Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Six Days of Creation

Some rough approximations:

Six days from the Big Bang, each hour lasting approx 100 million years.

Earth appears in the last hour of the fourth day.

Oceans form by the start of the fifth day.
The ancestor of all living cells appears around the middle of the day, and by the start of the sixth day its descendants have filled the atmosphere with oxygen, and chloroplasts develop.

In the middle of the sixth day the first dry land appears. Two or three hours later, fungi appear, and plants an hour or so later.
With five or six hours to go to the end of the day, fish and insects.
Three hours to go - amphibians.
Three minutes later seed-bearing plants colonise the land and reptiles follow them 12 minutes later.
Two and a half hours to go - the Permian extinction, after which the dinosaurs develop.
By the start of the last hour there are flowering plants, and the first birds and mammals.
Forty minutes to go - the first grass appears, and shortly afterwards the big dinosaurs are gone.

Four minutes, last common ancestor of humans and chimps.
100 seconds, genus Homo.
One minute, controlled use of fire.
8 seconds, Homo sapiens

Recorded history, 1/5 of a second.

1 comment:

Mr. Zickler said...

Wow. Really puts it in perspective, doesn't it?