Hidden miracles of the natural world

We live in a world of unseeable beauty, so subtle and delicate that it is imperceptible to the human eye. To bring this invisible world to light, filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg bends the boundaries of time and space with high-speed cameras, time lapses and microscopes. At TED2014, he shares highlights from his latest project, a 3D film titled "Mysteries of the Unseen World," which slows down, speeds up, and magnifies the astonishing wonders of nature.

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 time lapse 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-lapse 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 flier in nature.

It can hover, fly backwards,

even upside down.

And by tracking markers 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 that 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 100 times thinner

than human hair.

On there is bacteria,

and near that bacteria, 10 times smaller,

a virus.

Inside of that, 10 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 out 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)