RichPowers
Chieftain
- Joined
- Nov 13, 2008
- Messages
- 76
Hey Civfanatics,
The other day I attended a lecture by Walter Alvarez (the geologist best known for proposing that a meteorite caused the K/T extinction event) where he unveiled ChronoZoom, a "big history" visualization tool developed with some of his students and Microsoft researchers. I figured you guys might be interested in playing around with the beta.
All of what might be called history, starting with the Big Bang at 10E-43 s, is organized along a horizontal time axis. You can pan and zoom in/out and explore how we've reconstructed history. Some of what's included: decay rates of various elements; the tree of life; position of ancient landmasses; oxygen content of earth's atmosphere as a function of time; major known meteor impacts; magnetic field reversals; and an outline of human history. (You have to really, really zoom in to see where civilization comes into play.)
Click on the "Human History" shortcut in the upper right and then click on the "Big Bang" shortcut to get a really cool perspective. (It works best if you have a giant monitor.)
ChronoZoom does for timelines what Google Earth does for cartography. Simply amazing.
My only complaint is that it requires MS Silverlight, but I caved and installed it.
The other day I attended a lecture by Walter Alvarez (the geologist best known for proposing that a meteorite caused the K/T extinction event) where he unveiled ChronoZoom, a "big history" visualization tool developed with some of his students and Microsoft researchers. I figured you guys might be interested in playing around with the beta.
All of what might be called history, starting with the Big Bang at 10E-43 s, is organized along a horizontal time axis. You can pan and zoom in/out and explore how we've reconstructed history. Some of what's included: decay rates of various elements; the tree of life; position of ancient landmasses; oxygen content of earth's atmosphere as a function of time; major known meteor impacts; magnetic field reversals; and an outline of human history. (You have to really, really zoom in to see where civilization comes into play.)
Click on the "Human History" shortcut in the upper right and then click on the "Big Bang" shortcut to get a really cool perspective. (It works best if you have a giant monitor.)
ChronoZoom does for timelines what Google Earth does for cartography. Simply amazing.
My only complaint is that it requires MS Silverlight, but I caved and installed it.
