Clues to that riddle are all around us.

   [video of New York City skyline]   Skyscrapers cluster in the Wall
 Street  district of downtown Manhattan.  For more than a mile to the
 north, there are no tall buildings.  And then, in midtown Manhattan,
 the  skyscrapers sprout  up again.  It's a natural development,  its
 destiny  laid down hundreds  of millions of years  ago, when  molten
 lava flowed through  the  Hudson River Valley.  The bedrock on which
 the city is built was crumpled and wrinkled by geological processes,
 and the result was a pair of underground mountains.

   [video:    Al Jarnow  painting  of  Manhattan  substrata]    Since
 skyscrapers  must  be rooted in bedrock,  the swayback  form  of the
 Manhattan skyline traces out the contours of a subterranean mountain
 range.   It's here that we begin our exploration of the realm of the
 atom and the depths of the past.

   [video:  Ferris  in  Times  Square]    Times Square  is  about  as
 unnatural a piece of real estate as you can imagine. And yet it too,
 has been shaped,  to a considerable  extent, by its natural history.
 The  planetary  processes  that  shaped  it  are  by  and large  too
 imperceptibly  slow for  us to notice  on the human time scale.  But
 imagine  that  we could  walk into the  past at an accelerated rate.
 Then  we could see how the geology of Times Square was shaped. Let's
 try it.  Let's walk into the past at the rate of a century per step.

   [Al Jarnow  animation:  Times moves backward  in time]  A  century
 ago   Times  Square,  known  then as  Longacre Square,  was  a dark,
 dangerous  place--a haven for  muggers.  Its transformation into the
 Great White Way,  a  brighter if not  substantially safer place, was
 due to the applied physics of Thomas Edison, and  his invention, the
 electric light.  Two  hundred  years  before  that, Times Square was
 farmland.  The Hopper family raised  cabbages at Broadway  and  50th
 Street.

   [video:    overhead  view, Ferris walking in a snow scape.]   A few
 more steps into the past, and Broadway was an Indian trail.  Only 70
 steps--7,000  years  ago--and  Manhattan has yet to be discovered by
 the Indians.

   [video:   Ferris walking  through Central  Park]  A  little over a
 hundred  steps,  and  we've  come  to  the  epoch  of the mastodons.

 This was one of the mastodons'  favorite grazing  grounds,  We today
 call it Central Park.

   [video:  Ferris standing on rocks in Central Park]  Only 150 paces
 suffices to take us back to the most  recent ice age, when Manhattan
 was buried  under a sheath  of ice over a thousand feet thick.  This
 boulder is what the geologists call a glacial erratic. It was pushed
 down here from upstate  by the advancing ice, and  you can still see
 how  these exposed  rocks were  polished by  the glacier as it moved
 south.  But the rocks themselves are millions of years old.  To walk
 that far back in time at a century a step, you'd have to walk to the
 North Pole.  And the Earth is billions of years old. To go that far,
 you'd have to walk clear around the world.

   Scientists deal with big numbers like  these  by  using  what they
 call  exponentials--for instance,  powers  of ten. Ten to the second
 is  ten times ten, or 100.   Ten  to  the third  is ten  times that,
 or  1,000.   This  time,  let's imagine that we can walk deeply into
 the past exponentially,  by letting each step count for ten times as
 much as the step that preceded it.

   [dissolve   to  aerial  view   Central Park,  then  to  Al  Jarnow
 animation of Manhattan going back in time]  A month ago, a year ago,
 ten  years  ago,  100 years ago.  Ten to the third, a thousand years
 ago, and the city vanishes.   Ten thousand years ago, Manhattan  was
 still awash  with  the  melt of  the ice ages.  For a  million years
 before  that,  the  glaciers  advanced and retreated,  cutting great
 furrows that filled with runoff water. One of them became the Hudson
 River.

   One hundred million years ago, Manhattan lay  at  the floor of the
 Cretaceous Sea.  Prior to that, North America was still connected to
 Africa.   Volcanos  spewed forth  lava in  which the  skyscrapers of
 Manhattan  were  one  day to take root.   One billion years ago, New
 York City was the site of  a mountain range as imposing as the Alps.

   [video:  animation  of  solar system forming] Four to five billion
 years ago,  the Earth  was  still condensing from fragments of rock'
 circling the sun.  Before that, there was no Earth,  just a drifting
 interstellar  cloud from which the sun and its planets were to form.

   [video:  Clouds in rapid motion over New York City] Tennyson wrote
 of the abyss of time:

 Oh  Earth,   what  changes  hast thou
   seen!
 There  where  the long  street  roars
   hath been
 The  stillness of the central sea
 The   hills  are  shadows,  and  they
   flow
 From   form  to  form,   and  nothing
   stands;
 They   melt  like  mist,   the  solid
   lands,
 Like  clouds  they  shape  themselves
   and go.


   [video:  Ferris in Central Park] The Earth is old, but older still
 are the atoms  that compose  the Earth and the air,  and you and me,
 and this tree.  And we can investigate the depths  of cosmic history
 by  looking at  nature  on  the atomic and the subatomic scale.

   [video:  "microzoom" special effects; increasing  magnifications of
 tree; artwork representations of cells, DNA, carbon atoms]  The more
 closely  we  scrutinize  the universe  of the  very  small, the more
 evidence  we  find there of the past.  The pollen blossoms caught in
 this tree  are young,  but their  color and  form were  generated by
 genes that are older than the plant itself.  The genes, in turn, are
 built  upon  DNA  molecules.   The  molecules  become  visible  at a
 magnification  of 10,000,000  times.   Each is a  library of genetic
 information  accumulated over eons in the evolution of life.

   Moving in  more closely  still,  we can  see the  carbon atoms, of
 which the DNA molecules are made. They're even older than the Earth.
 The  outer  precincts  of  the  atom  are  patrolled  by a shell  of
 negatively   charged   particles--the   electrons.   Photons   carry
 electromagnetic force between the electron shells.   We pass through
 the inner shell of the carbon atom.

   We  are  approaching  one  of  the  oldest  and  most  magnificent
 structures in nature--the nucleus of the atom.   The nucleus is made
 of  protons,   here   colored  orange  to  indicate  their  positive
 electrical charge, and electrically neutral particles, the neutrons.
 These  nuclear  particles  are, in turn, made of trios of even older
 and more fundamental particles, the quarks.  We've reached the realm
 of  the  nuclear  forces.   The  weak  force mediates the process of
 radioactive   decay,   while  the  strong  force  binds  the  quarks
 together,  weaving  webs of energy into the forms we call matter.

 continued...

--- FMail 1.22