Powers of Ten

Powers of Ten is a 1977 short documentary film which depicts the relative scale of the Universe in factors of ten.

Related Topics:
1977 - Documentary film - Universe

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It begins with a couple picnicking in a park; the view is that of one meter across. The viewpoint, accompanied by expositionary voiceover, then slowly zooms out to a view ten meters across ( or 101 m in standard form). The zoom-out continues, to a view of 100 meters (102 m), then 1 kilometer (103 m), and so on, increasing the perspective—the picnic is revealed to be taking place near Chicago, Illinois's waterfront—and continuing to zoom out to a field of view is 1026 meters, or the size of the observable universe. The camera then zooms back in to the picnic, and then to views of negative powers of ten—10-1 m (10 centimeters), and so forth, until we are viewing a carbon nucleus inside the man's hand at a range of 10-18 meter.

Related Topics:
Meter - Voiceover - Standard form - Chicago, Illinois - Centimeter

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The idea for the film appears to have come from the 1957 book Cosmic View, by Kees Boeke.

Related Topics:
Cosmic View - Kees Boeke

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It was written and directed by Charles and Ray Eames. The film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Related Topics:
Charles - Ray Eames - Library of Congress - National Film Registry

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The film has inspired a science exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences, which was shown from June 1, 2002 to January 5, 2003.

Related Topics:
California Academy of Sciences - June 1 - 2002 - January 5 - 2003

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There is also a 1984 book of the same title, by Philip Morrison and Phylis Morrison; it contains a sequence of pictures starting with the universe and moving in powers of ten down to subatomic sizes.

Related Topics:
Philip Morrison - Universe

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There are some errors in the film. What is shown as one square metre is actually somewhat more than that. When zooming out, the 107 m rectangle fits snuggly around the Earth, when it should really be somewhat bigger (but when zooming back in it is shown correctly). And the stars are often shown as a fixed photograph that does not zoom out or in. This becomes more apparent when lines are drawn to show constellations.

Related Topics:
Earth - Constellations

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Also, the film tries to show what was known at the time. Superstrings are not mentioned. Also, quarks are mentioned merely as a question, even though the concept was already accepted for about a decade at the time. Furthermore, subatomic particles are shown as spheres, but that is just one way to view them (waves are another).

Related Topics:
Superstrings - Quarks - Subatomic particles

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An interresting aspect mentioned by Robbert Dijkgraaf is that when one zooms out into the universe one goes back in time and thus the farthest image, of the whole universe, is really one of the universe at the 'time' of the Big Bang, when it was infinitely small. In this sense, the two extremes come together.

Related Topics:
Robbert Dijkgraaf - Big Bang

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