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PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
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Category: Evolution
Posted on: February 12, 2009 12:22 PM, by PZ Myers
Seed has compiled a short list celebratory articles and media for your Darwin Day — take a look. I rather liked The Evolution of Life in 60 Seconds: it's very short, but it puts everything in perspective by listing key events in the 4.6 billion year history of the planet with appropriate timing to fit into one minute. If they'd put it into the context of the over 13 billion year history of the universe, it might have been even more dramatic.
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Comments
Posted by: Her Reference Ron Sullivan | February 12, 2009 12:31 PM
That was fun; thanks. And happy Darwin Day to you too!
Posted by: Richard Harris
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February 12, 2009 12:32 PM
Jumpin Jeezus, that sure goes off with a bang!
That dumb-ass Yahweh fellah sure took his time getting started there, so I guess it's little wonder the Y E Creationists reckon the Earth's only six thousand years old. Feckin' edjits.
Posted by: Glen Davidson | February 12, 2009 12:34 PM
Yeah, I think a few more things were occurring during all of the dead time--including a whole lot of evolution of basic biochemical pathways. We just don't know much about it.
No photos, though? The IDiots say they might pay attention if we have snapshots every 30 seconds or so over the course of evolution. To be sure, they'd still probably credit any "important" changes to miracles.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Posted by: Kobra | February 12, 2009 12:36 PM
It kinda reminds me of an exponential function. e^x does very little until it hits 0, then rushes up to infinity.
Posted by: SEF | February 12, 2009 12:39 PM
It's rather dangerously misrepresentative the way these things show humans as being the last note / nanosecond / fingernail scraping or whatever. It feeds the religious nutters' desire to be the special end product. Instead the "graph" (whatever form it takes) should show humans as a miniscule nonentity positioned merely somewhere along a sequence of ill-defined length, fading into a nebulous unknown end.
Posted by: Barry | February 12, 2009 12:39 PM
Thanks!
Posted by: Parkeraduk | February 12, 2009 12:39 PM
Has anyone applied Moore's law to this?
Posted by: strangebrew | February 12, 2009 12:40 PM
'If they'd put it into the context of the over 13 billion year history of the universe, it might have been even more dramatic.'
Well not for 10-12 mins or so...the dark screen of inflation...mind you what with fundamental particles...quarks...hydrogen...there would have been a couple of flashes...but what an ending ;-)
Posted by: pHred | February 12, 2009 12:53 PM
I liked it but - it is Banded Iron Formation - IRON not Ion formations. I was so bugged by that I couldn't pay attention to the next several events.
Posted by: cactusren | February 12, 2009 1:03 PM
Cool. Will defnitely show this to my historical geology class. I'm sure 'ion' instead of 'iron' was just a typo--she said it correctly.
Posted by: Darby | February 12, 2009 1:10 PM
It could do without the blood = ocean water comparison in the original blurb.
Posted by: Frac | February 12, 2009 1:18 PM
I don't think anyone will do it better than Carl Sagan and his calendar in Cosmos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2qezQzfgIY
Posted by: Holbach | February 12, 2009 1:19 PM
And there it is, so obvious in it's origins and ramifications. Pisses you off, eh religious morons? Suffer.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | February 12, 2009 1:19 PM
Why? What's the problem with that statement? Seems appropriate to me.Posted by: ThatOtherGuy | February 12, 2009 1:27 PM
Haha, I was sitting there bracing myself for the Cambrian Explosion... then it came and OHMYGODWORDSWORDSWORDS
Posted by: Naked Bunny with a Whip | February 12, 2009 1:31 PM
Are you calling my penis short? Grr!
Posted by: Darby | February 12, 2009 1:31 PM
Well, it's just a false comparison. We've got water, but it's not even in the same proportion as ocean water (thanks to a long period of fresh-water fish adaptation), and the salts certainly aren't comparable. If you're looking for evidence of our marine origins, plasma is too disconnected to really use as some sort of ancient remnant.
Posted by: Galactor | February 12, 2009 1:45 PM
Frac: That video is an overview from episode 1. The full treatment was in episode 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igPPh8_bXWw
Posted by: Holbach | February 12, 2009 2:03 PM
Frac @ 12
I never tire of watching Carl Sagan. The cosmic calendar makes the relgionist's version look like the insane crap that it is. Bugs the crap out of them. Suffer, you morons.
Posted by: Robert Thille | February 12, 2009 2:07 PM
Shouldn't "Last Banded Ion Formations" be "Last Banded Iron Formations"? My wife is the geologist in the family, but her BIF rocks are the oldest ones in the house AFAIK...
Posted by: RamblinDude
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February 12, 2009 2:33 PM
You are a very short note near the end of the symphony of life
C sharp to B sharp!
(Hey, wait a minute. We may be somewhere in the middle of this symphony!)
Posted by: SocraticGadfly | February 12, 2009 2:42 PM
Don't forget to listen to The Carnival of the Animals, by Saint-Saens! It even has the one section titled "Fossils."
Posted by: Freelancer | February 12, 2009 2:43 PM
As usual, The ONION nails it.
Darwin Pareidolia, FTW.
Posted by: Katkinkate | February 12, 2009 2:44 PM
The symphony is not over yet.
Posted by: Claire L. Evans | February 12, 2009 3:16 PM
Ah, it is indeed a typo -- thanks Pharyngula, for picking out something which I was too close to notice. It will be fixed anon.
Happy Darwin Day, everyone!
Posted by: Katy | February 12, 2009 3:22 PM
I e-mailed the link to a good friend as a Happy Darwin Day card.
Thanks!
Posted by: Jim Battle | February 12, 2009 3:27 PM
Kobra @#4 said: "e^x does very little until it hits 0, then rushes up to infinity."
Huh? The growth from e^(-20) to e^(-10) is exactly the same ratio as e^10 to e^20.
Sorry, I felt the urge to pick that nit.
Back to the topic: nice video!
Posted by: Chris Davis | February 12, 2009 4:01 PM
That's absolutely gorgeous! I've been playing over and over, and I don't think I'll stop for a while yet.
Posted by: Desert Son | February 12, 2009 4:19 PM
Excellent video!
Happy Darwin Day!
No kings,
Robert
Posted by: Jan Andrea | February 12, 2009 4:23 PM
Oh, that was awesome! The end totally gave me chills.
Posted by: JM | February 12, 2009 5:08 PM
pHred wrote at #9:
I vaguely remember having a (Chemistry?) teacher who pronounced the element "Eye-Ron", which eliminated the confusion. It's not the pronunciation I'm used to.
Posted by: Eclogite | February 12, 2009 5:43 PM
I had the same problem as pHred @ #9.
Posted by: Mr. F | February 12, 2009 6:14 PM
I like that!
Posted by: defectiverobot | February 12, 2009 6:31 PM
Frack...er...Frac!
You beat me to it. The Cosmos calendar was really cool. And the evolution animation was way ahead of it's time...and had a cool soundtrack to boot!
Posted by: Keith Harwood | February 12, 2009 6:53 PM
These things always annoy me. We have had life on Earth for 4,000,000,000 years. Before the Sun gets too big and bright we are likely to have life on Earth another 4,000,000,000 years. (Unless we do something *really* silly.) Even David Attenborough got it wrong with his year of life on earth. We aren't a blip of a couple of seconds at the end of December. We are a blip of a couple of seconds at the beginning of July.
Posted by: CraigM | February 12, 2009 8:13 PM
Yeah, I also stared at Banded Ion for awhile thinking, huh? It is a very cool representation of the geologic timeline, though.
Posted by: Rickey | February 12, 2009 8:29 PM
Maybe we should let the life at 4,000,001,000 and beyond do their own calendars. Hell, they will probably figure out how to really harness the sun and keep on going until we swing into some unforeseenly dangerous random rock. We might just be in last moment of the third week in January. It's gonna be a long winter. History will be a thing of the past. (sorry, Red Stripe is Jamaican Mon.)
Posted by: Crudely Wrott | February 12, 2009 9:27 PM
I like your example of us being the last note, PZ. Some others might think that our relative flash in the pan leaves an opening for the literalist thumpers to thrust their noses into. Let them have at it, I say. It will only hasten the day when they will be roundly considered anachronisms.
We are a final note only to what has already been played. But as soon as that last note is noted and recorded and played back to wisely nodding heads, the symphony has moved on. So we are not the last note, we are a voice in a grand harmony that can be heard wherever people look closely and think long. Whenever we build upon what we know, using the predictive power of theory, the revelatory power of observation and the instructive power of experimentation. It's worked so far.
The last note we sing is probably a ridiculous distance in the future, though I sure cannot say with any certainty. But I can confidently say that things will certainly change by then. The accelerating trend at the end of the video certainly showed no sign of diminishing.
The big deal here is, look what we have done in an eye blink of time! Why, we have even developed the ability to represent our understanding of natural processes with not only esoteric symbols, but with imagery that nearly anyone can understand. That's never been done before on this rock by any other critter.
Now comes the future . . . Bwaahahahahaaaa!
Posted by: Alan Kellogg | February 13, 2009 1:35 AM
In a symphony lasting trillions of years fifteen billion aint even an 8th note.
Posted by: Widgetas
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February 13, 2009 4:12 AM
That gave me shivers that did.
Posted by: cedgray
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February 13, 2009 6:28 AM
If we're the last note, it's a distinctly unfinished symphony. Good so far, though.
Posted by: Monado | February 13, 2009 7:28 AM
Cool! Here's a banded iron formation from Australia, which was so heavily glaciated in the past that it has a lot of very old rock showing.
Posted by: Thomas Theobald | February 19, 2009 11:20 AM
Hmm...no, I'm not.
I am a very, VERY short note at the very BEGINNING of the symphony of life - it simply has not finished writing itself.
T