It would be so incredible if you could hit a Play button and see the plates move (or even just step through the existing snapshots slide show style while centered I
your city).
Ancient Earth Globe
41–50 of 75 posts
Re: Ancient Earth Globe
#42As an enhancement to the website it’ll be cool to see how earth might look in future based on the movements so far.
This is a random plate tectonic forecast I found on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLahVJNnoZ4
Re: Ancient Earth Globe
#43I would love to see the projection of what the landmasses would look millions of years into the future.
I’ve seen some. The most noticeable changes are Australia smashing into Southeast Asia. The Mediterranean closing up as Africa moves into Europe. East Africa splitting along the rift valley. California surfing up toward Alaska.
Re: Ancient Earth Globe
#44This is really interesting, but I have trouble enjoying it because the earth keeps spinning while I try to look at a specific part.
Click display options in the top right and then uncheck "Rotate globe"
Re: Ancient Earth Globe
#45It would be so incredible if you could hit a Play button and see the plates move (or even just step through the existing snapshots slide show style while centered I your city).
Put it in street view mode, The Time Machine
Re: Ancient Earth Globe
#46It's comforting to know there wasn't any ice at the north pole 20Mi years ago, and humans survived just fine.
Yeah but the Silurian civilization is gone though :-/
Re: Ancient Earth Globe
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just so we’re clear—the most recent ice age was already ending before the industrial revolution. Unless you believe like a couple did in the 70s that there was a coming ice age which we completely stopped and reversed. I would love to hear the steelmanning for that.
I think all the scientific evidence indicates that we'd be on a long ~50,000 year slide into a new ice age right now, except that human ingenuity in the pursuit of energy resulted in a massive injection of fossilized carbon into the atmosphere in the form of coal, oil and gas combustion. However, if the goal was to head off the next Ice Age, all the scientists agree, "Mission Accomplished!" Probably best to eliminate…
After 2x-ing the amount of carbon in the whole planet atmosphere in the shortest time ever (ever is a long time btw)? Maybe we could pause and evaluate effects of this geoengineering experiment
Re: Ancient Earth Globe
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
We’re still technically in an ice age - there is permanent ice at the poles (for now). In contrast during other ages all the ice melted in summer, even at the poles.
That’s fascinating! Where can I read more?
Try Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age
Re: Ancient Earth Globe
#49Something that surprises me about these types of presentations is they all reference the work of Chris Scotese. As far as I can tell that work is over 20 years old from its last coat of paint and 40 years old from when the bulk of the work was done. The website even has the late 90s early 2000s feel (not just in looks but if you click around you can find his kids personal pages from when they were in high school, I w…
Very true. As the author of this visualization, I airbrushed the country borders off the two most recent textures. Because it was too obvious that the borders show the Soviet Union :) Professor Scotese was a great partner and instrumental in putting this visualization together. He's acknowledged on the site, but for those interested here is his website: http://www.scotese.com/ . I believe he has a more modern iterati…
I think your "first grass" date is incorrect. Wikipedia says there are grass fossils over 100 million years old: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poaceae#Evolutionary_history