Gary Greenberg: The beautiful nano details of our world

106,765 views ・ 2012-11-07

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:00
Translator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Morton Bast
0
0
7000
00:17
So I want to talk a little bit about seeing the world
1
17057
2467
00:19
from a totally unique point of view,
2
19524
2726
00:22
and this world I'm going to talk about is the micro world.
3
22250
3025
00:25
I've found, after doing this for many, many years,
4
25275
2580
00:27
that there's a magical world behind reality.
5
27855
2716
00:30
And that can be seen directly through a microscope,
6
30571
3159
00:33
and I'm going to show you some of this today.
7
33730
2105
00:35
So let's start off looking at something rather not-so-small,
8
35835
3687
00:39
something that we can see with our naked eye,
9
39522
2264
00:41
and that's a bee. So when you look at this bee,
10
41786
2441
00:44
it's about this size here, it's about a centimeter.
11
44227
2896
00:47
But to really see the details of the bee, and really
12
47123
2288
00:49
appreciate what it is, you have to look a little bit closer.
13
49411
3729
00:53
So that's just the eye of the bee with a microscope,
14
53140
3086
00:56
and now all of a sudden you can see that the bee has
15
56226
2347
00:58
thousands of individual eyes called ommatidia,
16
58573
2831
01:01
and they actually have sensory hairs in their eyes
17
61404
2432
01:03
so they know when they're right up close to something,
18
63836
2369
01:06
because they can't see in stereo.
19
66205
3704
01:09
As we go smaller, here is a human hair.
20
69909
3704
01:13
A human hair is about the smallest thing that the eye can see.
21
73613
2819
01:16
It's about a tenth of a millimeter.
22
76432
2734
01:19
And as we go smaller again,
23
79166
1176
01:20
about ten times smaller than that, is a cell.
24
80342
3406
01:23
So you could fit 10 human cells
25
83748
2583
01:26
across the diameter of a human hair.
26
86331
3666
01:29
So when we would look at cells, this is how I really got
27
89997
1586
01:31
involved in biology and science is by looking
28
91583
3268
01:34
at living cells in the microscope.
29
94851
2467
01:37
When I first saw living cells in a microscope, I was
30
97318
2071
01:39
absolutely enthralled and amazed at what they looked like.
31
99389
3899
01:43
So if you look at the cell like that from the immune system,
32
103288
3316
01:46
they're actually moving all over the place.
33
106604
1824
01:48
This cell is looking for foreign objects,
34
108443
3750
01:52
bacteria, things that it can find.
35
112193
2357
01:54
And it's looking around, and when it finds something,
36
114550
2648
01:57
and recognizes it being foreign,
37
117198
2296
01:59
it will actually engulf it and eat it.
38
119494
1292
02:00
So if you look right there, it finds that little bacterium,
39
120786
4284
02:05
and it engulfs it and eats it.
40
125070
5622
02:10
If you take some heart cells from an animal,
41
130692
3181
02:13
and put it in a dish, they'll just sit there and beat.
42
133873
2896
02:16
That's their job. Every cell has a mission in life,
43
136769
3590
02:20
and these cells, the mission is
44
140359
1801
02:22
to move blood around our body.
45
142160
3527
02:25
These next cells are nerve cells, and right now,
46
145687
2784
02:28
as we see and understand what we're looking at,
47
148471
2936
02:31
our brains and our nerve cells are actually doing this
48
151407
2114
02:33
right now. They're not just static. They're moving around
49
153521
2542
02:36
making new connections, and that's what happens when we learn.
50
156063
3502
02:39
As you go farther down this scale here,
51
159565
2790
02:42
that's a micron, or a micrometer, and we go
52
162355
2904
02:45
all the way down to here to a nanometer
53
165259
2348
02:47
and an angstrom. Now, an angstrom is the size
54
167607
2757
02:50
of the diameter of a hydrogen atom.
55
170364
3367
02:53
That's how small that is.
56
173731
1633
02:55
And microscopes that we have today can actually see
57
175364
2302
02:57
individual atoms. So these are some pictures
58
177681
3058
03:00
of individual atoms. Each bump here is an individual atom.
59
180739
2833
03:03
This is a ring of cobalt atoms.
60
183572
2829
03:06
So this whole world, the nano world, this area in here
61
186401
2658
03:09
is called the nano world, and the nano world,
62
189059
3195
03:12
the whole micro world that we see,
63
192254
3134
03:15
there's a nano world that is wrapped up within that, and
64
195388
3033
03:18
the whole -- and that is the world of molecules and atoms.
65
198421
4395
03:22
But I want to talk about this larger world,
66
202816
2458
03:25
the world of the micro world.
67
205274
2337
03:27
So if you were a little tiny bug living in a flower,
68
207611
4119
03:31
what would that flower look like, if the flower was this big?
69
211730
3151
03:34
It wouldn't look or feel like anything that we see
70
214881
2515
03:37
when we look at a flower. So if you look at this flower here,
71
217396
3294
03:40
and you're a little bug, if you're on that surface
72
220690
1832
03:42
of that flower, that's what the terrain would look like.
73
222522
4066
03:46
The petal of that flower looks like that, so the ant
74
226588
2376
03:48
is kind of crawling over these objects, and if you look
75
228964
2681
03:51
a little bit closer at this stigma and the stamen here,
76
231645
3344
03:54
this is the style of that flower, and you notice
77
234989
2745
03:57
that it's got these little -- these are like little jelly-like things
78
237734
4225
04:01
that are what are called spurs. These are nectar spurs.
79
241959
4742
04:06
So this little ant that's crawling here, it's like
80
246701
2617
04:09
it's in a little Willy Wonka land.
81
249318
1826
04:11
It's like a little Disneyland for them. It's not like what we see.
82
251144
4135
04:15
These are little bits of individual grain of pollen
83
255279
3903
04:19
there and there, and here is a --
84
259182
3446
04:22
what you see as one little yellow dot of pollen,
85
262628
2578
04:25
when you look in a microscope, it's actually made
86
265206
1964
04:27
of thousands of little grains of pollen.
87
267170
3764
04:30
So this, for example, when you see bees flying around
88
270934
2235
04:33
these little plants, and they're collecting pollen,
89
273169
2805
04:35
those pollen grains that they're collecting, they pack
90
275974
2423
04:38
into their legs and they take it back to the hive,
91
278397
2433
04:40
and that's what makes the beehive,
92
280830
2630
04:43
the wax in the beehive. And they're also collecting nectar,
93
283460
3818
04:47
and that's what makes the honey that we eat.
94
287278
3911
04:51
Here's a close-up picture, or this is actually a regular picture
95
291189
3257
04:54
of a water hyacinth, and if you had really, really good vision,
96
294446
2673
04:57
with your naked eye, you'd see it about that well.
97
297119
2561
04:59
There's the stamen and the pistil. But look what the stamen
98
299680
2628
05:02
and the pistil look like in a microscope. That's the stamen.
99
302308
3514
05:05
So that's thousands of little grains of pollen there,
100
305822
2651
05:08
and there's the pistil there, and these are the little things
101
308473
3286
05:11
called trichomes. And that's what makes the flower give
102
311759
3719
05:15
a fragrance, and plants actually communicate
103
315478
3960
05:19
with one another through their fragrances.
104
319438
5394
05:24
I want to talk about something really ordinary,
105
324832
2368
05:27
just ordinary sand.
106
327200
1924
05:29
I became interested in sand about 10 years ago,
107
329124
1930
05:31
when I first saw sand from Maui,
108
331054
2561
05:33
and in fact, this is a little bit of sand from Maui.
109
333615
3147
05:36
So sand is about a tenth of a millimeter in size.
110
336762
3031
05:39
Each sand grain is about a tenth of a millimeter in size.
111
339793
2911
05:42
But when you look closer at this, look at what's there.
112
342704
2583
05:45
It's really quite amazing. You have microshells there.
113
345287
3502
05:48
You have things like coral.
114
348789
2193
05:50
You have fragments of other shells. You have olivine.
115
350982
3534
05:54
You have bits of a volcano. There's a little bit
116
354516
2196
05:56
of a volcano there. You have tube worms.
117
356712
2627
05:59
An amazing array of incredible things exist in sand.
118
359339
4726
06:04
And the reason that is, is because in a place like this island,
119
364065
2679
06:06
a lot of the sand is made of biological material
120
366744
2366
06:09
because the reefs provide a place where all these
121
369110
2997
06:12
microscopic animals or macroscopic animals grow,
122
372107
3890
06:15
and when they die, their shells and their teeth
123
375997
2338
06:18
and their bones break up and they make grains of sand,
124
378335
2342
06:20
things like coral and so forth.
125
380677
2970
06:23
So here's, for example, a picture of sand from Maui.
126
383647
3793
06:27
This is from Lahaina,
127
387440
2537
06:29
and when we're walking along a beach, we're actually
128
389977
1730
06:31
walking along millions of years of biological and geological history.
129
391707
3454
06:35
We don't realize it, but it's actually a record
130
395161
2467
06:37
of that entire ecology.
131
397628
2573
06:40
So here we see, for example, a sponge spicule,
132
400201
3158
06:43
two bits of coral here,
133
403359
2586
06:45
that's a sea urchin spine. Really some amazing stuff.
134
405945
3850
06:49
So when I first looked at this, I was -- I thought,
135
409795
2377
06:52
gee, this is like a little treasure trove here.
136
412172
1749
06:53
I couldn't believe it, and I'd go around dissecting
137
413921
2166
06:56
the little bits out and making photographs of them.
138
416087
3309
06:59
Here's what most of the sand in our world looks like.
139
419396
2511
07:01
These are quartz crystals and feldspar,
140
421907
3261
07:05
so most sand in the world on the mainland
141
425168
2461
07:07
is made of quartz crystal and feldspar. It's the erosion of granite rock.
142
427629
3750
07:11
So mountains are built up, and they erode away by water
143
431379
4351
07:15
and rain and ice and so forth,
144
435730
2027
07:17
and they become grains of sand.
145
437757
1306
07:19
There's some sand that's really much more colorful.
146
439063
2450
07:21
These are sand from near the Great Lakes,
147
441513
2069
07:23
and you can see that it's filled with minerals
148
443597
2011
07:25
like pink garnet and green epidote, all kinds of amazing stuff,
149
445608
3492
07:29
and if you look at different sands from different places,
150
449100
2384
07:31
every single beach, every single place you look at sand,
151
451484
3251
07:34
it's different. Here's from Big Sur, like they're little jewels.
152
454735
5032
07:39
There are places in Africa where they do the mining
153
459767
2489
07:42
of jewels, and you go to the sand where the rivers have
154
462256
4169
07:46
the sand go down to the ocean, and it's like literally looking
155
466425
2299
07:48
at tiny jewels through the microscope.
156
468724
2863
07:51
So every grain of sand is unique. Every beach is different.
157
471587
3177
07:54
Every single grain is different. There are no two grains
158
474764
3182
07:57
of sand alike in the world.
159
477946
1700
07:59
Every grain of sand is coming somewhere and going somewhere.
160
479646
3532
08:03
They're like a snapshot in time.
161
483178
3728
08:06
Now sand is not only on Earth, but sand is
162
486906
3423
08:10
ubiquitous throughout the universe. In fact, outer space
163
490329
2598
08:12
is filled with sand, and that sand comes together
164
492927
3664
08:16
to make our planets and the Moon.
165
496591
3197
08:19
And you can see those in micrometeorites.
166
499788
1582
08:21
This is some micrometeorites that the Army gave me,
167
501370
2543
08:23
and they get these out of the drinking wells in the South Pole.
168
503913
3094
08:27
And they're quite amazing-looking, and these are the
169
507007
2746
08:29
tiny constituents that make up the world that we live in --
170
509753
4424
08:34
the planets and the Moon.
171
514177
1915
08:36
So NASA wanted me to take some pictures of Moon sand,
172
516092
3244
08:39
so they sent me sand from all the different landings
173
519336
2263
08:41
of the Apollo missions that happened 40 years ago.
174
521599
4478
08:46
And I started taking pictures with my three-dimensional microscopes.
175
526077
3640
08:49
This was the first picture I took. It was kind of amazing.
176
529717
2967
08:52
I thought it looked kind of a little bit like the Moon, which is sort of interesting.
177
532684
3783
08:56
Now, the way my microscopes work is, normally
178
536467
2663
08:59
in a microscope you can see very little at one time,
179
539130
2466
09:01
so what you have to do is you have to refocus the microscope,
180
541596
2947
09:04
keep taking pictures, and then I have a computer program
181
544543
3791
09:08
that puts all those pictures together
182
548334
2474
09:10
into one picture so you can see actually what it looks like,
183
550808
3122
09:13
and I do that in 3D. So there, you can see,
184
553930
3235
09:17
is a left-eye view. There's a right-eye view.
185
557165
2702
09:19
So sort of left-eye view, right-eye view.
186
559867
2553
09:22
Now something's interesting here. This looks very different
187
562420
2368
09:24
than any sand on Earth that I've ever seen, and I've
188
564788
2378
09:27
seen a lot of sand on Earth, believe me. (Laughter)
189
567166
3800
09:30
Look at this hole in the middle. That hole was caused
190
570966
2958
09:33
by a micrometeorite hitting the Moon.
191
573924
2339
09:36
Now, the Moon has no atmosphere, so micrometeorites
192
576263
2357
09:38
come in continuously, and the whole surface of the Moon
193
578620
3216
09:41
is covered with powder now, because for four billion years
194
581836
2600
09:44
it's been bombarded by micrometeorites,
195
584436
2794
09:47
and when micrometeorites come in at about
196
587230
2390
09:49
20 to 60,000 miles an hour, they vaporize on contact.
197
589620
4010
09:53
And you can see here that that is --
198
593630
1910
09:55
that's sort of vaporized, and that material is holding this
199
595540
2594
09:58
little clump of little sand grains together.
200
598134
2546
10:00
This is a very small grain of sand, this whole thing.
201
600680
2179
10:02
And that's called a ring agglutinate.
202
602859
2160
10:05
And many of the grains of sand on the Moon look like that,
203
605019
3944
10:08
and you'd never find that on Earth.
204
608963
3457
10:12
Most of the sand on the Moon,
205
612420
3253
10:15
especially -- and you know when you look at the Moon,
206
615673
1699
10:17
there's the dark areas and the light areas. The dark areas
207
617372
2360
10:19
are lava flows. They're basaltic lava flows,
208
619732
4141
10:23
and that's what this sand looks like, very similar
209
623873
2665
10:26
to the sand that you would see in Haleakala.
210
626538
3763
10:30
Other sands, when these micrometeorites come in,
211
630301
3423
10:33
they vaporize and they make these fountains,
212
633724
3089
10:36
these microscopic fountains that go up into the --
213
636813
2623
10:39
I was going to say "up into the air," but there is no air --
214
639436
2364
10:41
goes sort of up, and these microscopic glass beads
215
641800
4220
10:46
are formed instantly, and they harden, and by the time
216
646051
2513
10:48
they fall down back to the surface of the Moon,
217
648564
3385
10:51
they have these beautiful colored glass spherules.
218
651949
2896
10:54
And these are actually microscopic;
219
654845
1545
10:56
you need a microscope to see these.
220
656390
2968
10:59
Now here's a grain of sand that is from the Moon,
221
659358
3437
11:02
and you can see that the entire
222
662795
2154
11:04
crystal structure is still there.
223
664949
2483
11:07
This grain of sand is probably about
224
667432
2148
11:09
three and a half or four billion years old,
225
669580
2282
11:11
and it's never eroded away like the way we have sand
226
671862
2191
11:14
on Earth erodes away because of water and tumbling,
227
674053
4019
11:18
air, and so forth. All you can see is a little bit of erosion
228
678072
3250
11:21
down here by the Sun, has these solar storms,
229
681322
4607
11:25
and that's erosion by solar radiation.
230
685929
4763
11:30
So what I've been trying to tell you today is
231
690692
2586
11:33
things even as ordinary as a grain of sand
232
693278
3569
11:36
can be truly extraordinary if you look closely
233
696847
2975
11:39
and if you look from a different and a new point of view.
234
699822
3305
11:43
I think that this was best put by William Blake when he said,
235
703127
4375
11:47
"To see a world in a grain of sand
236
707502
2542
11:50
and a heaven in a wild flower,
237
710044
2754
11:52
hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
238
712798
2333
11:55
and eternity in an hour."
239
715131
2333
11:57
Thank you. (Applause)
240
717464
3729
About this website

This site will introduce you to YouTube videos that are useful for learning English. You will see English lessons taught by top-notch teachers from around the world. Double-click on the English subtitles displayed on each video page to play the video from there. The subtitles scroll in sync with the video playback. If you have any comments or requests, please contact us using this contact form.

https://forms.gle/WvT1wiN1qDtmnspy7