Neil deGrasse Tyson speaks at Tampa’s Straz Center

He’s the biggest science star America has produced since Carl Sagan. And he will be in Tampa Thursday.

He’s Neil deGrasse Tyson, the director of the prestigious Hayden Planetarium in New York City, and the only person in history who has been both a New York Times best-selling author and People magazine’s “Sexiest Astrophysicist Alive.”

He’ll be in Morsani Hall at the Straz Center for the Performing Arts Thursday, but if you don’t have tickets you might be out of luck. A couple of days before the show, the Straz Center’s website noted that only “non-traditional” seats were available, and advised you to call the box office to find out what those are. (Sometimes, tickets for events become available shortly before the event begins, so it might be worth making the call.)

Tyson spoke about a year and a half ago to a capacity crowd at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall in Sarasota. In a casual and entertaining chat with the audience, accompanied by slides and videos, he talked about of parallel universes in other dimensions, about the diminishing role of the United States in space exploration, and even about the drawers full of hate mail he received after he was blamed for demoting Pluto from its status as a planet.

Science moves fast, and it’s likely he’ll have some other hot topics from the universe to talk about this time.

Details: 7:30 p.m. Nov. 17, Morsani Hall at the Straz Center for the Performing Arts, 1010 N. MacInnes Place, Tampa. Sold out; call the box office to see if any seats become available. 813-229-7827, strazcenter.org.

This story was originally published November 16, 2016 at 5:49 PM with the headline "Neil deGrasse Tyson speaks at Tampa’s Straz Center."