Am I remembering correctly that the red round thing used to rotate? Is that supposed to represent the sun? I went up those stairs in 2001, but don't remember it. My friend who worked at the museum said that a lot of money was spent on a famous rock song that was supposed to accompany the red glowing thing, but had malfunctioned and never worked properly (he couldn't remember the song).
@DavidBrown a few years late, but it is supposed to represent the Earth. Don't recall it ever rotating, but the malfunction may have been referring to the stairs, which are in fact escalators. No song of any sorts, but ambient music plays as you enter the core of the Earth, which has models of ammonites and other such fossils in the walls.
