The Scale of Geologic Time
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- Опубліковано 8 січ 2025
- The concept of geologic time is one of the most important intellectual developments in scientific thought. Understanding geology and its processes is inextricably linked to time. And yet, geologic time is extremely difficult to grasp simply because of its vastness.
This video explains geologic time using three different approaches. The first portion shows two photographs of the Green River in Utah that were taken 97 years apart in the same position and orientation. The photos show very little change in the landscape, indicative of the extremely slow rates of geologic processes, i. e. longer than one human life.
The second approach uses a calendar and the third approach uses a yardstick to illustrate the length of geologic time by indicating where significant geologic events would occur respectively, by the month and date or within the length of the yard stick.
Using the metric system instead, imagine geological time as a distance of 1 millimeter (mm) for every year. On this scale, every kilometer (km) represents 1 million years and every thousand kilometers a billion years. Thus, a distance of 4,567 kilometers (according to the IUGS) -- roughly from the city center of Seattle WA to Guatemala -- represents Earth's entire geological timescale. Yet, the first visible lifeforms, the Ediacaran biota, appear at only 635 km (extreme southern Oregon) from today, the Cambrian explosion (of new lifeforms) is at 538.8 km (north of Kirk OR), the Paleozoic ends at 251.9 km (Mt. Hood OR), the dinosaurs go extinct at 66 km (north of Electron WA), humanoids first appear at 2.8 km (within Seattle), modern humans at 300 meters (m), the last Neanderthals die out at 40 m, the Gregorian calendar starts at 202.5 centimeters (cm), Columbus discovers the New World at 53.3 cm and WWII starts at 8,5 cm.
Nicely done! Thanks.
Cause its not about time but coincidence
32 million years in the future: the US finally changes to the metric system
Even metric time?
Do you want teriffs? Because that kinda talk will give you terrifs.
@@whiskeymonk4085sure I'll take one what's a teriff?
Why is that so important to you?
Hahaha😂
Well done and highly informative.
I'm putting those dates on my calendar
For me the lesson is that momentous events, like the emergence of simplest life, are at first spaced very far from each other, but as complexity is compounded, the great developments beging to snowball. From eukaryotic to bilateral to tetrapodal to terrestrial anatomy, the potential for deep, technological intelligence gathers momentum, until today we risk rolling faster than our own potential can hold together. Time to learn self-control?
Simple life returning to the White House.
James, Paul, Veronica, Sammy………..Nice work. Truly. Thanks. Kevin
I grew up in western Nebraska where all sorts of fossils can be found around the base of the bluffs that rise from the prairie. When whole fossils are preserved, with some exceptions, you have to think of things happening quickly. Massive changes can be slow and gradual, but they can also happen in minutes, as we saw with Mt. St. Helen's. Circumspection about commonly repeated ages and periods is sensible. It seems more and more sensible as the story (narrative) repeatedly changes through the course of a person's life.
People like to imagine going back in a time machine to observe changes, but don't realize there is only a tiny portion of Earth's history where human's could breathe the air without dying.
Sure there has been oxygen for a long time, but most of the time there has been either too much oxygen, or too little for us to survive.
Nicely done.
Man, both the Roman Empire and the United States submitted their assignments at the last instant.
good assembly and description of this data.
geologic time should include geologic events not just biologic events :)
I hope this helps a lot of people put some more thought into deep time
I'm not sure that most of us are built to consider it too deeply for too long.
Decades are enough.
Music is totally distracting.
I am disappointed there wasn’t anything explaining you know how old the Earth is. The measuring stick and calendar were interesting models for illustrations. I see they weren’t meant to explain how to know it is true.
The river bend pictures can be viewed in 3D stereo. I'm guessing the 1871 picture was made by Jackson.
Saying the Roman Empire was founded in 27 BCE is OK, although "founded" may not be the best word there, as it was an evolution from a Republic, following civil war. But the statue you show is of Julius Caesar, who was assassinated in 44 BC. Julius' great nephew, Octavian, became the first Roman Emperor, around 27 BC, so a statue of him would be more appropriate to show, corresponding to the date you choose here. I definitely agree that is one of the most important historical moments in human history.
Bowknot bend is on the Green River not the San Juan!
You had to yell it? A kind correction would be sufficient!
Every time we have a major flood or landslide or earthquake in some area that reshapes the landscape and we say, wow that’s never happened in living memory, I like to think just how many thousands of times that’s actually happened there, before us newcomers arrived in that place, or indeed on this Earth. Go back a billion years and nothing would be recognisable. The earth’s surface is constantly being broken down and rebuilt.
Very nicely done!!!👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
It took 2:08 like 2-3 days from a massive MASSIVE sudden flood
weather is like that dripper in your plant pot or mister, but then straight up pour 10 5 gallon buckets of water on a house plant and it will massively erode the soil in seconds, 100 years of years doent compare to 1 year of massive floods
Thank you for the perspective of time
It's not science. Made up time because a Cataclysm shapped the landscape and it is recorded in recent human expierence as mythology. The land was craved out by interplanetary electrical arcs and super sonic winds harder than steel. Gigantic boulders, some large enough that they now have cities on them were picked up and tossed across the land by electrical sputtering. Earth was the moon of Saturn during the Golden age before the flood. Saturn was in axial alligment with Venus, Mars and earth under a purple opaque sky during the golden age. They don't want you to know this documented fact.
another point's that all present organisms have been evolving for 4 billion years. so our human-specific characteristics are only a tiny part of how we function.
Americans really will use anything but the metric system (this is a joke, this is a cool video)
it has taken humans one beat of a flys wing to f up the entire earth
Exactly!
To loosely paraphrase George Carlin- we haven’t f’ed up the Earth at all. The Earth isn’t prejudiced against styrofoam. It doesn’t care if the cute fuzzy animals are lost to extinction while the creepy boring ones live on. They’re all Earth’s children. The Earth isn’t going anywhere. We are.
The genus Homo is about 3 million years old, but Homo sapiens like you and me are only roughly 300,000 years old. When you say "humans" in the video, you are technically correct because we're all in the Homo genus, but it's still pretty misleading for almost everyone who think of humans as being only Homo sapiens. 😕
People ask why we haven't detected alien life yet. That's like asking why your one day old baby hasn't received a PhD from MIT yet.
Americans using a yard stick to represent time, genius
Which is three feet that nobody has.
The vegetation along the river is mostly Tamarisk , brought into the rivers in the late 19th C by some German(s). They/he (not a pronoun issue, just a who issue.) also brought in trout for the rivers that were slaughtered for gold mining. I live in the gold country and wowie, what a guy can do with hose.
Nice video, thanks!
I was taught that an Eon was the time it would take you to climb Mt Everest everyday to pee and wear it down to sea level.... Just saying :}
IDN, the opening above the middle red arrow @1:55 looks like the floor of the opening goes from a "V" shape in the older picture to a flat bottom in the newer picture. Either man has been there or something needed a place to rest and built up the floor of the opening. Here I thought erosion only worked with gravity. 😏
It's crazy we live on a planet that's literally hundreds of years old, and live in a universe with literally thousands of stars
You are kidding, of course, unless maybe you are a creationist.
😂😂
Great stuff but please lose the music.
Never knew a minute has 100 seconds! You learn something new every day! 😂
lol
Ok, but what's an "inch"?
I once mentioned that standing on the pile of rocks at the bottom of a waterfall to have a shower is a bad idea.
One response was "That stuff happens in geologic time!!!" as if those events happen only when you're not looking. ;)
They were on about risk. Not impossibility. More chance of doing a car crash.
@@lost4468yt These events happen regularly "in geological time", just look at the shape of any waterfall valley.
Capitólio rockfall killed 10.
There was another from Brazil I can remember where 40+ died when the sides of the valley slid.
@whatilearnttoday5295 and how many die in car accidents?
Except Canyonlands National Park doesn't include the San Juan River. There is a bow knot bend on the Green River near Canyonlands.
Geology and geography have similar spelling so maybe that explains the error. Another thing current "scientists" practice is the use of "BCE" and "CE" which basically cancels the most influential individual, Jesus Christ, from history. My guess is that it is supposed to be inclusive even though it mimics the same dates as AD and BC. So "scientists" can't get the location right and they allow politics to seep into their discipline.
2:30 Yards? Inches? Really? If you really have to use them, then at least provide values in metric system at the same time.
Great!❤
And that's just the earth. The solar system formed in early August by the Universe's even vaster calendar.
*Let the Sunshine In...*
Why in imperial system? What a shame.
Imperial units, is it really a system. He even reverts to decimal so ...
My takeaway is: Even though we’ve only been on earth for a relatively short time, we’ve really screwed it up. Perhaps the best thing for earth is to have AI take over 😂.
Generalisations, assumptions, theories and hypotheses happens when science and a secular worldview meet. Where have we been the last 7000 years?
Thanks : )
Keep in mind that within the context of the calendar the extinction of humankind occurs very soon after New Year. There's very little time left for humanity.
How do you know?
Edit: too bad, my reply is hidden.
@gustavgnoettgen have you seen the Earth? Have you examined the state of the human species?
@@sentientflower7891 It's shitty, but I can't read the future. Maybe we sterilize the planet but survive.
Careful, don’t show pictures of the ocean coast, or risk being called a climate denier 😅. Go to Natural Bridge in Virginia to see examples of the river erosion over time.
Peter truly prophesied that people would come saying, "all things must continue as they are and have continued as they are from the beginning."
This was fulfilled.
Around 1785, James Hutton came stating, "the cyclic process of the formation of sedimentary rocks by erosion and sediment deposition, do not change over time."
This was the foundation of uniformitarianism, which is the foundation for the theory of evolution.
Peter continued stating, "For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:"
How can uniformitarianism even be proven scientifically if it is not observable, sounds like a theory that has become fact by secular scientists, similar to evolution.
Rome was founded in 753 bc 🤓
In the first picture. Most of that was carved by a catastrophic ice age flood in a short amount of time.
What is your evidence? Btw meandering rivers from in low erosional environments . Insized rivers that meander happen as the land rises if the erosion took place from basic penaplane the canyon would be straight
@@jeffbybee5207 taken from the grand canyon website.
What Do Rocks and Glaciers Have to Do With Grand Canyon?
How did the river and its tributaries carve their path? The answer may surprise you since it is not the water that did it, but rather the rocky debris eroded and transported in floods that does most of the cutting. Think of this flood debris acting as a giant rock tumbler that can physically abrade the bedrock channels. In the last two and a half million years, repeated cycles of glaciation in the Rockies caused huge Ice Age floods to roar down the river. As the river deepened its track in Grand Canyon, the tributary streams kept pace as their load of more and bigger debris incised into the bedrock.
You mean the mountains? U-shaped valleys and paternoster lakes are typical of landscapes carved by glaciers.
@@dragonridley No, I am talking about glacial outburst floods. Which were common during the ice age. Multiple outbursts happened on many river systems. Including the Colorado river. The biggest outburst flood was called the Missoula Flood. It carved away half of Washington. The amount of water that runs through the Grand Canyon is but a miniscule fraction of what was running through there 14000 years ago.
@@LotsofStuffYT I know about the Missoula flood, but that doesn't seem to be what's in that first image
"yard stick"... the moment i closed the video
Heroic and brave.
You need a new calendar. "Explain coal"?
We can make coal in a laboratory. Genesis 1:1
Wood + time
Fallen logs buried under pressure from trees and plants that lived before bacteria evolved that could feed off of timber (thus rot the wood before it could be pressed into coal)
It took 1.833×10^39 joules of energy for life to form....3.9 billion years x 14.9 Zettawatts
What? Are you new?
Yes, yes I am.
Humans did not originate in Africa. That theory has been disproven by the human genome sequence.
Uhhhh... no.
@edsanville RH negative blood says otherwise. Imagine that... The government learning institutions didn't tell the truth. Impossible right?
I had to stop watching when you gave up using the metric system. Sorry.
He didn't give it up he never used metric silly
You are the epitome of a victim, such a pity and loss that you stopped.
Thankfully you left a comment to show just how valuable you were before you shattered into a million metric pieces.
Moondust green jello an lima beans , madness like poop onna stick . Wavering in infrared
god created the universe 6 thousand years ago.
Ignore everything people show you.
@gustavgnoettgen Jesus is the word. In the begining is the word. 6 thousand yrs ago god created everything.
@@regorflora7915 Ignore everything people show you including the stuff you like to believe.
@@gustavgnoettgen what i believe is not some stuff. its the devine truth.
@@regorflora7915 Ignore everything people show you and your own judgements.