Talk:Powers of Ten (film)

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copied text in intro[edit]

The introductory section is basically just copy-pasted text from the second and third paragraphs from here: http://www.powersof10.com/film, with a few minor changes. IBrow1000 (talk) 14:10, 22 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

big = small[edit]

An interresting aspect mentioned by Robbert Dijkgraaf is that when one zooms out into the universe one goes back in time and thus the farthest image, of the whole universe, is really one of the universe at the 'time' of the Big Bang, when it was infinitely small. In this sense, the two extremes come together.

That's not interesting; it's contrived for the sake of parading the French proverb les extrêmes se touchent. The largest scale in Powers of 10 is 1026 m, which is certainly not the 'whole universe'. In a square 10 billion light years on a side, the corners are just 7 billion light years from the center, where the Earth is located. That's just half the age of the universe. Most points in the square are considerably closer.
—Herbee 00:47, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

I wonder if the number 1026 is really correct? The largest scale mentioned on the website is only 1025 m. Pity I haven't seen the film.
—Herbee 01:03, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

I am not sure what you mean with that square and the points in it (how can a point be small? It has no dimensions). The comment was not on the the film specifically, but on the notion of zooming out (and thus going back in time - this might need some more explaining) until you reach the furthest point you can reach (whether the film does this or not is irrelevant - maybe that should be stated too), which corresponds with the Big Bang, just before which (there's a little flaw) the universe was immensely small ('infinitely small' is probably wrong). I don't claim to fully understand this (but then, who does?) but this is the best rendition I can give of what Dijkgraaf said. And I do find it an interresting obsevation, in the spirit of the film (mind-boggling aspects of the universe, or what should I call that). DirkvdM 07:12, 20 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
No reaction to this yet, so I'll put it back and see what happens :) . DirkvdM 08:15, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Other Versions or Similar Movies?[edit]

I have seen this film (at School and in several museums) but I also recall once seeing a more recent movie that was very similar slightly more polished but in other ways not as good as the original. I think it may have been an IMAX (or another large format) movie. I also recall that instead of squares on the zoom out this other version had circles. Does anyone know about this or other remakes? -Waza 02:17, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

NASM IMAX Cosmic Voyage[1]. There have been several other movies and books too.[2] 66.30.119.55 14:35, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

When zooming out, the 107 m rectangle fits snuggly around the Earth, when it should really be somewhat bigger

Did I miss something, or is the Earth's diameter no longer greater than 12,700,000m? Aragorn2 12:28, 1 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The Earth is slightly bigger. The article does seem a bit unclear. I tweaked it. 66.30.119.55 14:35, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think the earth-fitting-in-a-frame-of-10^7-m criticism is mistaken, which mostly vitiates the "errors" paragraph. The assertion of incorrect frame size ignores the angular width of the view, which will cause the view to span a larger sphere than the viewframe itself, because the earth is on the far side of the viewframe: The 10^7-meter view frame is constructed not through the middle of the earth but in a plane tangent to the near side of the earth, at Chicago. A customary angle of view for a camera shot of "ordinary" proportions (neither wide-angle nor telephoto) will be something like 32 degrees high and 49 degrees wide (for a 3:2 frame whose viewing distance equals its diagonal, the standard rule of thumb). Having a view frame of that height would place the viewpoint (the "camera") at an altitude of 1.8 x 10^7 meters from Chicago, i.e., 2.44 x 10^7 meters from the center of the earth, which would cause the view angle to lie tangent to a sphere centered on the center of the earth and having a diameter of 1.35 x 10^7 meters -- a bit larger than the earth, so this would allow leeway for a somewhat narrower view angle than I have assumed. I think Philip Morrison, who not only narrated but consulted on the film, would have done that trig. I think the Eameses could have too for that matter. Now -- I grant that as you zoom on out toward the next order of magnitude, the parallax should change and the earth should end up hanging out past the frame -- but computationally that's a bit much to ask of a film made in 1977. At the point in the film when the view frame's size was actually declared, the view was actually legitimate. And I grant that the frame is too big on the return trip. That was assuredly a lapse. But with the principal alleged inaccuracy being mistaken, I think the "errors" paragraph loses much of its point for being. Crispin miller (talk) 02:45, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

How Big Are Things? was an experiment in avoiding some of the pedagogical pitfalls of "Powers of Ten". 66.30.119.55 14:35, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This may be relevant to the date discussion below also. There were at least two versions of the film. The first, which I saw (repeatedly) at the Air and Space Museum in DC maybe around 77/78 was in black and white, the picnicker was alone without the female companion, a few details like the dna were inferior, and the first narrator may indeed have been a female voice. I assume it was a prototype for the color version that followed, though the music was identical. Probably worth adding in, but wanted to check on discussion first. Chris Rodgers (talk) 06:54, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

@ Chris Rodgers-- "A Rough Sketch for a Proposed Film Dealing with the Powers of Ten and the Relative Size of Things in the Universe" (1968) http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0063525/ "Powers of 10" (1977, the finished version the above "rough sketch" eventually resulted in) http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0078106/

In fact, I recall seeing the former version at the Air & Space Museum as recently as 1997. I was rather startled upon hearing the female narration, 'cos it wasn't the same as the male narration I'd heard in repeated screenings of the latter on 16mm at school..... ;o) MXocross 00:33, 28 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Images[edit]

This article would definitely benefit from images. I imagine the cover jacket of the book or video are considered fair use? 24.63.125.78 14:51, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Very Similar to Cosmic Zoom[edit]

This sounds almost identical to the 1968 Canadian short documentary Cosmic Zoom, which was based on the book Cosmic View. Pufnstuf 03:09, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Other Related works and references in pop culture[edit]

Contact and Men in Black had scenes that involved zooming out from earth to a scale much larger. Should they, too, be listed in this section of this article? --HantaVirus 19:12, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not all these works are references to this film. This is a very old concept and only works which are verifiable reference should be listed. (no original research!)

Stephen Dedalus

Class of Elements

Clongowes Wood College

Sullins

County Kildare

Ireland

Europe

The World

The Universe A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Kwenchin (talk) 18:16, 10 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

According to SCOTT QUINN's website (http://www.withoutuntil.com/sq.htm) Shawn Lane's record's named after the book. Kwenchin (talk) 03:40, 11 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

shown at NMPFT Bradforf, UK[edit]

During the late 80's to mid 90's (AFAIK) this was shown continuously in a dedicated seating area in the bottom floor of bradford's national museum of photography film and television, saw it several times there when growing up and it totally blew my mind :-)

may be relevant to this page somehow, may not

Is it definitely 1977?[edit]

I could almost swear I saw this Powers of Ten (I'd forgotten the title, but I remember the man on the blanket) much earlier in the '70's, because it was in "Bull Moose Films" which were shown during lunch-ish time when I was at the University of Washington, and I wasn't there after about 1973. Can there have been an earlier version? 81.43.76.71 21:30, 23 February 2007 (UTC) Catanea[reply]

I'm very curious about this too, because in Schrader on Schrader (Faber, revised ed. 2004), there is an essay by Paul Schrader on Eames' work in film ("Poetry of Ideas: The Films of Charles Eames") which mentions Powers of Ten. The essay was originally published in Film Quarterly in Spring 1970 (seven years earlier than 1977, to emphasise the obvious), and the description it gives is that of a film the same as that on the Google website (currently linked to from the bottom of this article) in general terms, but not in specifics. It says that "the right central section of the screen pictures the actual zoom, at the left of the screen a dashboard with several clocks shows the total distance travelled, the power of ten achieved, the traveller's time, the earth time, and the percentage of the speed of light." This is all greatly simplified in the version linked to. Schrader also writes that "a dispassionate female voice ... describes every second of the journey in full" (in the linked version the voice is male). The score, however, seems to have been the same ("an eerie score supplied by Elmer Bernstein on a miniature Japanese organ").
So it seems there was indeed an version of the film earlier than 1977 (Schrader calls the film "recent", but I can't see a specific date). I'm reluctant to edit the article myself, since this is just something I've stumbled upon, and working it into what we've got already seems like a non-trivial task (especially given that I've never seen the original and know nothing about the circumstances under which it was apparently revised), but it's surely something that ought to be mentioned. --Camembert 17:27, 26 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Without knowing its actual year, there was an earlier version; see discussion above under versions. Chris Rodgers (talk) 06:57, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(See above section) Earlier version was "A Rough Sketch..." (1968) Kwenchin (talk) 02:59, 12 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have fixed the date as 1968 (with a 1977 rerelease), as given in (the correction to) the NYT obituary cited. Powers of Ten is also indirectly referenced in a 1972 book by Arthur C. Clarke, if necessary. Goochelaar (talk) 18:00, 23 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Men in Black reference[edit]

I'm not sure that the feature film was referencing this short film specifically in that sequence. I've never seen this short film, nor can I recall having even heard of it until now, but I have seen a sequence before similar to the one in Men in Black, where zooming out ultimately showed something like what was portrayed in the feature film, with the entirety of the known universe as merely some trivial object in a fantastic setting, because I was reminded of it while I watched that part of Men in Black. Unfortunately right now I can't think of the source or even the details of this alternate reference. Of course, whatever it was I was reminded of could have been referencing Powers of Ten anyway. B7T 16:13, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You maybe were thinking of the opening sequence of Contact, where we zoom out from Earth orbit to the edges of the universe and end up in a reflection of the main protagonist's eye. Contact is by now included in the article. Men in Black (released one week earlier than Contact) ends with a zoom out from Earth's surface to (merely) our own galaxy, to reveal it's in a marble some alien is using to play with (see youtube ) --87.239.206.56 (talk) 01:07, 7 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Removal of "needs infobox" tag[edit]

This article has had its infobox tag removed by a cleanup using AWB. Any concerns please leave me a message at my talk page. RWardy 19:01, 11 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Zoom out but traveling in?[edit]

One thing that has struck me as odd about Powers of Ten is whether we're really "zooming out" and "zooming in" as the article implies. When we travel into the blood vessel, we're not just magnifying / zooming in, but actually travelling INTO the body, no? Coop (talk) 15:34, 25 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The two are not mutually exclusive. The proton in the C nucleus is intended to be the center point; to look at it from far away, you must emerge from the atom, the human, the Earth's atmosphere, etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Glengarry (talk • contribs) 21:52, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

free alternatives?[edit]

Are there any free videos to the same effect? With Wikipedia's new powers of video hosting, this would be an encyclopedic project. The macroscopic part could be rendered quite easily with Celestia or similar, but I am not familiar with software that could be used for the microscopic part. --dab (𒁳) 17:41, 24 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Google Maps[edit]

This article currently includes the statement:

Google Maps notes the location of the blanket with text reading, "Powers of Ten".

I've removed the following external link:

from that sentence because it does not show what the statement says it should. I don't know if it's because there's something wrong with the link, if Google removed the text, or whatever else the problem might be. I've fact-tagged the statement in hopes that someone might fix this. Otherwise we should remove the sentence. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 23:14, 4 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's visible here:
—Fred (talk) 17:59, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Cultural References[edit]

Did this article used to have a section for these?

I wanted to add a link to this very popular internet cartoon:

http://xkcd.com/271/

--Adxm (talk) 15:57, 20 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Many Wikipedians love xkcd, but we don't add mention to articles for every cultural reference (xkcd or otherwise). Only notable instances generally belong. Otherwise Biblical and Shakespearean articles would be 90% "cultural references" sections... :) -- Quiddity (talk) 19:39, 20 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ah yes, "notable" - one of the many subjective inconsistencies that Wikipedia is riddled with. Ah well. Adxm (talk) 19:43, 27 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but it was silently removed in March Kwenchin (talk) 19:51, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Articles are notable, or they are removed. Content is encyclopedic or not. See WP:NNC. Lentower (talk) 08:05, 7 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

conflict in citations?[edit]

There are two citations to the revised book. The year differs, as well as minor details:

  • <ref>Morrison, Philip, et al. ''Powers of Ten: About the Relative Size of Things in the Universe''. Scientific American Books, 1990.</ref>
  • <ref>{{cite book|title=Powers of Ten: A Book About the Relative Size of Things in the Universe and the Effect of Adding another Zero|isbn=978-0-7167-6008-5|year=1982, revised 1994|publisher=Scientific American Library|author=[[Philip and Phylis Morrison]]}}</ref>

Can they be combined into one? If yes, please do so. Lentower (talk) 07:56, 7 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

broken link[edit]

The article contained a broken link to http://www.powersof10.com , which is a broken link. I deleted the link. User Lentower reverted my edit without explanation. I'm redeleting the broken link. Lentower, please don't make further counterproductive edits without participating in discussion or giving reasons for your actions.--Fashionslide (talk) 00:27, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The addition of {{dead link}} to my revert[3] of your edit is explanation enough for most editors ({{dead link}} was also in my edit summary). But in looking further, I see that dead links are handled differently in External links sections. I about to revert your last edit with the active link to an archive copy. Did you check for an archive copy before deleting this "broken" link? The information is valuable to Wikipedia's readers. — Lentower (talk) 03:22, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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