Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Berkeley HTML5 Timeline Tool Can Show a Day, Or the Lifetime of the Universe

Posted by timothy on from the timelines-are-underrated dept.

An anonymous reader writes "UC Berkeley Professor Walter Alvarez, most widely known for his theory that dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid impact, is developing an open source HTML5 timeline tool for visualizing all 13.7 billion years of the past called ChronoZoom. Originally conceived by one of his former students, Roland Saekow, ChronoZoom can zoom from a single day out to all of the Cosmos, passing Earth, Life, and Human Prehistory along the way. The idea and initial database was put together by students at UC Berkeley while students at Moscow State University in Russia wrote the code with guidance and support from researchers at Microsoft Research. The beta is available as of today, and the source code is available. The hope is that it will revolutionize teaching, study and research of the past."

5 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. "The Universe in a Day", by God by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Funny

    12:00 midnight: Let there be light, motherfuckers! How you like this TIME AND SPACE, haters?

    12:31 a.m.: Galaxies and stars forming. Yep, let's get this party STARTED!!

    4:00 a.m.: All work and no play

    8:00 a.m.: Makes God

    1:00 p.m.: A dull boy

    5:00 p.m.: Earth forms. Great, another rock. Boooooorrrring.

    5:20 p.m.: Life on earth. Well, this has potential.

    11:53:12 p.m.: Hah, suck on THAT, dinosaurs!

    11:59:59 p.m.: Humans evolve! Hey, looks like this "life" thing is finally going somewhere.

    11:59:59:59:46 p.m.: Reality television? *That's* where you took it? Really?

    12:00 midnight: Hope you losers read those Mayan calendars I sent.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
  2. In other news... by forkfail · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... Facebook sues the University of California for patent infringement.

    --
    Check your premises.
  3. Other timelines by omems · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here's another decent open source timeline I've used. It's not immediately scalable, but with a little db knowledge, I think it could be modified. http://www.simile-widgets.org/timeline/

  4. Bug report by tverbeek · · Score: 4, Funny

    There's a glitch in this timeline: it shows dates billions of years before God actually created the universe!

    --
    http://alternatives.rzero.com/
  5. Yeah, but by XanC · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is still cooler: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120312.html