Cosmic View

When she was in middle school, my daughter told me that they were learning a very complicated concept in Mathematics – factors! She just did not seem to comprehend the theory. I showed her a ten-minute film on my computer and she could easily understand the idea of base and exponents.

The film begins with the camera 1 meter (10⁰) above a man. The camera zooms out to a view ten meters (10¹) to a view of the man in a park. It further pans to a view of 100 meters (10²) to Chicago's lakefront. Further on we see on the way the views of Lake Michigan, our earth, our solar system, the Milky Way… the zoom continuing to a view of 10²⁴ - the size of the observable universe.

The camera then zooms back to the man's hand and moves on to zoom into views of negative powers of ten: 10⁻¹ (10 centimeters), and so forth. The zoom moves the range from the surface of the skin to the inside right up to the proton in a carbon atom at 10⁻¹⁶ meter.

The 1977 short film ‘Powers of Ten’ depicts the relative scale of things in the Universe using factors of ten. The film, made by Ray and Charles Eames, is an adaptation of the 1957 book Cosmic View by Kees Boeke. The film thus travels two extreme extents of our universe. However, the lessons from the film go beyond the attempt to understand the universe

The cosmic view guides us on the journey between the larger-picture and the smaller-picture. We need to see ourselves and our situation from a perspective that moves from a wide-angle outlook to a deeper insight. It is only such perspectives that will help us comprehend the larger vision and the minute intricacies of the situation that surrounds us.

Larger and smaller picture holds details new
we must zoom and pan to the cosmic view!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Goa, India.