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Powers of Ten
1977 · Film · documentary · 9 min
Directed by Ray Eames, Charles Eames
A scientific film essay, narrated by Phil Morrison. A set of pictures of two picnickers in a park, with the area of each frame one-tenth the size of the one before. Starting from a view of the entire known universe, the camera gradually zooms in until we are viewing the subatomic particles on a man's hand.
11 positive7 neutralfrom 18 commenters
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20 comments on Hacker News
I think there are a few movies that made me realize how much the space is vast, empty and adverse to life.
I think it would be nice for people to take a look at them:
- Aniara (2018)
- High Life (2018)
and maybe in a less artistic view:
- Powers of Ten (1977) yt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0
I like this work exploring magnitude. The Eames film does this explicitly, “Powers of Ten” (1977)
A happy find is an exhibition catalogue on the theme of the numinous pre- and post-photography:
Clair, Jean. Cosmos from Goya to De Chirico, from Friedrich to Kiefer: art in pursuit of the infinite (2000)
https://youtu.be/0fKBhvDjuy0
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19133047W/Cosmos?edition=key%3A/books/OL6851787M
Yes, the Eames were much more than furniture designers (often for Herman Miller) - they also made films like the famous "Powers of Ten"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0
When I was a kid the local science museum had this version on a film loop.
Now the local science museum has Cosmic Eye (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Eye)[1] on a loop, which was inspired by Powers of Ten and by Cosmic Zoom[2]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Are9dDbW24
[2] https://www.nfb.ca/film/cosmic_zoom/
The 1977 film Powers of Ten is short and simple but gives one a better feeling for what infinity represents (40 orders of magnitude isn't much in contrast to infinity, but is very large):
https://youtu.be/0fKBhvDjuy0
There's also an hour-long talk by Prof. Raymond Flood on Cantor's Infinities on YT that covers all the mathematical history.
The video that this one is alluding (or paying tribute?) to is called "Powers of Ten" from 1977. If that does not sound familiar, I recommend you watch it as well. It's a gem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0
Powers of Ten was also a 1977 short film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0
(Duplicating my own comment from a few months ago.)
> Several years later, in 1968, architect Charles Eames, along with his wife Ray, directed a "rough sketch" film of the same concept and finally completed the work (entitled the "Powers of Ten") with the assistance of Philip Morrison in 1977.
The video they talk about here is available on Youtube and is still quite interesting, despite looking a bit dated now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0
I really liked the Powers of Ten article / film / book originated within SA which certainly doesn't justify any current editorial choices, but is I hope a fun video for anyone who hasn't seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0
There's (analog) prior art for the zooming from 1957, 1968, and 1977. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powers_of_Ten_(film)
Charles and Ray Eames made a film in 1977 with a similar idea:
https://www.eamesoffice.com/the-work/powers-of-ten/
Years ago, when I prototyped an orders-of-magnitude physical-properties playground web app, I found the development bottleneck was searching for video clips and images. For example, find clips showing the heartbeat of a {goldfish,mouse,cat,dog,child,adult,horse,elephant,whale}, for a <kg - body mass - metabolic/heart rate> association (metabolic rate scales with body mass). Jiggling an oom kg scale, maybe you're shown a cat or mouse, and maybe a mouse heart patter, and whale's slow swish. Providing a massive (sorry) hidden curriculum. They all exist on youtube, and might be fair use for OER content, but finding them was not plausible. And still isn't, even with commercial use of stock videos.
In the 1950's, the first Powers of Ten zoom book was hand drawn from books over years. Around 1980, a PoT film and book could use photos, but still good people made mistakes. Now creating a PoT zoom book can be homework. A video a school project. An XR a professional project. Technology, media search, acquisition, and handling costs, throttles science education content.
Necessary but not sufficient, of course. The first book might have been imagined and created earlier, but wasn't. 1950's astronomy textbooks needn't have had the color of the Sun wrong, and the same now in 2020. Though, anticipated difficulty of creation does throttle imagination...
If OP search were deployed on youtube, and fair use in its current form was allowed to survive, providing a historical step-change in the abundance and accessibility of reusable content, how might you imagine using that?
These would make great paintings, for sure. I’d hang a big one in the house.
The original Cosmos had a great episode on life at different scales, and the magnitude you’d have to view earth at to so see evidence of life.
Before that, there were the Eames with their great “Powers of Ten” film.
reminded me of this (old?pfff) film: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powers_of_Ten_(film)
and, dont remember who of science-fiction or phylosophy writer said, "matter is an encoding of information". Might be Pirsig? not sure
Thanks to both of you for the praise.
You might also be interested in "The Secret Life of Machines". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Life_of_Machines and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDpNQQqdSh8&list=PLByTa5duIolYRtq45Cz_GmtzfWJyA4bik .
Philip Morrison (from Ring of Truth) is perhaps best known for his powers-of-10 movie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powers_of_Ten_(film) .
He was also a columnist for Scientific American. The only column I remember is when he decided to make bread from scratch. Really from scratch. They grew wheat in a small plot of land near his home in Cambridge, Mass.
He's part of the generation that developed the first atomic bomb. He carried the first core to the Trinity test site in the back seat of his car, and helped load the weapons on the planes that went to Japan.
The Powers of Ten film comes to mind, helps put things in perspective as well. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powers_of_Ten_(film)
It's a classic, by Charles and Ray Eames.
If you want to see their amazing film work (and they made quite a few cool films on computing thanks to IBM) take a look at this:
https://www.youtube.com/user/EamesOffice
If you want to be inspired by an amazing product roll out take a look at their video for the SX 70 (this is one of the amazing products that Steve Jobs admired Edwin H. Land for):
https://youtu.be/GXPYera597U
If you're a fan of data visualization you MUST see The Powers of Ten if you've never seen it before:
https://youtu.be/0fKBhvDjuy0
This reminded me of the famous short film, "Powers of Ten" (9 minutes long), which depicts the universe over scales spanning 40 orders of magnitude. Note that the film was made with 1968 technology.
The film can be seen here: http://www.powersof10.com/film
Ha, ok 8MM film works as well :) I think thats how I saw "Powers of Ten" originally anyways.
It's like a choose-your-own-adventure version of the Eames Brothers' "Powers of Ten" movie!