APOD: Powers of Ten (2011 Feb 01)

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APOD: Powers of Ten (2011 Feb 01)

Post by APOD Robot » Tue Feb 01, 2011 5:06 am

Image Powers of Ten

Explanation: How different does the universe look on small, medium, and large scales? The most famous short science film of its generation gives breathtaking comparisons. That film, Powers of Ten, originally created in the 1960s, has now been officially posted to YouTube and embedded above. Please click the above arrow to see the nine minute movie for yourself. From a picnic blanket near Chicago out past the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies, every ten seconds the film pans out to show a square a factor of ten times larger on each side. The video then reverses, panning back in a factor of ten every two seconds and ends up inside a single proton. The Powers of Ten sequence is actually based on the book Cosmic View by Kees Boeke in 1957, as is a similar but mostly animated film Cosmic Zoom that was also created in the late 1960s. The changing perspectives are so enthralling and educational that sections have been recreated using more modern computerized techniques, including the first few minutes of the movie Contact, and in a short digital video called The Known Universe created last year for the American Museum of Natural History. Ray and husband Charles, the film's creators, were known as quite visionary spirits and even invented their own popular chair.

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Narrated & written by the great Philip Morrison

Post by neufer » Tue Feb 01, 2011 5:41 am

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/morrison.html wrote:
Image
<<Philip Morrison, (7 November 1915 – 22 April 2005) was a member of the Manhattan Project who went on to become a vocal critic of the nuclear arms race, Morrison was widely known for his research and professional contributions in quantum electrodynamics, nuclear theory, radiology, isotope geology and, since the 1950s, in cosmic-ray origins and propagation, gamma-ray astronomy and other topics in high-energy astrophysics and in cosmology.

http://www.disclose.tv/action/viewvideo ... an___1975/
http://www.viddler.com/explore/jacksmernov/videos/1/

Morrison was among the first scientists (in 1959) to call upon the professional community to begin a coordinated search for interstellar communications using a microwave search. His many publications and speeches, beyond research and astronomy, center on two large issues: nuclear and conventional war and American policy; and the teaching and public understanding of physics and science in general. He has authored or co-authored many books on these subjects, including "The Price of Defense," which he co-authored with five other students of the arms issue. The book, published in 1979, was the first to propose a detailed alternative defense posture for the United States.

A regular reviewer of books on science for Scientific American since 1965, Morrison had also narrated and helped script films on science for Charles and Ray Eames. He appeared widely on radio and on British, Canadian and American television in a number of science programs and series, most visibly as author-presenter (with his wife, the late Phylis Morrison) of a six-part national Public Broadcasting System series, "The Ring of Truth," which first aired in 1987. He and his wife co-authored a book, "The Ring of Truth: An Inquiry Into How We Know What We Know" (Random House, 1987) as a companion to the series.

Philip Morrison was born in Somerville, N.J., in 1915. He attended Pittsburgh public schools and received the B.S. degree from the Carnegie Institute for Technology in 1936. In 1940 he received the Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of California at Berkeley, under the supervision of J. Robert Oppenheimer. For the next two years he taught physics at San Francisco State College and at the University of Illinois before joining the Manhattan Project. In 1946, Morrison joined the physics faculty at Cornell University, where he remained until he came to MIT in 1964.

From 1943 to 1946 Morrison was associated with the Manhattan Project, which was responsible for the development of the first atomic bomb. He joined the Metallurgical Laboratory of the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago toward the end of 1942. He was a physicist and group leader there and later at Los Alamos from 1942 to 1946. In 1945, it was Morrison, riding in the back seat of an automobile, who brought the bomb's plutonium core from Los Alamos to the New Mexico desert site for the first test. He also was at the island air base of Tinian, from which two bombs were launched against Japan. He later witnessed the aftermath of the explosion at Hiroshima in a visit immediately following the war.

In 1984, Morrison's faculty colleagues named him the James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award Lecturer for the academic year 1984-85. The citation read, in part, "Philip Morrison is more than a distinguished scholar. He represents an attitude, a way of life, a symbol for what one might call 'joy of insight' or 'thirst for knowledge.' No one has better demonstrated, or rather embodied, what it means to the human soul to perceive or recognize a new scientific discovery or a new theoretical insight. Scientific knowledge and understanding is not a purely cerebral affair; it is soaked with emotion, excitement, and nervous tension, as everyone knows who has heard Philip Morrison talk. "He has a gift for language and a wide-ranging intellect which allow him to draw upon insights from different fields to help illuminate a subject.">>
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Re: APOD: Powers of Ten (2011 Feb 01)

Post by hstarbuck » Tue Feb 01, 2011 7:51 am

I love this film...and I own it on DVD. Wouldn't it be great if my science class students could see it during our lessons on SI units, powers of 10, conversions, etc...Yes it would. Timeless?? I think so. I used to play the Simpson's version but have since given it up.

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Re: APOD: Powers of Ten (2011 Feb 01)

Post by Javachip » Tue Feb 01, 2011 10:49 am

In the first part of this movie, the side of the visible square starts at 1 meter at time t=0 seconds, and then increases by a factor of 10 every 10 seconds. For this to happen, our velocity away from the starting point must start at zero and then increase more and more rapidly. Questions: what formula gives our velocity at any time t? What formula gives our acceleration at any time t? At what time t will our velocity equal the speed of light, 3x10^8 meters/second, assuming that is possible? Thank you.

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Re: APOD: Powers of Ten (2011 Feb 01)

Post by GoBears » Tue Feb 01, 2011 11:32 am

Here is another version of the Powers of Ten sequence, this one written in Java at Florida State University.

http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java ... index.html

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Re: APOD: Powers of Ten (2011 Feb 01)

Post by León » Tue Feb 01, 2011 11:36 am

1.-I agree with Protagoras that man is the measure of all things, and the construction of the video was made on the basis of man to the maximum, and in man to a minimum. 2 .- get to see more ways in the least to the greatest, which shows how much sight distance needed to reach, is more or less like watching from inside a cell.

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Re: APOD: Powers of Ten (2011 Feb 01)

Post by neufer » Tue Feb 01, 2011 12:30 pm

Javachip wrote:
In the first part of this movie, the side of the visible square starts at 1 meter at time t=0 seconds, and then increases by a factor of 10 every 10 seconds. For this to happen, our velocity away from the starting point must start at zero and then increase more and more rapidly. Questions: what formula gives our velocity at any time t? What formula gives our acceleration at any time t? At what time t will our velocity equal the speed of light, 3x10^8 meters/second, assuming that is possible? Thank you.
Note: Velocity doesn't start at zero once the motion has actually begun; (it is more like 0.23 m/s).
  • t = 10 log(z)

    z = 10t/10 = e(ln(10)/10) t
    v = (ln(10)/10) z ~ 0.23 z
    a = (ln(10)/10) v ~ 0.23 v ~ (z/185) g's


    c ~ 3 x 108 ~ 0.23 zc
    zc ~ 1.3 x 109 meters
    tc ~ 10 log(1.3 x 109) = 91.14 seconds
Last edited by neufer on Tue Feb 01, 2011 4:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: APOD: Powers of Ten (2011 Feb 01)

Post by waterfall007 » Tue Feb 01, 2011 1:07 pm

Thank you for posting this great video. Children through adults can't take their eyes off this as it unfolds. As a teacher, I greatly appreciate these 'big picture' learning experiences. Another great source on "The Scale of the Universe" can be found at:
http://primaxstudio.com/stuff/scale_of_universe/

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Re: APOD: Powers of Ten (2011 Feb 01)

Post by moonstruck » Tue Feb 01, 2011 4:02 pm

WOW! Most interesting thing I've seen like that. My telescope won't go that far out and my microscope won't go that far in. :?

Elmar Schmidt

Re: APOD: Powers of Ten (2011 Feb 01)

Post by Elmar Schmidt » Tue Feb 01, 2011 4:09 pm

The Earth incorrectly fits snugly into a 10^7 meter square in "Powers of Ten". Actually, its diameter is sizably larger than 10 000 km, namely 12 756 km in the equatorial plane. The book "Powers of Ten" shows the right size of the Earth.

Philip

Re: APOD: Powers of Ten (2011 Feb 01)

Post by Philip » Tue Feb 01, 2011 4:42 pm

I am startled by the slap-dash "Charles and Ray" (leaving out "Eames"), and the "even" in the next phrase. As the Wikipedia link to their biographies shows, they were great designers of furniture -- not just one chair -- among many other things.

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Re: APOD: Powers of Ten (2011 Feb 01)

Post by dmpalmer » Tue Feb 01, 2011 8:18 pm


lisaloon

Re: APOD: Powers of Ten (2011 Feb 01)

Post by lisaloon » Tue Feb 01, 2011 8:29 pm

Advances in cellular and molecular biology make it really necessary to update the graphics in the microscopic, cellular and subcellular levels. In particular, it would be most important to incorporate our current understanding of membrane structures and the packing of DNA and histones inside nuclei--in this case, that of a white blood cell, it seems. I would also expect that current understanding of atomic-level physics would require more changes at those levels--I'm just not informed enough myself to suggest what's outdated and how to improve it.

Biziliz

Re: APOD: Powers of Ten (2011 Feb 01)

Post by Biziliz » Tue Feb 01, 2011 9:23 pm

As I watched the film advance the Earth became visible in a starfield at about 10^7. However I did not see the starfield change in size until the film reached 10^17. You would think that the starfield would be changing and expanding constantly as the field of view widened around the Earth and our galaxy.

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Re: APOD: Powers of Ten (2011 Feb 01)

Post by NoelC » Wed Feb 02, 2011 12:24 am

Fun!

At what point did we exceed the speed of light? Was that what you wrote, neufer, when you expressed the following?

tc ~ 10 log(1.3 x 109) = 91.14 seconds

-Noel

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Re: APOD: Powers of Ten (2011 Feb 01)

Post by delco » Wed Feb 02, 2011 1:26 am

All you commenting on how did we exceed the speed of light, totally miss the point.
This is very educational and shows us how important we really are on the scale of all things larger and smaller.
It is also really fun to watch!! Well done.

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Re: APOD: Powers of Ten (2011 Feb 01)

Post by GoBears » Wed Feb 02, 2011 1:43 am

León wrote:1.-I agree with Protagoras that man is the measure of all things, and the construction of the video was made on the basis of man to the maximum, and in man to a minimum..
No, we are not the measure of all things, and this video is not based on that notion.

Instead, it is one of the wonders of the cosmos that we are at the "middle" of the scale of things. In other words, we are about 20 orders of magnitude smaller than the known universe, and we are about 20 orders of magnitude larger than the smallest particles we know about. Ain't that wicked amazin'?!? The design of this video simply follows the design (for lack of a better word) of the universe.

Sorry, Protagoras. All things are the measure of all things.

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Re: APOD: Powers of Ten (2011 Feb 01)

Post by neufer » Wed Feb 02, 2011 2:12 am

NoelC wrote:Fun!

At what point did we exceed the speed of light? Was that what you wrote, neufer, when you expressed the following?

tc ~ 10 log(1.3 x 109) = 91.14 seconds
Right. It is an imaginary trip and the speed of light is no object.

(We would have been dead long before that from the g forces in any event.)
Art Neuendorffer

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Re: APOD: Powers of Ten (2011 Feb 01)

Post by Barry » Wed Feb 02, 2011 2:44 am

Oh Boy - I've been telling people about this film for DECADES! At last I get to see it again! I saw it at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto in 1971 when I was 14 years old. It catapulted my curiosity of outer and inner space - microscopes at school and indigo night skies of our Quebec Laurentian cottage. I probably wouldn't have made this NASA Picture of the Day site my home page if it hadn't been for this.

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Re: APOD: Powers of Ten (2011 Feb 01)

Post by rstevenson » Wed Feb 02, 2011 12:29 pm

neufer wrote:(We would have been dead long before that from the g forces in any event.)
Nah... Artificial gravity is a well known by-product of any technology which allows us to accelerate past the speed of light. Not to worry.

Rob

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Re: APOD: Powers of Ten (2011 Feb 01)

Post by GoBears » Wed Feb 02, 2011 2:24 pm

rstevenson wrote:Nah... Artificial gravity is a well known by-product of any technology which allows us to accelerate past the speed of light. Not to worry.
Actually, in order to produce artificial gravity you need a set of gravitational tenterhooks.

As everyone knows, tenterhooks (from the familiar idiom "on tenterhooks" meaning filled with anticipation) are actually medieval devices for stretching freshly woven fabric. Gravitational tenterhooks, of course, are used to stretch the fabric of spacetime, thereby producing artificial gravity. If NASA and ESA would simply stop being stubborn and start using them, it would make those pesky spacewalks a lot easier!

I have a used set of gravitational tenterhooks for sale on eBay if anyone is interested. :wink:
Last edited by GoBears on Wed Feb 02, 2011 11:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: APOD: Powers of Ten (2011 Feb 01)

Post by bystander » Wed Feb 02, 2011 2:52 pm

GoBears wrote:I have a used set of gravitational tenterhooks for sale on eBay if anyone is interested. :wink:
How many hours are on them? Is a warranty still available? Does the Buy Now price include free shipping?
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Re: APOD: Powers of Ten (2011 Feb 01)

Post by neufer » Wed Feb 02, 2011 5:20 pm

rstevenson wrote:
neufer wrote:
(We would have been dead long before that from the g forces in any event.)
Nah... Artificial gravity is a well known by-product of any technology which allows us to accelerate past the speed of light. Not to worry.
I suppose if the Earth were orbiting a black hole that there would be spiraling rocket trajectories into that black hole that would temporarily emulate exponential acceleration away from the earth (and towards the black hole) where the g forces would be close to zero.
Art Neuendorffer

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Re: APOD: Powers of Ten (2011 Feb 01)

Post by alphachap » Wed Feb 02, 2011 6:39 pm

That movie is 50 years old. Very well done.
Even for a 2011 critic, very well done.

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Re: APOD: Powers of Ten (2011 Feb 01)

Post by NoelC » Wed Feb 02, 2011 9:51 pm

I suppose if the Earth were orbiting a black hole that there would be spiraling rocket trajectories into that black hole that would temporarily emulate exponential acceleration away from the earth (and towards the black hole) where the g forces would be close to zero.
You've just hit upon how we can achieve acceleration to near the speed of light in real time!

We won't need propulsion at all. We just need to create a black hole and keep it exactly far enough away from us to accelerate the capsule as needed. Okay, so we don't know how to create a black hole yet. But it's a different problem from how to carry all the fuel needed to propel the rocket!

You can thank me later.

-Noel

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