ChronoZoom: A Timeline for Big History.

While reading a recent issue of 'New Scientist' (essential Easter reading!) I came across mention of a project called 'ChronoZoom'. So, I looked it up on my favourite search engine and was astounded by the scope and capability of this project. It is, for me, one of the best things I have seen on the Internet for quite some time. I chose this forum as it covers the huge range of time from the beginning of the Universe right up to the present!

A. Motivation and Introduction

“Big History” is a new and emerging field that attempts to unify the past — all of the past — from the beginning of time, through the four major historic regimes of Cosmic, Earth, Life and Human history, up to the present. It offers a broad understanding of how the past has unfolded, and the opportunity to think about what unifying characteristics there may be in all kinds of history. It presents a motivation for bridging the intellectual chasm between humanities and sciences.

Because the field of Big History studies all 13.7 billion years from the Big Bang to the present, a tool to aid the comprehension of time relationships between events, trends and themes is necessary. ChronoZoom is an intuitive, visual approach to fulfilling this void.

At the same time, as the number of electronic resources and specialized online collections containing articles, images, video, sound and other multimedia grow at an increasingly faster rate, there becomes a need to organize, catalogue and unify similar resources. ChronoZoom is a step toward enabling users to browse knowledge, rather than searching, by linking relevant online resources to fixed time scales in an organized and logical manner. ChronoZoom is a tool for instructors, students and the general public to discover new knowledge through information organization.

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ChronoZoom Home

ChronoZoom Beta: try it here

I am impressed by the intended scope of this project and the amount of information it attempts to collate into a coherent whole.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I have/am. I think it's fantastic.

Mods, if you think that there is a more appropriate forum for this, please move it.

reply to post by aorAki


Really cool stuff.
I was just getting to the part about the Earths land mass separating,when my flash player crashed-my computers fault,not the video.
This project looks like a great tool for looking into our potential past with lots of different theories included.
S+F

Originally posted by Silcone Synapse

This project looks like a great tool for looking into our potential past with lots of different theories included.
S+F

Glad you like it. I think it's a wonderful resource and a huge undertaking, but very worthwhile.

reply to post by aorAki
Hiya aorAki, what an excellent project. I like the way they've embedded easy-to-understand videos in some of the pop-up boxes. I watched the one about emerging life (prokaryotes -eukaryotes) and noticed it's been made for the 'big history' project. This shows how far-reaching the plans are. The cosmos sections look bright and informative too.

A lot of my interest has been focused on emerging human life-forms and their cultural baggage. This area hasn't been completed yet, so I'll be checking it out once in a while for new additions. Also, it could be a great link for those threads where the OP has the idea that scientific knowledge has been pulled out of the same thin air as most religious beliefs.

I used to post this in the A&LC forums Atlas of the Human Journey - it plots the progress of modern humans across the globe.

Both projects show how hard it is to keep up with science when minor shifts keep happening with new evidence and tweaked theories.

Not so long ago, it was all 'Out of Africa' in a great exodus. Now we know that mini-waves were happening and some of the guys were going *back* to Africa.

That study above is ridiculous. The whole idea that has been put together so far by modern archaeologists is ridiculous.
They first went to the other side of the world over land? And then to closer locations (Europe and Asia) from where they came from (Africa) later. Left little or no traces of their existence along the route there? But they got there so it had to happen this way. Its not possible they had ocean going technology at this stage?
in 1903 the first aircraft was built. It was incredibly primitive but it worked. 1969 we went to the moon. That is less than 70 years later, that is a humans lifetime of advancement of technology.
There is more than enough circumstantial evidence to suggest they could have easily been far more advanced than this, much earlier on than we thought and then been wiped out by disasters or came upon hardship and we went backwards doomed to start again. No one is looking for evidence this happened? why not?