New video by NASA scientist Jessie Christiansen will make it easier for you to imagine how short the time humans have lived on Earth.
By tracking the motion of the Solar System in the Milky Way, NASA scientist Jessie Christiansen tells us how long the “dinosaur kingdom” has dominated Earth, and when compared to the age of the Earth. people, we see how short our time in “ruling” is.
The Moon revolves around the Earth, we orbit the Sun, and the great fireball (as well as the entire Solar System) orbits the center of the galaxy; The Sun completes one revolution in about 250 million years. Christiansen’s short video shows that when our Solar System was in this position long ago, the Triassic (started at 251.9 million years ago, lasted 50.6 million years) was at its zenith, and The forerunners of the dinosaurs had just appeared.
Researcher Christiansen came up with the idea while she was attending a stargazing party at the California Academy of Sciences. Those who attended the event were surprised to learn that when the Solar System was on the other side of the Milky Way, dinosaurs were walking on the ground. Surprised eyes, expressing interest in the truth of history led Ms Christiansen to start making the video.
” That’s when I realized the timelines – archeology, fossil chronology and astronomical datum – all fit together ,” Ms Christiansen told Business Insider. ” Then I thought of drawing a diagram showing the evolutionary steps of the dinosaurs based on the motion of the galaxy .”
Timeline of Earth’s position in the Milky Way and when the dinosaurs appeared.
Ms. Christiansen said that she used Powerpoint and 4 hours to make the video above. Besides, she also had to correct a few things: Pleisiosaur is not a dinosaur, and the Solar System flies around the Milky Way once every 250 million years, not 200 million years as shown in the video.
The video above has also reduced a lot of details related to the motion of the celestial body in the galaxy and of the galaxy itself. Many stars and star systems also move, at speeds different from ours and with their own orbits. Objects closer to the center of the galaxy fly faster. Not to mention that our galaxy is also moving in the vast Universe, getting closer and closer to its neighbor Andromeda.
“My video makes you think we’re back to where we were 250 million years ago, but in reality, the entire galaxy has traveled a great distance, ” Ms Christiansen said. ” I move in a vortex through the Universe .”
I wonder when the Solar System completes one more rotation around the center of the Milky Way, what will the Earth look like?