0:00:01.797,0:00:04.264 So I want to talk a little bit about seeing the world 0:00:04.264,0:00:06.990 from a totally unique point of view, 0:00:06.990,0:00:10.015 and this world I'm going to talk about is the micro world. 0:00:10.015,0:00:12.595 I've found, after doing this for many, many years, 0:00:12.595,0:00:15.311 that there's a magical world behind reality. 0:00:15.311,0:00:18.470 And that can be seen directly through a microscope, 0:00:18.470,0:00:20.575 and I'm going to show you some of this today. 0:00:20.575,0:00:24.262 So let's start off looking at something rather not-so-small, 0:00:24.262,0:00:26.526 something that we can see with our naked eye, 0:00:26.526,0:00:28.967 and that's a bee. So when you look at this bee, 0:00:28.967,0:00:31.863 it's about this size here, it's about a centimeter. 0:00:31.863,0:00:34.151 But to really see the details of the bee, and really 0:00:34.151,0:00:37.880 appreciate what it is, you have to look a little bit closer. 0:00:37.880,0:00:40.966 So that's just the eye of the bee with a microscope, 0:00:40.966,0:00:43.313 and now all of a sudden you can see that the bee has 0:00:43.313,0:00:46.144 thousands of individual eyes called ommatidia, 0:00:46.144,0:00:48.576 and they actually have sensory hairs in their eyes 0:00:48.576,0:00:50.945 so they know when they're right up close to something, 0:00:50.945,0:00:54.649 because they can't see in stereo. 0:00:54.649,0:00:58.353 As we go smaller, here is a human hair. 0:00:58.353,0:01:01.172 A human hair is about the smallest thing that the eye can see. 0:01:01.172,0:01:03.906 It's about a tenth of a millimeter. 0:01:03.906,0:01:05.082 And as we go smaller again, 0:01:05.082,0:01:08.488 about ten times smaller than that, is a cell. 0:01:08.488,0:01:11.071 So you could fit 10 human cells 0:01:11.071,0:01:14.737 across the diameter of a human hair. 0:01:14.737,0:01:16.323 So when we would look at cells, this is how I really got 0:01:16.323,0:01:19.591 involved in biology and science is by looking 0:01:19.591,0:01:22.058 at living cells in the microscope. 0:01:22.058,0:01:24.129 When I first saw living cells in a microscope, I was 0:01:24.129,0:01:28.028 absolutely enthralled and amazed at what they looked like. 0:01:28.028,0:01:31.344 So if you look at the cell like that from the immune system, 0:01:31.344,0:01:33.168 they're actually moving all over the place. 0:01:33.183,0:01:36.933 This cell is looking for foreign objects, 0:01:36.933,0:01:39.290 bacteria, things that it can find. 0:01:39.290,0:01:41.938 And it's looking around, and when it finds something, 0:01:41.938,0:01:44.234 and recognizes it being foreign, 0:01:44.234,0:01:45.526 it will actually engulf it and eat it. 0:01:45.526,0:01:49.810 So if you look right there, it finds that little bacterium, 0:01:49.810,0:01:55.432 and it engulfs it and eats it. 0:01:55.432,0:01:58.613 If you take some heart cells from an animal, 0:01:58.613,0:02:01.509 and put it in a dish, they'll just sit there and beat. 0:02:01.509,0:02:05.099 That's their job. Every cell has a mission in life, 0:02:05.099,0:02:06.900 and these cells, the mission is 0:02:06.900,0:02:10.427 to move blood around our body. 0:02:10.427,0:02:13.211 These next cells are nerve cells, and right now, 0:02:13.211,0:02:16.147 as we see and understand what we're looking at, 0:02:16.147,0:02:18.261 our brains and our nerve cells are actually doing this 0:02:18.261,0:02:20.803 right now. They're not just static. They're moving around 0:02:20.803,0:02:24.305 making new connections, and that's what happens when we learn. 0:02:24.305,0:02:27.095 As you go farther down this scale here, 0:02:27.095,0:02:29.999 that's a micron, or a micrometer, and we go 0:02:29.999,0:02:32.347 all the way down to here to a nanometer 0:02:32.347,0:02:35.104 and an angstrom. Now, an angstrom is the size 0:02:35.104,0:02:38.471 of the diameter of a hydrogen atom. 0:02:38.471,0:02:40.104 That's how small that is. 0:02:40.104,0:02:42.406 And microscopes that we have today can actually see 0:02:42.421,0:02:45.479 individual atoms. So these are some pictures 0:02:45.479,0:02:48.312 of individual atoms. Each bump here is an individual atom. 0:02:48.312,0:02:51.141 This is a ring of cobalt atoms. 0:02:51.141,0:02:53.799 So this whole world, the nano world, this area in here 0:02:53.799,0:02:56.994 is called the nano world, and the nano world, 0:02:56.994,0:03:00.128 the whole micro world that we see, 0:03:00.128,0:03:03.161 there's a nano world that is wrapped up within that, and 0:03:03.161,0:03:07.556 the whole -- and that is the world of molecules and atoms. 0:03:07.556,0:03:10.014 But I want to talk about this larger world, 0:03:10.014,0:03:12.351 the world of the micro world. 0:03:12.351,0:03:16.470 So if you were a little tiny bug living in a flower, 0:03:16.470,0:03:19.621 what would that flower look like, if the flower was this big? 0:03:19.621,0:03:22.136 It wouldn't look or feel like anything that we see 0:03:22.136,0:03:25.430 when we look at a flower. So if you look at this flower here, 0:03:25.430,0:03:27.262 and you're a little bug, if you're on that surface 0:03:27.262,0:03:31.328 of that flower, that's what the terrain would look like. 0:03:31.328,0:03:33.704 The petal of that flower looks like that, so the ant 0:03:33.704,0:03:36.385 is kind of crawling over these objects, and if you look 0:03:36.385,0:03:39.729 a little bit closer at this stigma and the stamen here, 0:03:39.729,0:03:42.474 this is the style of that flower, and you notice 0:03:42.474,0:03:46.699 that it's got these little -- these are like little jelly-like things 0:03:46.699,0:03:51.441 that are what are called spurs. These are nectar spurs. 0:03:51.441,0:03:54.058 So this little ant that's crawling here, it's like 0:03:54.058,0:03:55.884 it's in a little Willy Wonka land. 0:03:55.884,0:04:00.019 It's like a little Disneyland for them. It's not like what we see. 0:04:00.019,0:04:03.922 These are little bits of individual grain of pollen 0:04:03.922,0:04:07.368 there and there, and here is a -- 0:04:07.368,0:04:09.946 what you see as one little yellow dot of pollen, 0:04:09.946,0:04:11.910 when you look in a microscope, it's actually made 0:04:11.910,0:04:15.674 of thousands of little grains of pollen. 0:04:15.674,0:04:17.909 So this, for example, when you see bees flying around 0:04:17.909,0:04:20.714 these little plants, and they're collecting pollen, 0:04:20.714,0:04:23.137 those pollen grains that they're collecting, they pack 0:04:23.137,0:04:25.570 into their legs and they take it back to the hive, 0:04:25.570,0:04:28.200 and that's what makes the beehive, 0:04:28.200,0:04:32.018 the wax in the beehive. And they're also collecting nectar, 0:04:32.018,0:04:35.929 and that's what makes the honey that we eat. 0:04:35.929,0:04:39.186 Here's a close-up picture, or this is actually a regular picture 0:04:39.186,0:04:41.859 of a water hyacinth, and if you had really, really good vision, 0:04:41.859,0:04:44.420 with your naked eye, you'd see it about that well. 0:04:44.420,0:04:47.048 There's the stamen and the pistil. But look what the stamen 0:04:47.048,0:04:50.562 and the pistil look like in a microscope. That's the stamen. 0:04:50.562,0:04:53.213 So that's thousands of little grains of pollen there, 0:04:53.213,0:04:56.499 and there's the pistil there, and these are the little things 0:04:56.499,0:05:00.218 called trichomes. And that's what makes the flower give 0:05:00.218,0:05:04.178 a fragrance, and plants actually communicate 0:05:04.178,0:05:09.572 with one another through their fragrances. 0:05:09.572,0:05:11.940 I want to talk about something really ordinary, 0:05:11.940,0:05:13.864 just ordinary sand. 0:05:13.864,0:05:15.794 I became interested in sand about 10 years ago, 0:05:15.794,0:05:18.355 when I first saw sand from Maui, 0:05:18.355,0:05:21.502 and in fact, this is a little bit of sand from Maui. 0:05:21.502,0:05:24.533 So sand is about a tenth of a millimeter in size. 0:05:24.533,0:05:27.444 Each sand grain is about a tenth of a millimeter in size. 0:05:27.444,0:05:30.027 But when you look closer at this, look at what's there. 0:05:30.027,0:05:33.529 It's really quite amazing. You have microshells there. 0:05:33.529,0:05:35.722 You have things like coral. 0:05:35.722,0:05:39.256 You have fragments of other shells. You have olivine. 0:05:39.256,0:05:41.452 You have bits of a volcano. There's a little bit 0:05:41.452,0:05:44.079 of a volcano there. You have tube worms. 0:05:44.079,0:05:48.805 An amazing array of incredible things exist in sand. 0:05:48.805,0:05:51.484 And the reason that is, is because in a place like this island, 0:05:51.484,0:05:53.850 a lot of the sand is made of biological material 0:05:53.850,0:05:56.847 because the reefs provide a place where all these 0:05:56.847,0:06:00.737 microscopic animals or macroscopic animals grow, 0:06:00.737,0:06:03.075 and when they die, their shells and their teeth 0:06:03.075,0:06:05.417 and their bones break up and they make grains of sand, 0:06:05.417,0:06:08.387 things like coral and so forth. 0:06:08.387,0:06:12.180 So here's, for example, a picture of sand from Maui. 0:06:12.180,0:06:14.717 This is from Lahaina, 0:06:14.717,0:06:16.447 and when we're walking along a beach, we're actually 0:06:16.447,0:06:19.901 walking along millions of years of biological and geological history. 0:06:19.901,0:06:22.368 We don't realize it, but it's actually a record 0:06:22.368,0:06:24.941 of that entire ecology. 0:06:24.941,0:06:28.099 So here we see, for example, a sponge spicule, 0:06:28.099,0:06:30.685 two bits of coral here, 0:06:30.685,0:06:34.535 that's a sea urchin spine. Really some amazing stuff. 0:06:34.535,0:06:36.912 So when I first looked at this, I was -- I thought, 0:06:36.912,0:06:38.661 gee, this is like a little treasure trove here. 0:06:38.661,0:06:40.827 I couldn't believe it, and I'd go around dissecting 0:06:40.827,0:06:44.136 the little bits out and making photographs of them. 0:06:44.136,0:06:46.647 Here's what most of the sand in our world looks like. 0:06:46.647,0:06:49.908 These are quartz crystals and feldspar, 0:06:49.908,0:06:52.369 so most sand in the world on the mainland 0:06:52.369,0:06:56.119 is made of quartz crystal and feldspar. It's the erosion of granite rock. 0:06:56.119,0:07:00.470 So mountains are built up, and they erode away by water 0:07:00.470,0:07:02.497 and rain and ice and so forth, 0:07:02.497,0:07:03.803 and they become grains of sand. 0:07:03.803,0:07:06.253 There's some sand that's really much more colorful. 0:07:06.253,0:07:08.322 These are sand from near the Great Lakes, 0:07:08.337,0:07:10.348 and you can see that it's filled with minerals 0:07:10.348,0:07:13.840 like pink garnet and green epidote, all kinds of amazing stuff, 0:07:13.840,0:07:16.224 and if you look at different sands from different places, 0:07:16.224,0:07:19.475 every single beach, every single place you look at sand, 0:07:19.475,0:07:24.507 it's different. Here's from Big Sur, like they're little jewels. 0:07:24.507,0:07:26.996 There are places in Africa where they do the mining 0:07:26.996,0:07:31.165 of jewels, and you go to the sand where the rivers have 0:07:31.165,0:07:33.464 the sand go down to the ocean, and it's like literally looking 0:07:33.464,0:07:36.327 at tiny jewels through the microscope. 0:07:36.327,0:07:39.504 So every grain of sand is unique. Every beach is different. 0:07:39.504,0:07:42.686 Every single grain is different. There are no two grains 0:07:42.686,0:07:44.386 of sand alike in the world. 0:07:44.386,0:07:47.918 Every grain of sand is coming somewhere and going somewhere. 0:07:47.918,0:07:51.646 They're like a snapshot in time. 0:07:51.646,0:07:55.069 Now sand is not only on Earth, but sand is 0:07:55.069,0:07:57.667 ubiquitous throughout the universe. In fact, outer space 0:07:57.667,0:08:01.331 is filled with sand, and that sand comes together 0:08:01.331,0:08:04.528 to make our planets and the Moon. 0:08:04.528,0:08:06.110 And you can see those in micrometeorites. 0:08:06.110,0:08:08.653 This is some micrometeorites that the Army gave me, 0:08:08.653,0:08:11.747 and they get these out of the drinking wells in the South Pole. 0:08:11.747,0:08:14.493 And they're quite amazing-looking, and these are the 0:08:14.493,0:08:18.917 tiny constituents that make up the world that we live in -- 0:08:18.917,0:08:20.832 the planets and the Moon. 0:08:20.832,0:08:24.076 So NASA wanted me to take some pictures of Moon sand, 0:08:24.076,0:08:26.339 so they sent me sand from all the different landings 0:08:26.339,0:08:30.817 of the Apollo missions that happened 40 years ago. 0:08:30.817,0:08:34.457 And I started taking pictures with my three-dimensional microscopes. 0:08:34.457,0:08:37.424 This was the first picture I took. It was kind of amazing. 0:08:37.424,0:08:41.207 I thought it looked kind of a little bit like the Moon, which is sort of interesting. 0:08:41.207,0:08:43.870 Now, the way my microscopes work is, normally 0:08:43.870,0:08:46.336 in a microscope you can see very little at one time, 0:08:46.336,0:08:49.283 so what you have to do is you have to refocus the microscope, 0:08:49.283,0:08:53.074 keep taking pictures, and then I have a computer program 0:08:53.074,0:08:55.548 that puts all those pictures together 0:08:55.548,0:08:58.670 into one picture so you can see actually what it looks like, 0:08:58.670,0:09:01.905 and I do that in 3D. So there, you can see, 0:09:01.905,0:09:04.607 is a left-eye view. There's a right-eye view. 0:09:04.607,0:09:07.160 So sort of left-eye view, right-eye view. 0:09:07.160,0:09:09.528 Now something's interesting here. This looks very different 0:09:09.528,0:09:11.906 than any sand on Earth that I've ever seen, and I've 0:09:11.906,0:09:15.706 seen a lot of sand on Earth, believe me. (Laughter) 0:09:15.706,0:09:18.664 Look at this hole in the middle. That hole was caused 0:09:18.664,0:09:21.003 by a micrometeorite hitting the Moon. 0:09:21.003,0:09:23.360 Now, the Moon has no atmosphere, so micrometeorites 0:09:23.360,0:09:26.576 come in continuously, and the whole surface of the Moon 0:09:26.576,0:09:29.176 is covered with powder now, because for four billion years 0:09:29.176,0:09:31.970 it's been bombarded by micrometeorites, 0:09:31.970,0:09:34.360 and when micrometeorites come in at about 0:09:34.360,0:09:38.370 20 to 60,000 miles an hour, they vaporize on contact. 0:09:38.370,0:09:40.280 And you can see here that that is -- 0:09:40.280,0:09:42.874 that's sort of vaporized, and that material is holding this 0:09:42.874,0:09:45.420 little clump of little sand grains together. 0:09:45.420,0:09:47.599 This is a very small grain of sand, this whole thing. 0:09:47.599,0:09:49.759 And that's called a ring agglutinate. 0:09:49.759,0:09:53.703 And many of the grains of sand on the Moon look like that, 0:09:53.703,0:09:57.160 and you'd never find that on Earth. 0:09:57.160,0:10:00.413 Most of the sand on the Moon, 0:10:00.413,0:10:02.112 especially -- and you know when you look at the Moon, 0:10:02.112,0:10:04.472 there's the dark areas and the light areas. The dark areas 0:10:04.472,0:10:08.613 are lava flows. They're basaltic lava flows, 0:10:08.613,0:10:11.278 and that's what this sand looks like, very similar 0:10:11.278,0:10:15.041 to the sand that you would see in Haleakala. 0:10:15.041,0:10:18.464 Other sands, when these micrometeorites come in, 0:10:18.464,0:10:21.553 they vaporize and they make these fountains, 0:10:21.553,0:10:24.176 these microscopic fountains that go up into the -- 0:10:24.176,0:10:26.540 I was going to say "up into the air," but there is no air -- 0:10:26.540,0:10:30.760 goes sort of up, and these microscopic glass beads 0:10:30.791,0:10:33.304 are formed instantly, and they harden, and by the time 0:10:33.304,0:10:36.689 they fall down back to the surface of the Moon, 0:10:36.689,0:10:39.585 they have these beautiful colored glass spherules. 0:10:39.585,0:10:41.130 And these are actually microscopic; 0:10:41.130,0:10:44.098 you need a microscope to see these. 0:10:44.098,0:10:47.535 Now here's a grain of sand that is from the Moon, 0:10:47.535,0:10:49.689 and you can see that the entire 0:10:49.689,0:10:52.172 crystal structure is still there. 0:10:52.172,0:10:54.320 This grain of sand is probably about 0:10:54.320,0:10:56.602 three and a half or four billion years old, 0:10:56.602,0:10:58.793 and it's never eroded away like the way we have sand 0:10:58.793,0:11:02.812 on Earth erodes away because of water and tumbling, 0:11:02.812,0:11:06.062 air, and so forth. All you can see is a little bit of erosion 0:11:06.062,0:11:10.669 down here by the Sun, has these solar storms, 0:11:10.669,0:11:15.432 and that's erosion by solar radiation. 0:11:15.432,0:11:18.018 So what I've been trying to tell you today is 0:11:18.018,0:11:21.587 things even as ordinary as a grain of sand 0:11:21.587,0:11:24.562 can be truly extraordinary if you look closely 0:11:24.562,0:11:27.867 and if you look from a different and a new point of view. 0:11:27.867,0:11:32.242 I think that this was best put by William Blake when he said, 0:11:32.242,0:11:34.784 "To see a world in a grain of sand 0:11:34.784,0:11:37.538 and a heaven in a wild flower, 0:11:37.538,0:11:39.871 hold infinity in the palm of your hand, 0:11:39.871,0:11:42.204 and eternity in an hour." 0:11:42.204,0:11:45.933 Thank you. (Applause)