Introduction:
Anne Passer introduces Nathan Myhrvold as a renowned guest who is an expert in various fields. Mark Bryan Brown, a member of the Explorers Club Board of Directors, is introduced as the host for the evening.

Nathan Myhrvold’s Accomplishments:
Myhrvold is a former CTO of Microsoft and the author of the award-winning Modernist Cookbook. He is also an acclaimed photographer, paleontologist, astronomer, and nuclear scientist. Myhrvold is compared to the 18th-century scientist and explorer Alexander Humboldt for his extensive knowledge in diverse fields.

Focus on Nathan Myhrvold’s Photography:
The discussion will center around Myhrvold’s photography work. The audience is encouraged to submit questions through Facebook comments, which will be addressed during the session.

Nathan Myhrvold’s Perspective on His Work:
Myhrvold acknowledges that his interests and activities may seem diverse and unrelated. He expresses his willingness to share insights into his various pursuits.

Photography Since Childhood:
Nathan Myhrvold has been passionate about photography since he was six years old. In high school, he sought mentorship from renowned photographer Ansel Adams.

Custom Equipment for Unique Shots:
Myhrvold’s photography style often requires specialized equipment. He and his team design and build custom cameras, optical systems, and robots to capture unique and challenging shots.

Control and Repeatability:
Myhrvold emphasizes the importance of repeatability in photography. By making a shot repeatable, it becomes more controllable and easier to capture the desired outcome.

Wine Glass Throwing Robot:
To create a series of striking wine glass images, Myhrvold’s team built a robot that throws wine glasses. The robot features a sled that holds the wine glass and shoots it along a track. A “toe kick” mechanism tips the glass over at a precise moment, creating dynamic shots of wine splashing and swirling.

Digital Technology and Robotics:
Myhrvold acknowledges that the ubiquitous use of digital technology and robotics in photography has made it easier to capture complex and challenging shots. However, he emphasizes that even with advanced technology, these shots still require skill, precision, and creativity to execute successfully.

Ice and Glaciers:
Glaciers are formed from compacted snow and appear white at the top due to the trapped air. As the snow gets compacted, it becomes bluer. At the very bottom of a glacier, friction and pressure can cause the water to melt and refreeze, resulting in crystal-clear ice. The presented piece of ice was found in a bay in Narsok, Greenland, and was part of a project to make ancient water beer.

Badlands and Paleontology:
The Badlands in Montana is a productive site for dinosaur and early mammal fossils. Badlands are formed by geology and terrible weather, which leads to erosion and exposes bones on the surface. Dinosaur digging involves carefully searching for bones sticking out of the ground using brushes and screwdrivers. Myhrvold has been involved in dinosaur digging for over 20 years and sponsors other digs as well.

Photography and Dinosaur Paleontology:
Photography and dinosaur digging are similar in that they require careful observation and attention to detail. Myhrvold’s interest in dinosaurs began in childhood and he later became involved in research after meeting Jack Horner on the set of Jurassic Park. Myhrvold has partnered with paleontologists like Paul Serino and Phil Curry to conduct research.

Place and Food:
The environment where food is produced significantly impacts its taste and quality. The Savoy region in France is renowned for its beautiful cows and the production of high-quality cheese like comte, gruyere, and reblochon.

Grass and Milk:
The grass in the Savoy region contains unique compounds, particularly carotenoids like carotene, which contribute to the flavor and color of the milk produced by the cows. Cows do not digest carotene, so it accumulates in their fat and milk, giving butter its yellow color. In contrast, goats digest carotene, resulting in white goat milk and cheese.

Understanding Food Science:
Nathan Myhrvold emphasizes the importance of understanding the science behind food, including the physics of heat transfer and the chemistry of food interactions. This knowledge is essential for chefs who want to create new dishes and innovate in the kitchen. Traditional recipes provide a foundation for cooking, but understanding food science allows chefs to experiment and develop new culinary experiences.

Frank Gehry Analogy:
Myhrvold compares the importance of food science to the role of computer-aided design (CAD) programs in modern architecture. Just as CAD programs enabled Frank Gehry to design wild, curvy buildings, understanding food science empowers chefs to create innovative dishes.

Conclusion:
The connection between place and food is significant, and the unique environment of the Savoy region contributes to the production of high-quality cheese. Understanding food science is crucial for chefs who want to create new dishes and innovate in the kitchen, enabling them to transcend traditional recipes and explore new culinary possibilities.

Exploded Italy:
A pizza is shaped as Italy in the midst of 40 gallons of red wine (like the wine-dark sea in the Odyssey) to highlight the lack of one unified “Italian” culture and cuisine and instead its diverse regional variations.

Controlled Waves:
To create waves in the red wine, compressed air was used to stir it at different points while taking pictures. The goal was to maintain the illusion of waves without relying solely on post-production compositing.

Exploded Diagrams:
Food is arranged in pieces around a central point to show the assembly of a dish, such as a sandwich or pizza. This approach is inspired by exploded diagrams in repair manuals and is used to visually explain culinary processes.

Levitating Food:
Achieving the appearance of levitating food is a trick, as it’s impossible to make food float. This effect can be achieved by shooting each piece individually at the correct angles and then compositing them. There was an idea to use the Vomit Comet plane’s weightlessness to capture a genuine levitation shot.

Homemade Camera:
The camera used in the demonstration was custom-built by Nathan Myhrvold, with only the lens board being conventional. This setup allowed for greater flexibility and customization in the photography process.

Applications in Cookbooks:
Exploded photography can be used to illustrate assembly instructions for dishes like pizza and sandwiches. It provides a visual guide to the construction of a dish, showing the layers of ingredients and their arrangement.

Capturing Sauces:
To photograph sauces, a technique involving dropping them onto a large piece of saran wrap is used, allowing the sauce to float briefly for a visually appealing effect. The time frame for capturing a successful shot is limited to about a thousandth of a second, after which the sauce may deteriorate.

Exploring the Inner Workings:
Photography is used to showcase the inner workings of machines and objects, revealing their intricate parts and mechanisms. This approach is inspired by curiosity about how things work and a desire to visually explain their functionality.

3D Printing Food Technology:
Nathan Myhrvold’s company possesses a comprehensive machine shop capable of shaping and modifying various materials like glass, plastic, metal, and wood. Direct printing of food is still in its early stages, with limited capabilities such as creating pancakes in unique shapes using devices like the Pancake Bot. Multi-flavored printing has been explored, but the taste outcomes are not yet remarkable.

Nathan Myhrvold’s Approach to Food:
Nathan Myhrvold uses 3D printing primarily for creating dishes and table furnishings, rather than directly printing food. He employs his software to design shapes, which are then 3D printed and used to create plaster of Paris molds. These molds are subsequently used to produce porcelain items.

Molecular Gastronomy and Its Impact:
The molecular gastronomy movement, exemplified by chefs like Ferran Adrià, Heston Blumenthal, and Wiley-Defrayne, has significantly influenced culinary practices. Nathan Myhrvold compares this movement’s impact to that of U.S. Poet Laureates, acknowledging their contributions despite limited commercial success. Molecular gastronomy has fostered creativity and artistry in the culinary world, leading to the widespread adoption of innovative techniques and ingredients.

Food as Art:
Nathan Myhrvold draws a parallel between food and architecture, emphasizing that while most food serves as sustenance, exceptional culinary creations can evoke emotional responses similar to great works of art. He suggests that the greatest chefs, like architects, can create dishes that transcend their nutritional purpose and become artistic expressions.

Interesting Photo Techniques and Innovations:
Nathan Myhrvold created a robot to saber champagne bottles repeatedly for a photoshoot. Ultra-high-speed flash is used to stop motion in photos, often requiring multiple high-speed flashes clustered together. Nathan Myhrvold developed his own microscope to take high-resolution, large-scale photos with better color depth than commercial microscopes.

Microscopic Photography:
Nathan Myhrvold’s microscopic photos of crushed vitamin C pills reveal birefringent crystals that transmit colors differently depending on the polarization of light. He experimented with various products, like aspirin, to find interesting crystals for microscopic photography.

Custom-Built Camera for Blueberry Photo:
Nathan Myhrvold constructed a unique camera to take a picture of blueberries that would appear unrecognizable without a sense of scale. The camera features an exotic lens designed by a Nikon subsidiary for quality control of plasma TV screens. The lens has an unusual feature: its optimum focus point is at very short distances, allowing for extreme close-ups of small objects.

Extraordinary Lens:
Nathan Myhrvold possesses one of four lenses worldwide with a computer-controlled gear that corrects aberrations at any distance, enabling exceptional focus and image quality.

Massive Data:
A single picture captured with this lens may comprise 5000 to 7000 frames, resulting in an enormous amount of data.

Visual High-Definition Images:
The image quality captured by this lens allows for blown-up images that maintain visual high definition, even at large sizes such as 30 feet, comparable to the side of a building.

Cellular Details:
As the image is enlarged, the individual cells within the plant become visible, showcasing the intricate details of nature.

Yeasty Covering on Blueberries:
The dusty covering on blueberries and grapes consists of natural yeasts, waiting to penetrate the fruit’s juice. Handling blueberries excessively can remove this yeast coating.

Auditioning Blueberries:
To obtain the perfect shot, a large number of blueberries must be inspected, as some may have imperfections or fingerprints that hinder the image quality.

Enchanting Blueberries:
The unique and captivating nature of blueberries makes them an ideal subject for this type of ultra-high-definition photography.

Snowflake Photography:
Nathan Myhrvold also showcases a photograph of a snowflake, demonstrating the versatility of his photographic technique.

Snow’s Importance and Snowflake Photography:
Most of the water we drink originates as mountain snow that melts during the summer. Capturing stunning images of snowflakes is challenging and requires specialized techniques. Pioneering photographers like Snowflake Bentley and Ken Liebrecht have dedicated their work to this pursuit.

Unique Microscope for Snow Photography:
Nathan Myhrvold constructed a specialized microscope for outdoor snowflake photography. The microscope’s frame is made of carbon fiber to withstand freezing temperatures without distortion. A complex lighting system utilizes high-speed LED flashes to illuminate snowflakes briefly.

Challenges and Solutions:
Glass slides can warm up from handling, potentially affecting the snowflake’s structure. Sapphire slides with high thermal conductivity are used instead to prevent this issue. A cooling stage chills the sapphire slides to match the ambient temperature accurately.

Ideal Locations and Conditions:
Ideal locations for snowflake photography include Fairbanks, Yellowknife, and Timmins, known for their consistently cold temperatures. Hotels with porches or balconies provide suitable outdoor spaces for capturing snowflake images.

Audience Interaction:
The presentation concluded with questions from the audience.

Milky Way Gigapixel Photography:
Myhrvold is pursuing a project to create an ultra high resolution gigapixel photograph of the Milky Way. Challenges include the Earth’s rotation and the interference of sunlight. He has taken 160,000 frames during trips to Moab, Utah, and a desert location in Arizona. Myhrvold has developed custom software for assembling the mosaic image.

Blueberry File Size:
The final Blueberry file, a high-resolution image of a blueberry, is surprisingly small, only about one megabyte in size.

Asteroid Research:
Myhrvold has a background in physics and worked as a postdoc with Stephen Hawking. He has a long-standing interest in asteroids and their potential impact on Earth. Myhrvold conducts research on asteroids to determine their size and potential consequences if they were to collide with Earth.

Concepts for Capturing High-Resolution Photographs:
Nathan Myhrvold’s photography involves capturing images with extremely high pixel counts, often reaching billions of pixels. Each pixel is represented by 32 bits, allowing for a wide range of color and detail. Myhrvold emphasizes the importance of building custom cameras to achieve the desired image quality and resolution.

Challenges of Cooking in Space:
Convection, a key mechanism for heat transfer in cooking, is absent in space due to the lack of gravity. This creates unique challenges, such as the formation of superheated air pockets that can cause uneven cooking and potential burns. The absence of gravity also affects the behavior of liquids and gases, requiring specialized techniques and equipment for cooking in space.

TerraPower and the Pursuit of Nuclear Energy:
Myhrvold’s company, Intellectual Ventures, is actively involved in developing new technologies to address global challenges, including climate change. TerraPower, a company founded by Myhrvold and Bill Gates, focuses on inventing new types of nuclear power reactors. The goal is to decarbonize the economy and provide a clean and reliable source of energy to combat climate change. Myhrvold emphasizes the importance of pursuing multiple approaches, including renewables and nuclear energy, to address the urgent problem of climate change.

Regional Variations in Italian Cuisine:
Myhrvold highlights the hyper-locality of Italian cuisine, with each region having its unique culinary traditions and specialties. The concept of “Italian food” as a unified entity is not widely recognized within Italy itself. Different regions have distinct ingredients, cooking techniques, and dishes, reflecting the diverse cultural and geographical influences in Italy. The use of pineapple on pizza, often associated with Hawaiian pizza, is not traditional in Italy and has been met with criticism from some Italian chefs.

Applications of Digital Imaging in Various Industries:
Digital imaging technology, including techniques developed for photography, has found applications in various industries beyond traditional image capture. In paleontology, digital imaging is used to stitch together multiple photographs of dinosaur bones, creating high-resolution images for studying growth patterns and rings. Specialized lenses designed for specific purposes, such as quality control in flat-screen TV manufacturing, can be repurposed for unique photography projects.

The Impact of Climate Change on Wine Production:
Climate change has influenced wine production worldwide, with warmer summers and new wine-growing regions contributing to higher alcohol content in wines. Some traditional wine regions, such as Bordeaux, have seen an increase in alcohol levels from 8% to 15% in recent decades. While some argue that higher alcohol levels may compromise the finesse and complexity of certain wines, others appreciate the stress-relieving effects of higher alcohol content.