The beautiful nano details of our world Gary Greenberg

so I want to talk a little bit about

seeing the world from a totally unique

point of view in this world i’m going to

talk about is the micro world i found

after doing this for many many years

that there’s a magical world behind

reality and that can be seen directly

through a microscope and i’m going to

show you some of this today so let’s

start off looking at something rather

not so small suddenly we can see with

our naked eye and that’s a bee so when

you look at this be it’s about this size

here it’s about a centimeter but you

really see the details of the bee and

really appreciate what it is you have to

look a little bit closer so that’s just

the eye of the be with a microscope and

now all of a sudden you can see that the

bee has thousands of individualized

called ommatidia and they actually have

sensory hairs in their eyes so they know

when they’re right up close to something

because they can’t see in stereo as we

go smaller here is a human hair a human

hair is about the smallest thing that

the eye can see it’s about a tenth of a

millimeter and as we go smaller again

about ten times smaller than that is a

cell so you can fit 10 human cells

across the diameter of a human hair so

when we look at cells this is how I

really got involved in biology and

science is by looking at living cells in

a microscope when I first saw a living

cells in the microscope I was absolutely

enthralled and amazed at what they look

like so if you look at the cell like

that from the immune system they’re

actually moving all over the place this

cell is looking for foreign objects

bacteria things that it can find and

it’s looking around and want to find

something and recognizes it being

foreign it will actually engulf it and

eat it so if you look right there it

finds that a little bacterium and it

engulfs it and eats it if you take some

heart cells from an animal and put in

the dish they’ll just sit there and beat

that’s their job every cell has a

mission in life and these cells the

mission is to move blood around our body

usenext cells are nerve cells and right

now as we see and understand what we’re

looking at our brains and our nerve

cells are actually doing this right now

they’re not just static they’re moving

around making new connections and that’s

what happens when we learn as you go

farther down this scale here that’s

that’s a micron or a micro a micrometer

and we go all the way down to here to a

nanometer and an angstrom now an

angstrom is the size of the diameter of

a hydrogen atom that’s so small that is

and microscopes that we have today can

actually see individual atoms so these

are some pictures of individual atoms

each bump here is an individual atom

this is a ring of cobalt atoms so this

whole world the Nano world this area in

here is called the Nano world and the

Nano world the whole Mike reward that we

see is a nano world that is wrapped up

within that in the hole and the and that

is the world of molecules and atoms but

I want to talk about this larger world

the world of the microworld so if you

were a little tiny bug living in a

flower what would that flower look like

if the flower is this big it wouldn’t

look or feel like anything that we see

when we look at a flower so if you look

at this flower here and you’re a little

bug if you’re on that surface of that of

that flower that’s what the terrain

would look like the pedal of that flower

looks like that so the ant is kind of

crawling over these objects and if you

look a little bit closer at this stigma

and the stamen here this is the style of

that flower and you notice that it’s got

these little you like little jelly like

things that are what are called Spurs

these are these are nectar Spurs so this

little ant that’s crawling here it’s

like it’s in a little Willy Wonka land

it’s like a little Disneyland for them

it’s not like what we see these are

little bits of individual grain of

pollen there and there and here is a

what you see is one little yellow dot of

when you look in the microscope it’s

actually made of thousands of little

grains of pollen so this for example

when you see bees flying around these

little plants and they’re collecting

pollen those pollen grains that they’re

collecting they pack into the into their

legs and they take it back to the hive

and that’s what makes the d hive the wax

and the Beehive and they’re also

collecting a nectar and that’s what

makes the honey that we eat here’s a

close-up picture or this is accurate

regular picture of a water hyacinth and

if you have really really good vision

with your naked eye you would see it

about that well there’s this painting in

the pistol but look what the statement

in the pistol looks like in the

microscope that’s the stamen set

thousands of little grains of pollen

there and there’s the pistol there and

these are the little little things

called trichomes and that’s what makes

the the flower give a fragrance and

plants actually communicate with run it

with one another through their

fragrances I want to talk about

something really ordinary just ordinary

sand I became interested in sand about

ten years ago when I first saw a sand

from Maui and in fact this is a little

bit of sand from Maui so Sam is about a

tenth of a millimeter in size each sand

grain is about a tenth of a millimeter

in size but when you look closer at this

look at what’s there it’s really quite

amazing you have Micro shells there you

have things like coral you have

fragments of other shells you have

olivine you have bits of the volcano

there’s a little bit of the volcano

there you have two worms an amazing

array of incredible things exist in sand

and the reason that is is because in a

place like this island a lot of the sand

is made of biological material because

the reefs provide a place where all

these microscopic animals or macroscopic

animals grow and when they die their

shells and their teeth and their bones

break up and they make grains of sand

things like coral and so forth so here’s

for example a picture of sand from from

Maui this is from lahaina and when we’re

walking along the beach we’re actually

walking along millions of years of

biological and geological history we

don’t realize it but it’s actually a

record

that entire ecology so here we see for

example a sponge spicule two bits of

coral here that’s a sea urchin spine

really some amazing stuff so when I

first looked at this I was I thought

cheetahs like a little treasure trove

here I couldn’t believe it might go

around the second the little bits out

and making photographs of them here’s

who knows of the Sam in our world looks

like these are quartz crystals and

feldspar so most say on the world on on

the mainland is made of quartz crystal

and feldspar it’s the erosion of granite

rock so mountains are built up and they

erode away by water and rain and ice and

so forth and the become grains of sand

there’s some stand that’s really much

more colorful loser sand for near the

Great Lakes and you can see that is

filled with minerals like pink garnet

and green epidote all kinds of amazing

stuff and if you look at different sands

from different places every single beach

every single play so you look at Sam

it’s different here’s from Big Sur like

their little jewels there are places in

Africa where they do the mining of

jewels and you go to the sand where the

rivers have the sand go down to the

ocean and it’s like literally looking at

tiny jewels through the microscope so

every grain of sand is unique every

beach is different every single grain is

different there are no two grains of

sand alike in the world every grain of

sand is coming somewhere and going

somewhere it’s there there like a

snapshot in time now sand is not only on

earth but sand is ubiquitous throughout

the universe in fact outer space is

filled with sand and that sand comes

together to make our planets and the

moon and you can see those in micro

meteorites this is some micro meteorites

that the army gave me and they get these

out of the drinking wells in the South

Pole and they’re quite amazing looking

and these are the tiny constituents that

make up the world that we live the

planets and the moon so NASA wanted me

to take some pictures of moon sand so

they sent me sand for all the different

landings of the Apollo mission that

happened 40 years ago and I’ve started

taking pictures with my

three-dimensional microscopes this

the first picture I took it’s kind of

amazing I thought it looked kind of a

little bit like the moon which is sort

of interesting now the way my

microscopes work is normally in a

microscope you can see very little at

one time so what you have to do is you

have to refocus the microscope to keep

taking pictures and then I have a

computer program that puts all those

pictures together into one picture so

you can see actually what it looks like

and I do that actually in 3d so there

you can see the left eye view there’s a

right eye view so sort of left eye view

right eye view now something is

interesting here this looks very

different than any sand on earth that

I’ve ever seen I’ve seen a lot of sand

on earth look at this hole in the middle

that hole was caused by a micrometeorite

hitting the moon now the moon has no

atmosphere so micrometeorites come in

continuously and the whole surface of

the moon is covered with powder now

because for four billion years it’s been

bombarded by micro meteorites and when

microwave meteorites come in at about

twenty to sixty thousand miles an hour

they vaporized on contact and you can

see here that that is that sort of

vaporized and that material is holding

this little clump of little sand grains

together this is a very small grain of

sand this whole thing and that’s called

a ring agglutinate and many of the

grains of sand on the moon looked like

that and you’d never find that on earth

most of the of the sand on earth on the

moon especially and you know when you

look at the moon there’s the dark areas

in the light areas the dark areas are

lava flows there basaltic lava flows and

that’s what this sand looks like very

similar the sand that you look like that

you would see in Haleakala other sands

when these micro meteorites come in they

vaporize and they make these fountains

these microscopic fountains that go up

into the and I was going to happen to

the air but there isn’ta we’re go of

goes up and they and these microscopic

glass beads are formed instantly and

they Harden and by the time they fall

down back to the surface of the Moon

they have these beautiful colored glass

sphere Ewell’s and these are actually

microscopic you need a microscope to see

these and here’s a grain of sand that is

from the moon and you

see that the entire crystal structure is

still there this this grain of sand is

probably about three and a half of four

billion years old and it’s never eroded

away like the way we have salmon earth

erodes away because of water and

tumbling air and so forth all you can

see is a little bit of erosion down here

by the Sun has these solar storms and

those that see Rosen by solar radiation

so what I’ve been trying to tell you

today is things even as ordinary as a

grant of Sam can be truly extraordinary

if you look closely and if you look from

a different and a new point of view I

think that this was best foot I William

Blake when he said to see a world in a

grain of sand and I have them in the

wild flower hold infinity in the palm of

your hand in eternity in an hour thank

you