The World Science Festival Arrives in New York Science Gallery, Trinity College Dublin The exhibition "Surface Tension: The Future ofWater." THE science-fiction author and technology prophet Arthur C. Clarke once said that a technology sufficiently advanced from our own would be indistinguishable from magic. So what will be onstage at Jazz at Lincoln Center on Tuesday night may look like magic in the boyish and capable hands of Brian Greene, the Columbia University physicist and author, who will perform the kind of tricks to make you think your eyes, or maybe your brain, have fallen out of your head. The stuff onstage is, in fact, physics. Weird physics to be sure. A way for particles - or your sunglasses - to be two places at once, or to suspend a hockey puck indefinitely in space. Dr. Greene wants you to know just how bizarre reality became in the last century. As he says in a description of the program, "Get ready for a strange ride." Dr. Greene will be doing his tricks as part of the opening gala for the World Science Festival, the annual jamboree of science, culture and art that mixes boffins and boldface names. Quantum magic and its implications for the universe and the life within it are a running theme of this year's festival, five days in all, which will continue through Sunday, June 3. It will be happening all over New York, in spaces ranging from the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the waters of New York Harbor, and will include skygazing, lectures and a street fair in Washington Square Park. Robots, Neanderthals and especially children are welcome. Among those joining Dr. Greene on Tuesday in a star-studded salute to science will be Alan Alda, the actor, playwright, science popularizer and the gala's host; Joshua Bell, the violinist; the Tony Award-winning actors James Naughton and Debra Monk; and the Momix dance company. Big names are sprinkled throughout the week: the novelists Joyce Carol Oates and Jeffrey Eugenides, among others, talking about the "science of narrative"; Oliver Sacks, the best-selling author and neurologist at Columbia University, speaking with music therapists about the brain; and, over drinks and music at Le Poisson Rouge, the downtown art cabaret club, the author Richard Rhodes and the composer Philip Glass exploring the secret lives of Hedy Lamarr and the avant-garde composer George Antheil, who were involved in electronic warfare. On Thursday morning John Holdren, President Obama's science adviser, will preside over the announcement of the 2012 Kavli Prizes - awards of $1 million each, given every two years, for achievements in astrophysics, neuroscience and nanoscience. On Saturday the acclaimed biologist, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner and lover of ants, Edward O. Wilson of Harvard, will give a special address about evolution and social behavior, the second in an annual series at the festival called "On the Shoulders of Giants." This is the fifth incarnation of the festival, or "the fifth anniversary of the idea that ate our lives," in the words of Tracy Day, a former television producer and a co-founder of the festival with her husband, Dr. Greene. The festival's longtime sponsors are the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. True to the founders" original vow to expand digitally, but not physically, the number of events has remained the same over the years - around 50, which all sell out - but the festival's footprint has steadily expanded around the city, crossing the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday for an all-day "Innovation Square" in MetroTech Plaza in downtown Brooklyn. Some favorites return, including "Einstein, Time and the Coldest Stuff in the Universe," otherwise known as "Fun With Liquid Nitrogen," with the Nobel Prize-winner William Phillips. Several of the events this year have a watery theme, reflecting the growing concerns about the health of our oceans and drinking water. "Surface Tension: The Future of Water," an interactive exhibition from the Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin, in Ireland, will open for its American premiere at Eyebeam Art + Technology in Chelsea on Wednesday and stick around all summer. Visitors to the Hayden Planetarium will find themselves at the bottom of the ocean, surrounded by a coral reef. A pair of cruises on the sloop Clearwater will explore conditions in the waters around New York. In a frothier, tangier vein, you can join an archaeologist and a brewmaster to explore the history of beer, and sample an ancient Etruscan recipe for ale at the restaurant and grocery Eataly. Other events are pegged to the 100th anniversary of the birth of the mathematician Alan Turing, whose universal Turing machine is the basis of today's computers. There will be a screening of the movie "Robot and Frank," about an old jewel thief and his robot caretaker, which won the Sloan Foundation prize for best film about science or technology at Sundance this year.