Then it is but one vertex in crowd of geometric constellations, those forms mythologized from the view from earth since time immemorial. We move past orbital paths of Venus and Mars, and at ten to the eleventh, the solar system claims but half of our frame-for a moment. Soon the earth is lost in the sea of space, another faceless flicker. As ten to the sixth turns ten to the seventh, our Pale Blue Dot emerges unto a black canvas. Ten to the fourth and the entirety of the Great Lake takes shape the view serrated by streaking clouds. We see boats docked in lake Michigan to the east and hulking Soldier Field to the west. Another ten seconds and they conflate with the grass-ten to the second power, or 100 meters out. From ten to zero to ten to the first, the picnic-goers begin to blur. Every ten seconds, the lens expands outwards by a power of ten. The Tour-de-force demonstration of scale and relativity, Powers of Ten, runs like this: a view of a lakeside picnic on the shore of Chicago in October at a one by one meter frame.
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