I find science and history fascinating, but sometimes it’s hard to put things in to context when you hear that the earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago or that agriculture was invented about 10 000 years ago.
I thought of a way to help visualise it which I have not seen anywhere else, so I thought I’d share it for those who are interested.

Imagine 1 year as 1mm, then take it from there.

Your own life is unlikely to be more than the width of your hand, or about 100 years.

European civilisation began about 2000 years, or 2m ago. A little more than your height.

Agriculture began about 10 000 years ago. So that’s 10m.

Humans evolved around 250 000 years ago. 250m

See how it helps you to visualise it now ?
Imagine a 250m path and the whole of civilisation in the last few metres and written history in only the last two.

Now imagine a 65km road and the far end of it is where the dinosaurs all died.
Earth began about 4.5 billion years ago, or 4500km on this scale.

Apart from putting the significance and impact of human civilisation in to context with the whole history of earth, the industrial revolution only affects the last 200mm of a 4500km road for example, it helps to explain the big gaps in the fossil record.
If you think of the number of fossils found and the “distance” they are spread over, it’s not surprising there are gaps.

And yes, I should get out and socialise more.

Here’s how I visualise time…

Nice idea, they’ve been doing it by translating the 12 hour clock face into a clock for the history of the world for quite some time now, yours may actually be better.

yeah seen the calendar year thing used a few times too… i like yours, much easier to work out stuff on too 🙂

well done sir, if i were there i’d give you a hardy slap on the back

I can only do it in Bus Length or Height. Or at a push football pitch lengths.

Yes, I’ve seen the clock and heard of the “three seconds to midnight” nuclear thing, but it’s hard to visualise the whole of history that way.
Using mms and kms it’s a lot easier to put one in to context with the other.

Following the death of an elderly relative I had a bit of a “vision” about time ona smaller scale:

Imagine a huge dusty expanse. Completely flat and lifeless.
In the distance you can see what looks like a wave, travelling across the expanse in a single great wall.

As it gets closer you realise that as the wave travels over the dust it picks up a speck, which becomes a foetus, then a baby, then a child, then an adult at the peak of the wave, before becoming elderly, then crumbling back to dust at the back of the wave.

All of “now” exists in the wave. The rest is dust.

(if I had any artistic ability I’d love to animate this idea, as words don’t quite explain it, but sadly I’m bereft of such skills)

Will this scale fit in an are twice the size of Wales?

How many football pitches?

To be honest I can’t tell if something just took me 10 minutes or half an hour so this is the least of my worries

But thanks.

ohhh grahamS you’ve jsut excited my brain, i like that idea.. can it be developed so the ripples created by other people and your own actions during life effect the wave of other peoples lives?

But weren’t we all created 2011 years ago by a man called gawd or something? It isn’t that long a time to grasp everything that happened.

Geology and the history of the earth and development of civilisation fascinates me as well. One place I love that brings this together is Loch Coire Mhic Fhearchair round the back of Ben Eighe in Torridon. Apart from the sheer beauty of the place, in the picture the lighter coloured rock at the top is some of the oldest in the world you can actually touch – about 2 billion years old, sitting on top of much younger rock having been folded over by past geological events.

On the scree slopes by the loch below is the remains of a Lancaster that crashed into the cliff while training for a raid on U-boat pens in the war. The bits are scattered everywhere, including a rusty but still complete intact Merlin engine sat upright with the cam mechanism on top looking like it was waiting for a service. Just all very poignant somehow when you are there

Ben Eighe by CaptainMainwaring1, on Flickr

GrahamS, I like that. Very evocative.

oldest in the world you can actually touch – about 2 billion years old

😯

that’s almost as old as barnsleymitch!

This is a classic stoned conversation. So I would imagine.

GrahamS, I love that idea.

mastiles_fanylion – Member
But weren’t we all created 2011 years ago by a man called gawd or something? It isn’t that long a time to grasp everything that happened.

No dipstick, that was Christ Aka Jesus, Adam and Eve were sometime before that (apparently).

On my MSc we did what was called a “deep time walk.” This was along the Devon coast, and was a 6.4mile walk. Every 1metre = 1million years, and at various points such as a gate we would stop, and hear about evolution. You do pretty much half the walk and dont even get to multi-celled organisms. Then you go through the huge spurts in evolutionary development, and eventually at the end of the walk, the guide gets out a measuring tape, and 2mm is the distance from Christ to us, and our lives are thinner than a finger nail. That really helped put it in perspective.

Put your arms out wide. That is the history of the earth. Take a nail file and run it over the nail of your left middle finger. That is human history deleted.

If you get one of those IBM z196 cpus, that run at 5.2 GHz and keep it running for 3 years it will have done more cycles than there have bee seconds since the big bang (13.7 billion years ago).

The history of the earth in spiral form:

The history of the earth in clock form (perhaps making human time look more significant than it is!):

A great lecture on universal time scales and the end of the universe:

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdvWrI_oQjY[/video]

No dipstick, that was Christ Aka Jesus, Adam and Eve were sometime before that (apparently).

Ohhh, really? I must read that book sometime, it will make it all clear.

So were Adam and Eve born 45 billion years ago? Was the ‘big bang’ just god having a shag?

The history of the earth in clock form (perhaps making human time look more significant than it is!):

Grrr… i don’t like it when linear time is depicted as cyclical. Poor visual grammar.

can you prove time exists? i think there’s no such thing as time and in fact the world is governed by angry bees made of tweed… prove me wrong!

i’m not convinced. i can just as easily visualise 4600km as i can 4.6billion years. i.e., not very well!