Powers of Ten

[Music] the picnic near the lakeside in Chicago is the start of a lazy afternoon early one October we begin with a scene one meter wide which we view from just one meter away now every 10 seconds we will look from 10 times farther away and our field of view will be 10 times wider this square is 10 meters wide and in 10 seconds the next square will be 10 times as wide our picture will center on the picnickers even after they've been lost to sight 100 meters wide the distance a man can run in 10 seconds cars crowd the highway powerboats lie at their docks the colorful bleachers are soldiers filled this square is a kilometer wide 1000 meters the distance a racing car can travel in 10 seconds we see the great city on the lakeshore 10 to the 4th meters 10 kilometers the distance a supersonic airplane can travel in 10 seconds we see first the rounded end of Lake Michigan then the whole great lake 10 to the 5th meters the distance in orbiting satellite covers in 10 seconds long parades of clouds the day's weather in the middle west 10 to the sixth a one with six zeros a million meters soon the earth will show as a solid sphere [Music] we are able to see the whole earth now just over a minutes along the journey earth diminishes into the distance but those background stars are so much farther away if they do not yet appear to move [Laughter] a line extends at the true speed of light in one second at half crosses the Tilted orbit of the moon [Music] [Laughter] [Music] now we mark a small part of the path in which the earth moves about the Sun now the orbital paths of the neighbor planets Venus and Mars then mercury entering our field of view is the glowing center of our solar system the Sun followed by the massive outer planets swinging wide in their big orbits that are orbit belongs to Pluto a fringe of a myriad comets too faint to see completes the solar system [Music] 10 to the 14th as the solar system shrinks to one bright point in the distance our Sun is plainly now only one among the stars looking back from here we note four southern constellations still much as they appear from the far side of the earth [Music] this squares 10 to the 16th meters one light-year not yet out to the next star our last 10 second step took us 10 light-years further the next will be a hundred our perspective changes so much in each step now that even the background stars will appear to converge at last we passed the bright star Arcturus and some stars of the Dipper normal but quite unfamiliar stars and clouds of gas surround us as we traverse the Milky Way galaxy [Music] giant steps carry us into the outskirts of the galaxy and as we pull away we begin to see the great flat spiral facing us the time and path we chose to leave Chicago has brought us out of the galaxy along a course nearly perpendicular to its disk the two little satellite galaxies of our own are the clouds of Magellan 10 to the 22nd power the million light years [Music] groups of galaxies bring a new level of structure to the scene glowing points are no longer single stars but whole galaxies of stars seen as one we pass the big Virgo cluster of galaxies among many others a hundred million light years out as we approach the limit of our vision we pause to start back home this lonely scene the galaxies like dust is what most of space looks like this emptiness is normal the richness of our own neighborhood is the exception the trip back to the picnic on the lakefront will be a sped-up version reducing the distance to the Earth's surface by one power of 10 every 2 seconds in each two seconds will appear to cover 90% the remaining distance back to earth notice the alternation between great activity and relative inactivity a rhythm that will continue all the way into our next goal a proton in the nucleus of a carbon atom beneath the skin on the hand of the sleeping man at the picnic [Music] ten to the ninth meters ten to the eight seven six five four three two one we are back at our starting point we slow up at one meter 10 to the 0 power [Music] now we reduce the distance to our final destination by 90% every 10 seconds each step much smaller than the one before at 10 to the -2 1/100 of a meter 1 centimeter we approach the surface of the hand in a few seconds we were entering the skin crossing layer after layer from the outermost dead cells into a tiny blood vessel within skin layers vanish and turn an outer layer of cells del t collagen the capillary containing red blood cells in a roughly lymphocyte we enter the white cell among its vital organelles the porous wall of the cell nucleus appears the nucleus within holds the heredity of the man in the coiled coils of DNA as we close in we come to the double helix itself a molecule like a long twisted ladder whose rungs of paired bases spell out twice in an alphabet of four letters words of the powerful genetic message at the atomic scale the interplay of form and motion becomes more visible we focus on one commonplace group of three hydrogen atoms bonded by electrical forces to a carbon atom four electrons make up the outer shell of the carbon itself they appear in quantum motion is a swarm of shimmering points at ten to the minus 10 meters one angstrom we find ourselves right among those outer electrons now we come upon the two inner electrons held in a tighter swarm as we draw toward the atoms attracting Center we enter upon a vast inner space at last the carbon nucleus so massive and so small this carbon nucleus is made up of six protons and six neutrons we are in a domain of universal modules there are protons and neutrons in every nucleus electrons in every atom atoms bonded into every molecule out to the farthest galaxies as a single proton fills our scene reach the edge of present understanding are these some quarks that intense interaction our journey has taken us through 40 powers of 10 if now the field is one unit then when we saw many clusters of galaxies together it was 10 to the 40th or 1 and 40 zeroes [Music]