IMAX Theatre Winnipeg

Cosmic Voyage takes us through time and space to explore the known dimensions of our universe. The centerpiece of the film is a 15 minute “cosmic zoom” extending in an unbroken sequence from the surface of the earth to the largest observable structures of the universe, and then down to the sub-nuclear realm – a guided tour across some 42 orders of magnitude, or powers of 10.

Shot on location in Greece, Italy, Hawaii and the USA, Cosmic Voyage tackles concepts of large and small and gives us a unique perspective on our human place in the cosmos.

People have longer pondered the questions: How big is big? And how small is small?

Cosmic Voyage attempts to answer these age old questions with an unprecedented portrait of the universe, from the unimaginably small to the incomprehensibly large.

Along the way, the film covers a spectrum of the sciences – astronomy, physics, geology, chemistry and biology. The film provides students with a unique experience that will give them new insight into our place in the universe.

Starting on the surface of Earth in a scene that is a metre wide and seen from a metre away, we move 10 times farther away and increase the width of our view tenfold every few seconds, to 10 metres, then one hundred, a thousand and so on. In a surprisingly short time, we have zoomed far from Earth, past other planets and stars and out to the most distant reaches of the cosmos, where groups of galaxies, each containing billions of stars, appear as individual points of light.

Returning to Earth we take a similar journey inward, each step magnifying the previous scene by a factor of 10. Looking into a droplet of pond water, we find new worlds hidden: single celled micro-organisms such as paramecia and inside them, the complex molecules of life, DNA. From there we enter a single atom and its components: electrons, protons, neutrons; and beyond to the quarks that may be the building blocks of all matter.

Cosmic Voyage presents fascinating scientific information on the formation and structure of our universe in a breathtaking and ambitious blend of live action footage and cutting edge computer animation, which accounts for an unprecedented 15 minutes of the film.

The giant screen film format allows viewers to observe stupendous events such as the explosion of the "Big Bang," the collision of galaxies and the development of our own solar system. We also experience the smaller universe that exists on the microscopic level, by flying through a carbon atom and viewing quarks ... the smallest known building blocks of matter.

Cosmic Voyage also examins the fourth dimension by taking a trip through time, from the formation of the universe in the big bang to the present. Students will witness the development of stars and galaxies, the birth of our own solar system and the development of life on a young earth.

"I don’t think the universe has ever been seen before in quite the way it is seen in Cosmic Voyage”, says director Bayley Silleck. "The detail and the extraordinary power of the IMAX camera, I think, are going to create an experience unlike any other that has been seen in the world of film".

This spectacular film is presented by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum and is narrated by Morgan Freeman.

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Manitoba Curriculum Connections

SCIENCE

Grade 7: particle theory of matter

Grade 9: atoms and elements