A Treasure Trove for Science

Surely you have seen dragonflies hover. But did you know that they were also capable of flying backwards? Or even up-side down like a vintage double-decker during a daring air show? And that they could activate each one of their four wings separately – working at varying speed and propelling in different directions, all at the same time? Today it is possible to shoot images that are thousands of times faster than our own vision. Or slower. We can see how nature’s devices work – and imitate them. Helicopters or mechanical drones pretty much simulate the congenial dragonfly’s techniques. We live in a world of invisible beauty, too subtle to be perceptible to the human eye. Louie Schwartzberg shows breathtaking images during his fascinating TED talk.

  Louie Schwartzberg is a cinematographer, director and producer who bends the boundaries of time and space with high-speed and time-lapse cameras and microscopes. His career spans feature films, television shows, commercials and documentaries. His film Wings of Life narrated by Meryl Streep, was released in 2013, and his latest film, Mysteries of the Unseen World, is a National Geographic 3D Imax revealing worlds that are too slow, too fast, too small and too vast for the human eye to see. Schwartzberg founded Moving Art to inspire and entertain through TV, DVD products, motion pictures and Imax films.

Copyright header photo: Christina Feyerke