![]() ![]() The time and path we chose to leave Chicago has brought us out of the galaxy along a course nearly perpendicular to its disk. Giant steps carry us into the outskirts of the galaxy and as we pull away, we begin to see the great flat spiral facing us. Normal but quite unfamiliar, stars and clouds of gas surround us as we traverse the milky way galaxy. At last we pass the bright star Arcturus and some stars of the Dipper. Our perspective changes so much at each step now that even the background stars will appear to converge. Ten to the fourteenth, as the solar system shrinks to one bright point in the distance, our Sun is plainly now only one among the stars. Looking back from here we note four southern constellations, still much as they appear from the far side of the Earth. This square is ten to the sixteenth meters, one light year, not yet out to the next star, our last ten-second step took us ten light years further, the next will be a hundred. A fringe of a million comets too faint to see completes the solar system. Now the orbital path of the neighbour planets, Venus and Mars then Mercury. Entering our field of view is the glowing centre of our solar system – the Sun, followed by the massive outer planets, swinging wide in their big orbits. Now we mark a small part of the path in which the Earth moves about the Sun. In one second, it half crosses the tilted orbit of the moon. A line extends at the true speed of light. The Earth diminishes into the distance but those background stars are so much farther away that they do not yet appear to move. We are able to see the whole Earth now, just over a minute along the journey. Soon the Earth will show as a solid sphere. Ten to the sixth, a one with six zeros, a million meters. Ten to the fifth meters, the distance a hovering satellite covers in ten seconds, long parades of clouds, the day’s weather in the Middle West. We see first around and the end of Lake Michigan, then the whole Great Lake. We see the Great City on the lake shore. Ten to the fourth meters, ten kilometres, the distance a supersonic aeroplane can travel in ten seconds. This square is a kilometre wide, one thousand meters, the distance a racing car can travel in ten seconds. One hundred meters wide, the distance a man can run in ten seconds, cars crowd the highway, power boats lie at their docks, the colourful bleachers are Soldier Field. Our picture will centre on the picnickers even after they’ve been lost to sight. This square is ten meters wide and in ten seconds the next square will be ten times as wide. Now every ten seconds we will look from ten times farther away and our field of view will be ten times wider. The picnic near the lakeside in Chicago was the start of a lazy afternoon early one October. It begins with a scene one meter wide which we view from just one meter away. In one gasp, the viewer has experienced the unfathomably enormous universe and the marvels of the minute. By the end of the nine minute film, the viewer has journeyed 100 million light years from Earth and back again. From a fixed point in Chicago’s Burnham Park, near Soldier Field, the camera zooms out by factors of ten (one power of ten per 10 seconds). ![]()
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