Dr. Seuss and Our Place in the Universe

Tonight I saw the movie Horton Hears a Who, an adaptation of the Dr. Seuss children's book by the same name. The movie was well done and I enjoyed my foray into childhood memories. In the movie, an elephant named Horton discovers a microscopic civilization called Whoville, existing on a speck of dust. He and the microscopic mayor of Whoville are challenged to convince their respective societies of the existence of each other. An astute observation by Seuss of the human tendency to ridicule and deny new frontiers of knowledge or even other cultures, not surprising since Seuss was a political cartoonist prior to gaining fame for his children's books. But the movie reminded me of a cool short film made by industrial designers Charles and Ray Eames for IBM in 1977 called The Powers of Ten which shows our relative size in the macroscopic and microscopic universe. The film starts with a one meter square image of a picnic. The camera then moves away overhead 10 times further every 10 seconds, reaching to the edge of the universe. The journey is then reversed, going 10 times closer each ten seconds, ultimately reaching the interior of an atom. Combine that with the concept of the fractal structure of our universe, and we get a little better picture of our place in the universe. (9 minutes)— Ken Rohla