Hidden miracles of the natural world - Louie Schwartzberg - Hidden miracles of the natural world - Louie Schwartzberg : Louie Schwartzberg is a cinematographer , director and producer who captures breathtaking images that celebrate life — revealing connections , universal rhythms , patterns and beautyWhat 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 3 D IMAX film , " Mysteries of the Unseen World . " 0 : 50 ( Music ) 0 : 53 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 . 2 : 30 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 . 3 : 43 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 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 . 4 : 54 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 . 5 : 36 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 . 6 : 11 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 . 6 : 49 Who knows what awaits to be seen and what new wonders will transform our lives . 6 : 55 We ' ll just have to see . ( Applause ) Thank you . ( Applause )