Earth History scaled to a 24 hour movie spectacular
Saturday, October 18th, 2008
By Vince Sperrazza
Imagine you’ve settled into a theater to see a 24 hour movie spectacular featuring the history of the earth.
You start at midnight, and for the first 18 hours, (think – day and a half) it’s not exciting. You have plenty of time for naps, food, and bathroom as the movie opens on an alien looking world, full of noxious clouds and meteorite strikes. The camera shows mostly microscopic views of tiny bacteria, while the sky slowly turns blue.
If you watch carefully, by about 7 PM you can see little soft bodied creatures among the bacteria. Shortly after 9, the seafloor is crawling with trilobites and waving crinoids. Nearly at 10, giant fish inhabit the water, while huge horsetails and ferns sprout up on land.
At around 10:30 it’s dinosaur time, and for about an hour, they dominate the landscape. A bit past 11:30, there’s a bright flash, then darkness. Soon the screen brightens and is filled with birds and mammals, both familiar and strange.
At about 20 seconds to midnight, you watch carefully to see early humans stalking the savannah. All of human recorded history fits within the last few seconds before midnight.
———————————————
Here are some places to start for more info
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Earth_Clock_ENG.svg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_timescale
