Dust or Destiny

foreign [Applause] [Applause] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] a world crowd of this beauty a world of grandeur mystery [Music] yes this is a Wonderful World but perhaps the greatest Wonder of all is man himself [Music] his body is a Marvel of mechanical efficiency and adaptability [Music] the body has a chemical plant far more complex and efficient than any man has ever built it transforms the food we eat into flesh and blood and bones and teeth and the body has a heating system a living furnace that we Stoke daily with food for fuel as this fuel is oxidized heat and energy are provided for The Body Machine in Winter we're conformed by this remarkable system and in the summer we're kept cool by the body's own cooling system which is so efficient it can prevent our body temperature from rising for a limited time even in heat that will fry a steak an automatic thermostat controls both our Heating and our cooling systems keeping our temperature at a normal 98.6 degrees except when a higher temperature is needed to combat disease [Music] the body has a telephone system more wonderful than the greatest ever constructed by man the body's telephone system transmits millions of messages every day with never a busy signal or wrong number man-made machines require lubrication from an outside source but the body manufactures its own lubricant in just the right grade and the right amount for every part [Music] yes the body is wonderful the hand for example is a Marvel of mechanical adaptability it can perform a multitude of tasks old man has been able to make a mechanical hand that will feed a printing press but that hand can't thread a needle or perform an operation or paint a picture the human hand can perform all these activities and thousands more there's no doubt but what man needed a hand just like this but was the need alone enough to bring it into existence still more wonderful as the human eye the camera man's nearest mechanical approach to the eye resembles it in many ways for any camera whether it's a tiny model small enough to fit into your vest pocket or a giant aerial camera has a lens similar in design and function to the lens of the human eye sometimes the islands becomes damaged or clouded and requires surgery and here in an actual operation the islands is removed and we see what a perfect little Optical instrument it is [Music] the eye functions far more efficiently than the lens of the most expensive camera final lens is focused on an object at a given distance and that distance has changed the object becomes blurred and the lens must be refocused to the new distance in the camera this focusing must be done by hand but in the eye it's automatic strong muscles change the focus thousands of times each day without a thought on our part the camera also has a means for controlling the amount of light that reaches the film an iris diaphragm copied from and named after the iris of the human eye which automatically changes according to light now the pictures the eye gives us are not black and white their color pictures and they're not stills they're Motion Pictures [Music] and they're not silent they're sound pictures [Applause] thank you do you know that the music you're hearing is being played all over again on a perfect little musical instrument inside your ear we think of the sound as being produced by the piano and of course in one sense it is but actually the piano is as silent as a tomb and is merely producing vibrations in the air as the keys are struck felt hammers strike the strings causing them to vibrate each at its own frequency the vibrating strings at the air pulsating to the same frequencies these pulsations are transmitted to the outer ear down the auditory canal and through the mechanical linkage of the middle ear to the cochlea which is all rolled up like a cockle shell the cochlea could be stretched out we would discover a musical instrument similar to the piano but far more wonderful and complex the ear has more than 24 000 strings these two notes are as close as any the piano can produce but the ears piano can produce 10 tones between these two and more than 1500 different tones altogether when the piano was played hmm [Music] the ears remarkable little keyboard plays the same tones and sends corresponding signals along individual lines to the brain of course the outer ear operates in air but the cochlea is filled with a liquid the transmission of sound from Air to a liquid is one of the most difficult problems known to science but in the ear this problem is beautifully solved by the mechanical preciseness of the middle ear with its two diaphragms of just the right size and three connecting bones with the exact leverage required the eardrum is like a piston it has an area of 90 Square millimeters the smaller diaphragm an area of 3.2 Square millimeters these two diaphragms must be joined by a mechanical leverage of two to one in the ear these tiny Bones the ossicles are exactly right for the job they are a fixed size that must not change from the Cradle to the Grave the little fellow has a lot of growing to do before he's as big as Dad all the bones in his body must grow and develop all that is but the ossicles of his ears they have to be the right size at the start and never change throughout life these are the actual Bones from the ear of an adult and a child can it be just an accident that they are the only bones in a baby's body that do not grow that are fully developed at birth the ear is one of the most efficient sound detectors known to man capable of hearing the Roar of a cannon or the rustle of leaves and under ideal conditions even the footfalls of a cat but at the University of California at Los Angeles there is a place where we can hear sounds so soft that the footballs of a cat would seem deafening by comparison even the sub-basement of the physics building far below the surface of the Earth is the most unusual room where it is possible to study the amazing sensitivity of the human ear we find ourselves shut off from extraneous offside noises surrounded by prisms of Spun glass that absorb incidental sound such as our own breathing it takes time for our senses to become adjusted to the absence of familiar sounds in this strange environment but before long we hear noises we never really heard before the sound of air molecules beating against our eardrums the sound of our heart pounding against our ribs did you ever see a living beating human heart a rare operation enables us to see this marvelous little pump it pumps 12 pints of blood through hundreds of thousands of miles of blood vessels every minute and in one day pumps enough blood to fill a large gasoline truck to overflowing during a lifespan it would fill a string of tank cars 50 miles long and beat two and one-half thousand million times without a single shutdown for repairs foreign have you ever wondered what goes on in the brain of a homing pigeon somewhere within its tiny head is locked a secret no man has ever solved a secret that enables it to take to the air long distances from home Circle about a few minutes and get its bearings in some mysterious way and then fly straight home over long miles of unfamiliar territory because of the pigeon's strange homing ability pigeon raising has become a popular Hobby this hand-fed youngster doesn't look much like the expert flyer he will someday be and yet even at this early age he's banded with a number that will identify him through racing days as soon as the young are able to fly they are released from the home Loft on daily training flights like athletes they must build up their speed and endurance through many weeks of strenuous training the training flights are short at first with the birds circling about overhead only a few minutes and then returning to The Landing porch but as they grow older and stronger they're ready for longer flights and are transported many miles from the home Loft here they are released to Wing their way home over a path they have never seen [Music] then at last the 500 mile race the birds are watered Just Before Dawn to sustain them on their long journey home and at Sunrise pigendum's greatest race classic gets underway as thousands of experienced Flyers take to the air [Music] no one ever taught these birds the way home no one ever showed them the path they should take and yet so unerringly do they Wing their way across hundreds of unfamiliar miles that the time of their arrival home can be predicted almost exactly foreign but pigeons are small time operators compared with the Pacific Golden Plover a bird rarely seen outside of our field museums this feathered Globetrotter flies so far it needs two suits of clothes one for Arctic weather and the other for tropical wear [Music] lives and mates in eastern Siberia and Alaska but it Winters in the Hawaiian Islands in late summer the adult birds make the long migration Journey traveling 2 000 miles over Open Sea without stopping for food or rest they fly unerringly to these pinpoint Islands into vast Pacific Juniors left at home because he's too young to make the trip but many weeks later as soon as he's able to fly he too feels the urge to migrate and he sets out for a goal he has never seen to reach it he must Fly 2 000 miles over an unmarked path he has never traveled before and the birds with him can't show him the way they've never made the trip before either but what prompts the golden Plover to set out for a place he has never seen just think what would happen if his navigation were off and he missed those tiny Islands the migration Flight of the American Plover is even more amazing it travels from northern Canada to Labrador and then across 2 000 miles of pathless seas without a stop and on down to Argentina the journey home is by a different route and again the Young making the trip for the first time fly these thousands of miles unaccompanied by any bird that has ever made the trip before but the greatest migrant of all is the Arctic turn starting from within eight degrees of the North Pole it spans more than 11 000 miles in a record-breaking flight to the South Pole [Music] after a brief period within the Antarctic Circle it makes the long return trip to complete the world's longest migration flight 22 000 miles over unfamiliar Land and Sea [Music] to keep a modern plane on its course requires an array of complicated instruments charts plotters and Celestial navigation equipment Long Beach Long Beach clear scattered clouds at 3500 visibility eight temperature six zero 2.48 altimeter 2988 winds west southwest one three Clover Tower this is nc-275 landing instructions please over nc-275 this is clover Tower Runway 3-0 cleared to land Clover Tower nc-275 turning final foreign that all the Ingenuity of man cannot duplicate [Music] say what's this something out of a nightmare could be if you dream of bats the bat is a mysterious creature the only mammal that flies like other mammals it Bears its young alive and suckles them at its breast this is typical back country only a bat could feel at home here but rents are reasonable and bad Apartments easy to find that is for bats they are but sciat has spent long hours searching for the bat hideouts and the main object of their interest the bat's remarkable abilities in flight foreign preparations are made for technical studies at the spots where the bats have been located as the bats emerge in search of food important information for future analysis is obtained [Music] and then our official bat catcher swings into action in order that some of the bats may be taken to the laboratory for a closer study [Music] at the Moody Institute of science the bats quickly become adjusted to their new environment normally these bats feed on insects they catch on the wing but in the lab they'll settle for anything we can dig up Mickey was an orphan when we found him but he quickly became the lab pet somehow he had his own ideas about food even a doll's nursing bottle wasn't much of an attraction at first but it wasn't long before Mickey felt right at home with his bottle and in a few short days the two were inseparable but life isn't all worms and nursing bottles in a science lab there's work to be done even for bats these bats never served in the Army but they know what an obstacle course is the bat's Wings spread far exceeds the space between the crossbars only clever maneuvering will permit him to fly between them as the bat is released we cross our fingers and hope you'll do what the book says [Music] now watch this bats are not blind they have eyes and they can see but to keep the bat's success in avoiding obstacles is not his ability to see to prove it we'll blindfold him and put him through another test blindfolded he Dodges those bars just as skillfully as he did before [Music] but how does he do it well science knows that bats emit strange cries in flight they can't be picked up by the ordinary microphone they're far beyond the range of the human ear but a very special high frequency amplifier tuned to 32 000 cycles for this particular bat translates these inaudible sounds into sounds we can hear [Music] through numerous experiments science learned that the bat's ears are extremely sensitive to high-pitched sounds and the question arose can the bat's own cries be signals that guide it in flight well let's tie the bat's mouth closed so we can't make these sounds and see what happens incidentally here's the only creature we know that can get into trouble by keeping his mouth shut [Music] science has proved conclusively that bats are guided in Flight by Echoes of their signal cries why that's actually a kind of radar man's radar takes tons of equipment and a large crew of men to operate it but the bat carries its remarkable radar around in its head radar that guides it safely through the intense darkness of the caves that keeps it from colliding with obstacles it cannot see or with the thousands of other bats flying through the same Darkness how did the bat learn to use radar so many ages before it was even a dream in the mind of man where did the bat get such marvelous equipment obviously this is all a part of an intelligent plan but whose intelligence the bats if we were to visit the beaches of Southern California on certain spring and summer evenings we'd find them dotted with campfires but the people around these fires are not picnickers believe it or not these folks are fishing yes Grunion fishing and by tradition the hot dogs and the marshmallows are all a part of this unusual sport but now it's HR on Grunion night and here comes the lookout shouting hey Grunion come on come on and they're off in the strangest sport on Earth [Music] but wait a minute where's the fishing tackle you can't fish without poles or Nets or Kenya it looks like all you need for this kind of fishing is a reckless enthusiasm at a good boarding house grab oh yes and the bucket you'd really have some fun trying to carry an arm load of these fellas yes and dry clothes to go home in are a must for Grunion fishermen because in the excitement something like this always seems to happen Fish Out of Water yes and these fish haven't been washed up on the beach by accident they deliberately come out of the water to lay their eggs on shore the only fish in the world that spawn on land fish nesting on land one of the rarest of all biological phenomena a spectacle so unique it can be witnessed nowhere in the world except on a few Southern California beaches fish depend upon water for life just as we depend upon air and yet at the very risk of its life the Grunion comes out of the water into this foreign hostile environment here the female digs into the sand tail first and Laser eggs once they are fertilized the desperate struggle for survival begins if she misses the next wave she has little chance to survive [Music] pigs are always late when the water is far up on the beach then night after night the waters recede until they reach the lowest tide by then the eggs may be hundreds of feet from the water's edge far from the element in which the fish must eventually live here the eggs develop lying buried in the warm moist sand on the beaches of Southern California in the early spring or summer it's possible to find these eggs by digging almost anywhere along the high tide line careful searching uncovers tiny pockets of these brightly colored eggs [Music] for graphic laboratory of the Moody Institute of science the embryonic development which normally takes place under the sand is studied with the microscope these eggs were fertilized only seconds ago and now one is being prepared for observation within this tiny egg a miracle is about to take place with the aid of the lapse time photomicrographic equipment which compresses days into seconds on the screen we will be able to witness this amazing spectacle the magical unfolding of life through cell division the first faint stirrings of Life come when the blastodermal cap seen in the circle divides into two separate cells in about 30 minutes the second cleavage becomes evident resulting in four cells successive divisions produce 8 16 32 64 and so on up into the hundreds of thousands of cells this formless cluster is actually a fish in the making it contains all the characteristics of the adult Grunion its size its shape its habits yes even the The Germ of that mysterious wisdom by which it will someday be able to perfectly time its spawning with the movement of the tides food for the growing embryonic fish is supplied by numerous globules of oil in the center of the egg with every surge the cells divide until eventually there will be Millions upon millions of them each having just as much claim to being the original cell as any of the millions of others and yet they're all different soon they will take their place in the various parts of the body as bones and blood and scales and fins [Music] out of this indistinguishable mass of cells and some mysterious unknown way the form of a fish is building up around an invisible intangible framework but where is the mold or the pattern that is shaping these cells into a living creature the first recognizable features are the head and the eyes and the first action of the fish controlled by its newly formed muscles is revealed by the lapse time camera as a series of convulsive jerks The Head and the eyes are more plainly visible now and on the opposite side of the egg the tail is beginning to form [Music] at this stage of its growth the embryonic fish is four days old The Head and the eyes are well formed now and the simple heart already at work can be seen [Music] after eight to ten days the egg is ready to hatch but remember when it does it will be a fish if it were to hatch while buried here in the sand far from the water it wouldn't have a chance in the world to live but the Grunion egg never hatches until the water reaches it and then it hatches instantly you can keep these eggs buried in the sand for weeks or months and they won't hatch now let's pour some salt water on them and see what happens [Music] this mysterious hatching of the egg is just as definitely connected with the movement of the tides as is the spawning [Music] there are two main Tides which have their Peak at the full and the Dark of the Moon this complex pattern represents the rise and fall of the daily tides over a period of a month suppose the eggs were laid any night before the peak tied a higher tide the following night would wash them out of the Sheltering sand and expose them to their enemies or if they were laid on a night too long after the peak they would be washed out by a rising tide just a few nights later before they had a chance to develop actually there are only a few nights when the Grunion can lay her eggs successfully When the tide is at its peak or the first few nights after the peak and she must choose not only the right night but the right hour of that night or even if she should lay her eggs on the right night but when the tide is still Rising they would be washed out by that very tide or if she should wait too long after the peak and lay her eggs while that night's tide is receding they would be washed out by the rising tide of the next night and destroyed only during this magic hour can the eggs be laid where they will grow and develop safely but that isn't all for during this hour certain waves are higher than others so the Grunion has to choose not only the right month the right night of that month and the right hour of that night but even the right wave during that hour [Music] terrible and treacherous are the tides the story of their treachery is told in warning markers along many a fog bound Rocky coats no sea captain can guide his vessel safely without a knowledge of the tides but the Grunion possesses a far better knowledge of the tides than the most experienced Mariner and is able to turn these tides so destructive to man to its own advantage by them preserve its very life the life of its young [Music] remember that first Garden you had when you were a youngster you planted the seeds and covered them so carefully you rather expected the plants to pop out of the ground like this but somehow it didn't work out quite that way and as you waited you got to wondering well maybe I planted those seeds upside down well is there a right and a wrong end to a seed on opening a bean seed we find that the embryonic root points in a definite Direction this determines the direction of initial growth so it is possible to plant a seed upside down no matter which way the seed is placed in the ground the plant always grows in the right direction even if we try to fool the growing seed it doesn't get mixed up the root reverses its direction and continues to grow downward [Music] if we turn a growing plant on its side the stem will grow upward even if it has to bend at right angles to do so of course the root grows down because down is the logical place to find water but if it encounters a dry region like the red area it limits its growth to the area of moisture [Music] now the shoot grows up because up is the logical place to find the light it must have but if light can't be found by growing upward the Chute will grow in any direction to reach it even if it has to detour through a small hole to get there plant two seeds at the same time grow one in the light the other in the dark the one in the light soon has well-developed leaves but the one in the dark has wasted no energy in developing leaves which would be useless in the dark it has expanded all of its energy and a frantic effort to reach the light this is the principle that causes a tree to defy the law of gravity and reach high into the air have you ever paused to consider the enormous forces at work in a single tree this tree is probably the oldest living thing on Earth it was almost 2 000 years old when Christ was born for 3 800 years this tree has been lifting at least 10 tons of water each day to its top a total of more than 10 trillion foot pounds of work it is evident that there is an infinite power Behind The Mystery of Life but is this a blind unintelligent impersonal Force well you've been thinking haven't you that's all right don't feel embarrassed it's a good thing it's good to think once in a while about things like where you came from and why you're here maybe about where you're going now about that matter of origin no doubt you form some opinion as to where you came from well let's look at it this way suppose that you've never seen and you've never heard of a watch then one day you find one you're intrigued by its appearance and by that strange sound it makes if you're anything like the rest of us it isn't long before you have the back off trying to find out what makes it tick now you're still more intrigued with the intricate wonders of that mechanism if you're observant it it isn't long before you notice that there's a definite relationship between the movement of those hands and the passage of time you discover that you have a useful article but now you've got to explain the origin of the watch well you might develop the theory that the watch just happened especially if you were trying to convince yourself that nobody owned the watch You could argue that the atoms and the molecules of the various parts just got together by accident but the simplest kind of reasoning should tell you that somebody made those parts somebody put them together for a purpose well how about that eye with its automatic focus and light control or that tiny musical instrument inside the human ear or that heart with its endless capacity for work or the bat with its radar Magic or the directional Wizardry of birds in flight or the Grunion egg with its tiny cells building life about a ghost-like frame or the seeking Wonder of growing things is all this the product of flying chance you know when you come right down to it there are only two views we can take either this all happened by accident or it's the result of design and plan you might just shrug your shoulders and say well it's just a matter of personal opinion and let it go with that you might that is but for the fact that this is an issue which vitally affects your whole life it's going to determine how you think and how you live for after all if man is just an accident then he has no responsibility except that responsibility which he chooses to impose upon himself there's no law but the law of convenience and desire there's no ultimate right or wrong and when people think and live according to that philosophy the result is chaos but if on the other hand there's a plan then there's a planner if there's a design there's a designer in other words there's a God you know it isn't hard to believe in a god it's the simplest and the most logical thing in the world oh I know that some people are honestly confused by the Maze of conflicting arguments I guess maybe they just try to make the thing too hard but for a lot of people the problem gets complicated only when they begin to worry about who owns the watch in other words believing in God involves a responsibility and they don't want that responsibility they don't want anybody telling them what's right or what's wrong or how to live or act not even The God Who made them but when you get as many people as there are in the world today living and acting as if there were no God it's no wonder the world's in the mess foreign it doesn't seem at all far-fetched to say that the only hope for the world as a whole are for you as an individual is faith in God not just belief in a Supreme Being or a great force but belief on a personal God Who Loved You enough to provide a Salvation for you for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life [Music]