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Java Powers of Ten
WeeMan writes "Remember that cool video/film you might have seen in your high school science class "Powers of Ten"? Well Florida State University (FSU) has their own well done Java version of Powers of Ten. For those who have not seen it, basically it's a continuous zooming in of images by powers of ten, starting with galactic superclusters/walls and ending at the quantum scale. The FSU site also has some cool close up images of many chip designs here, Java virtual microscopy there, and plenty of other cool applets and microscopy images (like microscopic images of beer from around the world : )"
Hey! Using this technology, you might finally be able to see it!
Heh, I want to see the "powers of ten" movie centered on a nude sunbather... :) (Hey, this is Slashdot..)
But yeah, I remember the movie. IIRC it held the record for "longest contiunous zoom" or something...
This
Some more microscopy pics of chips, concentrating on some of the funny things designers put on their layouts is at Silicon Zoo. Cartoon characters, signs, messages and a marriage dedication... :)
a grrl & her server
The Power of Ten video is the work of the late artists Charles and Ray Eames. It is available from the Eames Office.
I was hoping I would be able to zoom out untill I saw the creation of the universe... but I suppose you cant have everything in life.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
well, you did say Java, didn't you?
-f
www.blackant.net
It's Australian for Russian cubism, mate!
I have been pwned because my
Well, it has a full set of images over a logarithmic range, but I'm not sure I'd say its well done. It's really just a slide show with a Powerpoint-esque transition effect.
There are a number of slides that are quite bad transitions. Look at the 1 nanometer->1 angstrom transition. The 1 angstrom image bears no resemblance to the 1 nm image; the corners of the "zoom" rectangle from one image should correspond to the outer corners on the next image. Similar problems exist throughout the slides in space.
As I recall, one of the beautiful things with the movie is that the transitions are seamless; the zoom out was continuous, and you never really got the impression that the images must have been from different sources
Russ %-)
... and never, ever play leapfrog with a unicorn.
The absolute resolution of any optical system, be it a common microscope, or a super yet to be invented CCD, is limited to half the wavelength of the visible light being used. Obviously deep violet light gives the maximum resolution. The electron microscope was a fantastic breakthrough because it could discern features much smaller than half the wavelength of violet light. That also explains why pictures taken with an electron microscope are always black and white (or colorized): there is no actual "light" there at all to give the object color. Below a certain size, color is impossible.
l ca lc/
Here's a page giving the simple formulas, as well as an automatic calculator:
http://www.microscopyu.com/tutorials/flash/pixe
The short answer is, I guess, you can't. Quantum objects like molecules, atoms, and sub-atomic particles will always be "invisible", as they are all much, much smaller than a wavelength of visible light, which is what we really define vision as. We can really only infer their existence from their indirect effects, which is the only way we know any of them are real. Besides, to actually "see" anything amounts to measuring the position and velocity of an object to as high an accuracy as the size of the object, so the Heisenberg uncertainty principle makes it impossible to see anything so small...
An attempt to actually zoom into a proton to see it using high-energy gamma ray photons would require a photon wavelength of less than 1 fm, or about 10^23 Hz. This gives a photon energy of roughly 2.5 GeV, which is comparable to the energies generated at the Fermilab or CERN particle accelerators. I guess this is probably enough energy to turn the proton into something else entirely even before you could see it. A similar attempt to view an atom would require a photon wavelength of 1 angstrom, a wavelength of about 10^18 Hz, and a photon energy of about 12 keV, quite enough to completely ionize the atom and strip away all of its electrons, leaving you with nothing to see. A similar calculation for the DNA strands at 10^-9 m gives an approximately 124 eV photon energy, which is also sufficient to ionize some of the molecules; you may be able to get a picture, but it will be a very hazy one (the best electron microscopy has been able to just barely make out the double helix structure of DNA).
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
Funny thing is, we don't really know what the milky way looks like from a distance. For the most part we make assumptions based on the structure of our galaxy compared to others that we CAN see. However, there is still much a lot of leeway in how the actual shape might turn out to be someday when technology is capable of making a more accurate ascertation.
Also, don't forget, but we can only see a fraction of our own galaxy, and a large swath of the universe can't be observed either since our own galaxy is so dense that the center of the galaxy blocks our view to the other side. Its only pure luck that we're located so close to the edge of the galaxy that we're able to see out at all.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
This is an insult to the slashdot community ! Can you think two seconds before posting ?
The idea of an alien guy pointing a camera to a tiny litle planet 10 million lightyears away, and still managing to aim at ground (25 pc of the earth surface), on a living organism, is simply ridiculous. For me, all remaining credibility was lost when a well centered quark appeared on the screen.
Also, how could this guy be thinking in decimal system like us ? He probably thinks in base e or in base fibonacci !
More so, if we suppose that this altruistic guy sends it to earth via radio waves (oh no, I forget, he probably aims a "L.A.S.E.R" to us too !), it would have to travel for 10e6 years before reaching a LISTENING receiver. And last time I checked, SETI didn't find anything.
Get a clue !
But last I read, the Milky Way was thought to be a bared spiral.
This guy, these guys, and most convincingly, these guys, seem to all agree.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
OK, but let's credit the person who, I think, really originated the idea. When I was a kid, I was given a wonderful book called "Cosmic View: The Universe in Forty Jumps," by a Dutch schoolteacher named Kees Boeke. It was all drawings, with that wonderful Dutch surrealistic sense of humor--it is centered on a school courtyard in The Netherlands, which just happens to have a dead whale lying in it.
It came out in 1957.
There's really no question, the Eames movie and Morrison book are a "remake" of "Cosmic View." The film and book explicitly give credit to Boeke.
To my astonishment, I find that the book is available online at
http://www.vendian.org/mncharity/cosmicview/
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!