Name: 【TED】Simone Bianco and Tom Zimmerman: The wonderful world of life in a drop of water (The wonderful world of life in a drop of water | Tom Zimmerman and Simone Bianco)
Uploaded: 2018-03-29T21:08:40.000Z
Duration: 11 min 7 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Tom Zimmerman: We'd like to take you on a fantastic journey

to visit the creatures we call the Elders.

Transition words & phrases

We call them the Elders because a half a billion years ago

they tripled the amount of oxygen in the air,

We call them the Elders, but you probably know them as plankton.

Now, Simone is a physicist, and I'm an inventor.

I was giving a talk about an invention I made --

He realized that my microscope could solve a big problem he was having.

Which was, how to measure the movement of plankton in 3D fast enough

so he could mathematically model their sensing and behavior.

And I frankly needed an application for my microscope, so ...

It was like peanut butter meets chocolate.

So we started working together, studying these amazing creatures.

And then we were alarmed to discover something.

And I just want to do something with you.

Now, please, just hold your breath for a second.

You see, plankton generate two-thirds of our oxygen using the sun.

OK, now you can breathe, because they're still here.

since 1950, the average surface temperature of the earth

due to all the carbon dioxide we are pumping into the air.

Now, while this temperature increase may not seem like a big deal to us,

Indirect measurements have shown that the global phytoplankton population

may have decreased by as much as 40 percent between 1950 and 2010

also because it's starving the fish that eat them.

And about a billion people around the world

depend on fish as their primary source of protein from animals.

So you see, this isn't just about breathing.

And that is a lot of food we will need to replace.

There's something else that is interesting.

actually make up a for lot of the carbon we burn today.

Because the plankton that are here today clean that carbon out of the air.

But you see, they don't really hold a grudge.

with the tremendous amount of carbon we are dumping into the air.

Well, it means that our big carbon footprint

is crushing the very creatures that sustain us.

killing almost half of the creatures that allow us to breathe

and it's really, really hard to care about something you cannot see.

You see, there's a quote I really like in "The Little Prince" that goes,

"What is essential is invisible to the eye."

We really believe that if more people could come

there is a greater chance we could all rally together

that are so important to life on our planet.

we're going to bring you scuba diving with plankton.

But I just need to shrink you by a factor of 1000,

to a scale where the diameter of a human hair is as big as my hand.

And I happen to have invented a machine to do just that.

SB: Anyone here remember "Fantastic Voyage"

Martin Short is one of my all-time favorite actors.

When I was a boy, I saw "Fantastic Voyage,"

and I really loved how I could travel through the bloodstream

and see biology work on a cellular level.

I've always been inspired by science fiction.

As an inventor, I try and turn fantasy into reality.

which let me travel and help people like you explore the virtual world.

It's based on the microscope that got Simone's attention.

like the kind in your cell phone, behind the lens.

And then I have a little tray of plankton water

【TED】Simone Bianco and Tom Zimmerman: The wonderful world of life in a drop of water (The wonderful world of life in a drop of water | Tom Zimmerman and Simone Bianco)

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【TED】Simone Bianco and Tom Zimmerman: The wonderful world of life in a drop of water (The wonderful world of life in a drop of water | Tom Zimmerman and Simone Bianco)

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