-
What is the intersection
-
between technology, art, and science?
-
Curiosity and wonder,
-
because it drives us to explore,
-
because we're surrounded by things we can't see.
-
And I love to use film
-
to take us on a journey
-
through portals of time and space,
-
to make the invisible visible,
-
because what that does,
-
it expands our horizons,
-
it transforms our perception,
-
it opens our minds
-
and it touches our heart.
-
So here are some scenes
-
from my 3D IMAX film
-
"Mysteries of the Unseen World."
-
(Music)
-
There is movement which is too slow
-
for our eyes to detect,
-
and timelapse makes us discover
-
and broaden our perspective of life.
-
We can see how organisms emerge and grow,
-
how a vine survives by creeping from the forest floor
-
to look at the sunlight.
-
And at the grand scale,
-
time lapse allows us to see our planet in motion.
-
We can view not only the vast sweep of nature,
-
but the restless movement of humanity.
-
Each streaking dot represents a passenger plane,
-
and by turning air traffic data
-
into time lapse imagery,
-
we can see something that's above us constantly
-
but invisible:
-
the vast network of air travel over the United States.
-
We can do the same thing with ships at sea.
-
We can turn data into a time lapse view
-
of a global economy in motion.
-
And decades of data
-
give us the view of our entire planet
-
as a single organism
-
sustained by currents circulating
throughout the oceans
-
and by clouds swirling through the atmosphere,
-
pulsing with lightning,
-
crowned by the aurora borealis.
-
It may be the ultimate time-lapsed image:
-
the anatomy of Earth brought to life.
-
At the other extreme,
-
there are things that move too fast for our eyes,
-
but we have technology that can look into that world
-
as well.
-
With high-speed cameras,
-
we can do the opposite of time lapse.
-
We can shoot images that are thousands of times
-
faster than our vision.
-
And we can see how nature's
ingenious devices work,
-
and perhaps we can even imitate them.
-
When a dragonfly flutters by,
-
you may not realize,
-
but it's the greatest flyer in nature.
-
It can hover, fly backwards,
-
even upside down.
-
And by tracking markets on an insect's wings,
-
we can visualize the air flow that they produce.
-
Nobody knew the secret,
-
but high speed shows that a dragonfly
-
can move all four wings in different directions
-
at the same time.
-
And what we learn can lead us
-
to new kinds of robotic flyers
-
that can expand our vision
-
of important and remote places.
-
We're giants, and we're unaware
-
of things that are too small for us to see.
-
The electron microscope fires electrons
-
which creates images
-
which can magnify things by as much
-
as a million times.
-
This is the egg of a butterfly.
-
And there are unseen creatures
living all over your body,
-
including mites which spend their entire lives
-
dwelling on your eyelashes,
-
crawling over your skin at night.
-
Can you guess what this is?
-
Shark skin.
-
A caterpillar's mouth.
-
The eye of a fruit fly.
-
An eggshell.
-
A flea.
-
A snail's tongue.
-
We think we know most of the animal kingdom,
-
but there may be millions of tiny species
-
waiting to be discovered.
-
A spider also has great secrets,
-
because spider's silk thread is pound for pound
-
stronger than steel
-
but completely elastic.
-
This journey will take us all the way down
-
to the nano world.
-
The silk is a hundred times thinner
-
than human hair.
-
On there is bacteria,
-
and near that bacteria, ten times smaller,
-
a virus.
-
Inside of that, ten times smaller,
-
three strands of DNA,
-
and nearing the limit of our
most powerful microscopes,
-
single carbon atoms.
-
With the tip of a powerful microscope,
-
we can actually move atoms
-
and begin to create amazing nano devices.
-
Some could one day patrol our body
-
for all kinds of diseases
-
and clean up clogged arteries along the way.
-
Tiny chemical machines of the future
-
can one day, perhaps, repair DNA.
-
We are on the threshold of extraordinary advances,
-
born of our drive
-
to unveil the mysteries of life.
-
So under an endless rain of cosmic dust,
-
the air is full of pollen,
-
micro-diamonds and jewels from other planets,
-
and supernova explosions.
-
People go about their lives
-
surrounded by the unseeable.
-
Knowing that there's so much around us
-
we can see
-
forever changes our understanding of the world,
-
and by looking at unseen worlds, we recognize
-
that we exist in the living universe,
-
and this new perspective creates wonder
-
and inspires us to become explorers
-
in our own backyards.
-
Who knows what awaits to be seen
-
and what new wonders will transform our lives.
-
We'll just have to see.
-
(Applause)
-
Thank you. (Applause)
Yasushi Aoki
Correction:
Knowing that there's so much around us we can see
#-> we can't see
Krystian Aparta
The English transcript was updated on 5/1/2015.