Bad Astronomy

The Earth’s Story in 60 Seconds

I love clever filmmakers. I love science. So of course, I love it when clever filmmakers makes clever science videos. John Boswell is one of the creators of Symphony of Science, a fantastic series of videos featuring scientists and science communicators auto-tuned to original music. He also makes other videos about science under the name MelodySheep on YouTube … which is how I found a fantastic short piece called “Our Story in One Minute”. It shows the entire 4.5 billion year history of the Earth compressed down into one minute. Well, the highlights at least, with a stress on humanity’s involvement. It’s fascinating and wonderful. Watch:

Pretty cool. And is that my friend Brian Cox standing on the mountain at the end? I think it is.

If you liked this video, you might also like “Timeline: The Age of the Universe”, which has the 13.73 billion year history of the entire Universe compressed to 13.73 minutes; a billion years per minute. It was created by Craig Hall, who wrote a piece of music specifically for the video. He also posted helpful comments in the video itself to tell you what was happening in the Universe and when.

Both of these videos should be shown in science classrooms! I think they’d help inspire kids to learn more about the cosmos we live in.

… and maybe they should be shown to Congress, too.