility of his writing. Before joining the Globe and Mail, he was the US news editor for the journal Nature, based in Washington, and was a bureau chief for New Science magazine, where he also hosted and produced one of the world’s first popular science podcasts, Scipod. His work has been featured in numerous other publications, including Sky and Telescope, Astronomy, and Cosmos, and he was a long-time associate editor of the Canadian astronomy magazine Sky News.

As a broadcaster, Ivan wrote and hosted two internationally acclaimed astronomy series. Hubble’s Canvas and Cosmic Vistas, and was a producer and space columnist for 12 seasons of Discovery Channel’s science magazine show, Daily Planet.

A lifelong enthusiast of the night sky, he first joined the staff of the Ontario Science Centre, where he developed exhibits and planetarium programs for more than a decade before embarking on a full-time career in science journalism. Since then, his work has garnered numerous awards and nominations, including the Sandford Fleming medal and citation for contributions to the public understanding of science and the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada’s Simon Newcomb award for outstanding writing.

In 2007, he was named a Knight Science Journalism fellow at MIT, and he was a journalist in residence at the University of Toronto’s Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics in 2009.

The asteroid 20045 “Semeniuk” is named after him in recognition of his service to public education.