Hidden miracles of the natural world | Louie Schwartzberg

What is the intersection between technology, art and science?

Curiosity and wonder,

because it drives us to explore,

because we're surrounded by things we can't see.

And I love to use film to take us on a journey

through portals of time and space,

to make the invisible visible,

because what that does,

it expands our horizons,

it transforms our perception,

it opens our minds

and it touches our heart.

So here are some scenes from my 3D IMAX film,

"Mysteries of the Unseen World."

(Music)

There is movement which is too slow for our eyes to detect,

and time lapse makes us discover

and broaden our perspective of life.

We can see how organisms emerge and grow,

how a vine survives by creeping from the forest floor

to look at the sunlight.

And at the grand scale,

time lapse allows us to see our planet in motion.

We can view not only the vast sweep of nature,

but the restless movement of humanity.

Each streaking dot represents a passenger plane,

and by turning air traffic data into time-lapse imagery,

we can see something that's above us constantly

but invisible:

the vast network of air travel over the United States.

We can do the same thing with ships at sea.

We can turn data into a time-lapse view of a global economy in motion.

And decades of data give us the view of our entire planet

as a single organism

sustained by currents circulating throughout the oceans

and by clouds swirling through the atmosphere,

pulsing with lightning,

crowned by the aurora Borealis.

It may be the ultimate time-lapse image:

the anatomy of Earth brought to life.

At the other extreme,

there are things that move too fast for our eyes,

but we have technology that can look into that world as well.

With high-speed cameras,

we can do the opposite of time lapse.

We can shoot images

that are thousands of times faster than our vision.

And we can see how nature's ingenious devices work,

and perhaps we can even imitate them.

When a dragonfly flutters by,

you may not realize,

but it's the greatest flier in nature.

It can hover, fly backwards,

even upside down.

And by tracking markers on an insect's wings,

we can visualize the air flow that they produce.

Nobody knew the secret,

but high speed shows that a dragonfly

can move all four wings in different directions

at the same time.

And what we learn can lead us to new kinds of robotic flyers

that can expand our vision

of important and remote places.

We're giants,

and we're unaware of things that are too small for us to see.

The electron microscope fires electrons which creates images

which can magnify things by as much as a million times.

This is the egg of a butterfly.

And there are unseen creatures living all over your body,

including mites that spend their entire lives

dwelling on your eyelashes,

crawling over your skin at night.

Can you guess what this is?

Shark skin.

A caterpillar's mouth.

The eye of a fruit fly.

An eggshell.

A flea.

A snail's tongue.

We think we know most of the animal kingdom,

but there may be millions of tiny species

waiting to be discovered.

A spider also has great secrets,

because spiders' silk thread is pound for pound stronger than steel

but completely elastic.

This journey will take us all the way down to the nano world.

The silk is 100 times thinner than human hair.

On there is bacteria,

and near that bacteria, 10 times smaller,

a virus.

Inside of that, 10 times smaller,

three strands of DNA.

And nearing the limit of our most powerful microscopes,

single carbon atoms.

With the tip of a powerful microscope,

we can actually move atoms

and begin to create amazing nano devices.

Some could one day patrol our body for all kinds of diseases

and clean out clogged arteries along the way.

Tiny chemical machines of the future

can one day, perhaps, repair DNA.

We are on the threshold of extraordinary advances,

born of our drive to unveil the mysteries of life.

So under an endless rain of cosmic dust,

the air is full of pollen,

micro-diamonds and jewels

from other planets and supernova explosions.

People go about their lives surrounded by the unseeable.

Knowing that there's so much around us we can't see

forever changes our understanding of the world,

and by looking at unseen worlds,

we recognize that we exist in the living universe,

and this new perspective creates wonder

and inspires us to become explorers

in our own backyards.

Who knows what awaits to be seen

and what new wonders will transform our lives.

We'll just have to see.

(Applause)

Thank you.

(Applause)