Limits of Perception - The Secrets of Nature

we are surrounded by mysterious worlds worlds hidden from us by their sizes too small or too large to be noticed it's possible to see these worlds was changed our perception technology extending our natural senses taking us on a remarkable journey from our own world through strange parallel worlds down to the smallest and up to the largest elements of creation Albert Einstein said it is entirely possible that behind the perception of our senses worlds are hidden of which we are unaware we experience the world around us through our five senses but the one we rely on most is sight for centuries it was the artist who recorded and interpreted what we could see since stephen's cathedral in vienna was started 850 years ago in the 12th century artists could only perceive a very limited world with humanity at its center but since then science has expanded those horizons looking outward beyond our planet and inward to the micro worlds beneath our feet the first microscopes revealed worlds we never dreamed existed and electron microscopes could take us further into even smaller worlds the atomic force microscope can show us the bizarre world of molecules and even take us to a place where common sense is stood on its head the unimaginable world atoms themselves and looking outwards telescopes in space take us beyond our solar system beyond even our galaxy to the farthest regions of our universe and humanity we exist right in the middle of all this wonder where exactly halfway on the journey between Adam and universe in the past artistic imagination challenged and probed the limits of our perceptions but now scientific imagination paints an even larger picture science has given us the tools to see our lives in a truly vast perspective as just one layer amongst the many that make up our universe and the first step on our journey through these layers needs just a simple tool a lens bending light to magnify images in the 17th century a few simple lenses in combination made a microscope and reveal the world that we'd never seen before we found out that a whole world could exist in a single drop of water a water bear with legs and claws like a tiny bear the first naturalists who saw these images often look for parallels with their familiar larger world but for 400 years this was the limit of our journey into the micro world it wasn't until the nineteen thirties but the next step was possible all eyes work on the same principle as those first microscopes by bending and focusing light rays some birds see much finer detail than humans and microscopes do better than both but in the end there is an absolute limit as to how much an image can be magnified with light to travel further into the micro world we need a microscope that can see the world in a way that's never evolved in nature at the turn of the 20th century technology was finally advanced enough to do that a microscope that sees the world not by focusing beams of light but by focusing beams of electrons electron microscopes reveal exquisite detail even in everyday objects we may be unaware of these tiny worlds but they're all linked to each other and to our own world everyday events in our world can create spectacular effects in theirs a rainstorm just makes us wet very inconvenient for us get on a bronze statue the continual wetting and drying out over the years creates a familiar green coating a patina but this thin green smear is really a spectacular landscape a landscape made up of crystals less than a hundredth of a millimeter across we're watching ten years of weathering unfolding in a matter of seconds producing intricate tiny flower gardens of crystals these crystal gardens are dead inanimate but this scale also hides a living world a patch of MAS looks like a forest and like any forest it hides all kinds of strange creatures these are tiny centipedes only a millimeter or so long and a pseudoscorpion a minut replica of a scorpion but at the next level ten times smaller again the most numerous creatures are mites thousands of different kinds millions of individuals many mites live on dirt and fungi but this is a complete miniature world down here as in our own world there are both hunters and hunted and the hunters here a fearsome armed with such powerful jaws they can prey on mites their own size with predators like this stalking the moss some mites use camouflage this mite has hairs on its back and attaches all sorts of junk to them making it look like any other piece of dirt other mites use armor plating turtle mites can draw their legs up right inside their shell it seems there's no end to the variety of different mice all living their lives unseen until technology revealed their hidden world but smaller again the surface of a dead leaf is yet another world covered in tiny bacteria exploring these tiny worlds doesn't just reveal unseen natural worlds it shows us the way our unfamiliar world is built up layer upon layer a cathedral is actually made of small building blocks hundreds of thousands of individual pieces of shaped stone a human body is also made of smaller blocks of cells but to build a human body takes more than 30 trillion cells creating a structure so elaborate that every individual is unique no other person has this pattern of cells making a fingerprint different kinds of cells build the different kinds of architecture to do different jobs the lining of the gut is folded into elaborate structures to speed up the absorption of food or the surface of the tongue covered in papillae that hide the taste buds so a human body like a cathedral is made up of building blocks but unlike the cathedrals stone blocks living cells on simple structures they're miniature worlds in themselves and in the same way the Cathedral is more than the sum of its blocks of stone a human body is much more than the sum of its 30 trillion cells until the 1940s we could only make out the vague outlines of cells so we thought they were simply bags of chemicals but now we can see inside individual cells these are images of incredibly thin slices through a single cell and clearly they're far more than just bags of chemicals they have their own elaborate structure by adding together information from images like these we can use a computer to recreate the inside of a single living cell this is what it's like to swim through the inside of a living cell and there are a few surprises in here scattered throughout the cell are sausage-like structures mitochondria the power generators of the cell but mitochondria were originally free living bacteria that became partners in ancient cells now we can't live without them but over an individual's lifetime cells are continually dying and being created over about seven years all the cells in our bodies are replaced so if none of our cells are the ones we were born with how do we stay the same individual how do we know who we are the answer lies at the heart of every cell inside the nucleus this is the next step of our journey into the world of molecules seen by an atomic force microscope these are human chromosomes each one made up from a tightly wound folded molecule and this is that molecule DNA unraveled the ridges have a very molecule that carries the code for life and each bump on the ridge is an individual letter in the code at this scale it would take 23 days to travel along the entire code book every animal or plant has its own code written in DNA a remarkable molecule creating all the diversity of life we see around us the DNA molecule is so remarkable it's even capable of creating a creature that can build a cathedral but molecules are not the final limit there are other levels beyond the structure of DNA for us to see a pencil line is made of carbon the same element that makes coal diamonds and most of the human body it's even more of a fundamental building block of life than DNA and these are carbon atoms seen with an atomic force microscope arrayed in a precise grid each atom a mere 10 millionth of a millimeter across for a hundred years we thought atoms were the simplest building blocks of matter but in the 1920s even the atom was teased apart to reveal yet other layers atoms are made of orbiting electrons and at the centre a tiny nucleus but the world inside an atom is a very strange one for something that's the building block of everything we see there isn't much to them if the outer shell of electrons were represented by this Cathedral how big would the nucleus at the center be at this scale it's so small it's the size of this crotchet on the hymnbook so in reality Mehta stuff is mostly empty space what feels like solid matter to us is just the interaction between electrons but deep in the heart of an atom even the tiny nucleus can be split and when it is huge unthinkable amounts of energy are released the energy that fuels an atomic bomb at these levels we're beyond the limits of what technology can measure a threshold below which we can't theoretically measure anything at all but the scientific imagination can still probe even smaller levels using the framework of mathematics and imagination and maths have come up with a remarkable concept of the final building blocks of the universe super strangers these entities are tiny strings of energy that vibrate like the strings of a guitar and as guitar strings produce different notes as they vibrate at different frequencies so super strings vibrating at different frequencies can create different particles like electrons or protons but the super string is a small in relation to the nucleus as a single atom is to our solar system something so small might lie forever beyond the limits of our perception so all we can perceive is the music of super strings the journey inwards has taken us to the limit of our perceptions and our common sense but what happens when we look outwards what does the world look like at larger scales than our familiar view point for example to our normal senses when walking through a forest we see a collection of trees yet we can look down on it and see the whole forest from above and from here it looks like a solid green entity covering the landscape in a way that's also a true perception the forest is like one organism it's linked together at the microscopic level the roots of the trees are all connected by tiny fungal threads weaving through the soil even in the largest forests a microscopic web of living matter connects all the elements together but they can see the woodland from an even broader perspective from a satellite we can watch the whole forest change color as autumn sweeps across the woodland satellites capture images of vast swirls in the atmosphere we can watch the climate as it changes or see the vortex patterns of clouds created by Highlands using a different sense infrared we can distinguish between different types of vegetation even the different crops grown by farmers satellites give us a completely different view of the earth technology does far more than generate stunning images it gives us more and more accurate measurements even of something as complex as the climate so does this mean we can use this information to make predictions can we forecast the weather accurately the answer is no there's a fundamental property of the universe that stops us chaos there are systems so incredibly sensitive to how they start off that the slightest change even one too small to measure can change the whole outcome the weather is one of these systems it's as if the air currents created by a butterfly's wings are enough to affect how the weather develops halfway around the world phenomena that are chaotic do follow simple mathematical laws they just seem to behave in a random way chaos theory goes against common sense and it does go against 500 years of scientific thinking there are things that appear to behave randomly because of what they are rather than because of any outside effect ultimately that means that we'll never be able to predict the weather chaos is everywhere even if we could predict the weather we could never predict a path of each raindrop or its path as it joins a running stream chaos has changed the way we think about the world but seeing the earth from even larger scales has given us yet more surprising insights the Apollo missions gave us a completely new view of our planet as Apollo 11 sped towards the moon millions of people all across the planet saw images of the earth as a tiny blue sphere vulnerable and isolated hanging in space and it's the only world we know that supports life and some people suggest that the earth itself behaves like a living creature regulating the climate to keep conditions just right for life according to this Gaia hypothesis it's the smallest creatures that are the most important a green stain in the ocean is made up from uncountable numbers of tiny plankton these are copper Luther for each only a fraction of a millimeter across but they exist in such numbers they can affect the climate if for example the earth warms up the plankton breed faster increasing their numbers even more but they release a substance called DMS which finds its way into the atmosphere and DMS causes water to condense into droplets making clouds so more plankton means more clouds and as white clouds reflect sunlight back into space the planet cools down the earth stays in the narrow temperature range where water exists as a liquid a vital condition for life itself for our planet is part of a bigger system based around the Sun and sunlight is the other crucial ingredient for life all the patterns and layers of life that we saw on the journey through the micro worlds depend on sunlight to fuel their diversity 500 years ago we thought we knew that the earth was the center of the universe but now we understand that it orbits the Sun and the Sun is at the center of the next level of reality the solar system the Sun is a fairly ordinary star and it shines because at its center hydrogen atoms are squeezed so tightly they fuse together forming helium and giving off massive amounts of energy in the process that energy radiation traveling at the speed of light takes about eight minutes to reach the earth but the radiation has to get from the Sun's core where it's created to the surface bouncing off the squeezed atoms as it does so the atoms in the Sun are so tightly packed that a journey that should take two seconds in a straight line actually takes ten million years so the heat and light that fuel life on Earth today was created long before humanity even evolved the Sun heats and lights the whole solar system but just as important it holds the whole system in place Isaac Newton published his theory of gravity in 1687 and his calculations showed how gravity keeps the planets in their orbits it seemed the universe was a place of mechanical precision and using Newton's mathematics the rising and setting of the Sun and the phases of the Moon could all be predicted this same mathematics allowed us to calculate the path of space probes in the past all we could do was the point telescopes of the sky but now we can send probes to visit the planets close up mercury is so near the Sun it's rarely seen with the naked eye in 1975 the Mariner probe showed us that mercury is a dead small world that rotates so slowly that it's day is longer than its year during its day temperatures reached 350 degrees hotter than an oven and at night more than 170 below zero the next planet out from the Sun is Venus the evening or morning star but although it shines so brightly in the night sky the planet itself is hidden by cloud the Magellan probe used radar to see through the clouds and found a turbulent world the greenhouse effect of the cloud cover keeps the surface at 450 degrees hotter than mercury hot enough to melt lead and then the third planet home at this scale the earth is unique it's a double planet its moon was once part of the earth itself smashed off by an impact with a lump of rock the size of another planet the next planet from the Sun is the stuff of science fiction Mars but the mariner probes showed there were no Martians no water and little atmosphere but the surface is spectacular covered in deep gashes including a Grand Canyon the length of the entire United States there are also the remains of huge volcanoes one rising 25 kilometers above the surface the biggest volcano in the solar system perhaps the most famous probes are the Voyager spacecrafts launched in 1977 towards Jupiter the giant gas planet Jupiter is so big it could swallow the rest of the planets with room to spare it's a swirling seething ball of gas including methane and ammonia storms rage over its surface arrogance far more powerful than any on earth beyond Jupiter Voyager journeyed on to another gas giant Saturn with its famous Rings the Rings aren't solid they're made of tiny fragments of ice and rock possibly the remains of a shattered moon or comets beyond Saturn is Uranus an ice giant Uranus has a very strange movement it rolls around the Sun on its side its moons circling it like a giant Ferris wheel so far out that the Sun is just a distant point of light Neptune's orbit is so vast that a year on Neptune takes 165 earth years to human lifespans Neptune is another ice giant like Uranus but we know little more about it but Newton's mathematics showed that between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter there should be another planet there isn't instead there's a band of millions of lumps of rock the asteroid belt and in the year 2001 we even managed to land a probe on the asteroid eros we have no idea how many asteroids there are but they range in size from small moons to house bricks and at this level the clockwork mathematics breaks down and chaos appears again for the motion of the planets Newton's laws are only approximations even the equations for just three bodies of similar size are hideously complicated beyond the reach of conventional mathematics so it's completely impossible to predict what will happen in the asteroid belt we've only just begun to realize how many asteroids there are and how close some of them come to earth extending our limits of perception doesn't always make us feel comfortable meteorites rocks from outer space pieces of other worlds captured behind glass for us to see they've been wandering the solar system for millions maybe billions of years some of them visit us from further than its outer edge it took a major change in how we perceive the world to realize that the Sun is just another star and our solar system is part of even bigger structures to even think about the size of these structures we had to invent a new way of measuring distance a light second is the distance light travels in one second about 300,000 kilometers and distances within the solar system are measured in light minutes or light hours earth lies about 8 light minutes from the Sun it takes light 43 minutes to reach Earth from Jupiter so we're seeing it as it was 43 minutes ago Saturn lies just over one light hour from Earth but distances beyond the solar system are measured in lightyears the distance light travels in one year to find out what lies beyond the solar system we sent a probe to look the two Voyager spacecraft set off in the 1970s Voyager 1 is now traveling at 96 thousand kilometres an hour and is 11 light hours away still transmitting signals back to earth it carries our signature onboard information about who we are and where we live in case the probe meets other intelligent life Voyager 1 has a new mission to find the heliopause the boundary where the solar wind particles streaming out from the Sun are beaten back by the interstellar wind it's heading for the edge of the solar system itself but before it gets there it has to pass through the Oort cloud a motley collection of comets and rocks that it'll reach in 20,000 years but it'll be travelling for a hundred thousand years before it meets the Suns nearest neighbor Alpha Centauri four light-years away not one star but a group of three as we look further and further into space we're looking further and further back in time distant stars are so far away their light takes thousands of years to reach us we're seeing them in the past at a time before human civilization existed but beyond the stars is a bigger structure the galaxy the galaxy is thousands of light-years across a huge spiral structure of billions of stars we live in one of the spiral arms the Orion Arm about two-thirds of the way out from the center from Earth we see the disk of the galaxy edge on as the Milky Way across the sky scientists are only now coming to terms with the scale of the universe but artists have always explored the infinite the world beyond the one which meets our eyes the hidden the mysterious as William Blake said if the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear as it is infinite worlds within worlds worlds without end looking up at the stars takes us out of ourselves gives us a sense of perspective but there's a problem with looking up at the night sky the atmosphere limits our view the answer is to put a telescope as high in the atmosphere as possible on top of a mountain mount akia in Hawaii where the Gemini telescopes are so sophisticated that computers actually distort the mirrors to compensate for the atmosphere they can stop the stars from twinkling and produce stunning views of space clouds of dust and gas creating magnificent abstract images but there's another solution put the telescope itself in space the Hubble Space Telescope is gazing outwards towards the edge of the universe seeing further than ever before and revealing layers of the universe we could never have imagined the new generation of telescopes have shown how dynamic our galaxy is we can watch the birth and death of stars themselves when Hubble was turned to look towards the constellation of Orion it could see deep inside the Eagle Nebula it saw these massive towers of gas star nurseries in each of the pillars gas is condensing an igniting nuclear fusion and new stars are born we can also witness the death of stars as the stars hydrogen fuel runs out it starts to fuse helium into other elements calcium potassium and carbon eventually no more reactions are possible and the star dies throwing the elements off in a spectacular cloud of gas our bodies are made up of these elements we are literally Stardust but the biggest stars don't go quietly they explode with unbelievable energy a supernova for a fleeting instant a supernova outshines a whole galaxy of stars in 1054 Chinese astronomers recorded a supernova as a star that shone so brightly they could see it in daylight a thousand years later we see the leftover cloud of gas as the Crab Nebula still expanding at thousands of kilometers our second all this drama takes place within our own galaxy but when Hubble was pointed at an empty patch of space and took an image with an exposure of four days this is what we saw not black space but more galaxies our galaxy is only one of billions galaxies come in different shapes spiral like our own elliptical or just irregular blobs all the galaxies are racing apart from each other as the universe expands but sometimes gravity wins out and galaxies collide but galaxies are so vast on the Stars within the muscle far apart that the galaxies just fused together it seems there's no end to the layers of structure within the universe galaxies themselves are part of bigger structures clusters and superclusters our own galaxy is part of a small group of six which includes Andromeda and the mega Lanna clouds but this group is racing towards the center of the Virgo supercluster made up of more than a thousand galaxies the super clusters themselves are linked into one vast shape the shape of the known universe there might be more but for now everything we know is here this is the outer limit of our perceptions is it the nearest we'll ever come to the creators view of the universe and that the opposite end of the scale you'll be ever find out what composed the music of the super strings

Channel: The Secrets of Nature

Views: 345,966

Rating: 4.7520218 out of 5

Keywords: orf universum, blue chip, natural history, secrets of nature, planet earth, natura, naturaleza, documentales, wildlife, limits of preception, elements of creation, atom, hubble telescope, limits of perception, human perception, nature documentary, science documentary, full documentary, documentales completos, Documentary (TV Genre), Nature (TV Genre)

Id: 1nLMa8FrNfs

Length: 51min 28sec (3088 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 28 2014