Conversion of sunlight into chemical energy, namely photosynthesis, is the primary energy source of life on Earth. A visualization depicting this process, based on multiscale computational models from electronic to cell scales, is presented in the form of an excerpt from the fulldome show Birth of Planet Earth. This accessible visual narrative shows a lay audience, including children, how the energy of sunlight is captured, converted, and stored through a chain of proteins to power living cells. The visualization is the result of a multi-year collaboration among biophysicists, visualization scientists, and artists, which, in turn, is based on a decade-long experimental-computational collaboration on structural and functional modeling that produced an atomic detail description of a bacterial bioenergetic organelle, the chromatophore. Software advancements necessitated by this project have led to significant performance and feature advances, including hardware-accelerated cinematic ray tracing and instanced visualizations for efficient cell-scale modeling. The energy conversion steps depicted feature an integration of function from electronic to cell levels, spanning nearly 12 orders of magnitude in time scales. This atomic detail description uniquely enables a modern retelling of one of humanity’s earliest stories—the interplay between light and life.

将阳光转化为化学能，即光合作用，是地球上生命的主要能源。基于从电子尺度到细胞尺度的多尺度计算模型，描绘了这一过程的可视化，以球幕节目“地球的诞生”的摘录形式呈现. 这种易于理解的视觉叙事向包括儿童在内的非专业观众展示了阳光的能量如何通过蛋白质链被捕获、转换和储存以驱动活细胞。可视化是生物物理学家、可视化科学家和艺术家之间多年合作的结果，而这又是基于在结构和功能建模方面长达十年的实验-计算合作，该合作产生了细菌的原子细节描述生物能细胞器，色素细胞。该项目所需的软件进步带来了显着的性能和功能进步，包括硬件加速的电影光线追踪和用于高效细胞尺度建模的实例化可视化。所描述的能量转换步骤具有从电子到细胞水平的功能集成，时间尺度跨越近 12 个数量级。这种原子细节描述独特地使现代重述人类最早的故事之一——光与生命之间的相互作用成为可能。