HR: 1340h
AN: ED13A-0720    [Abstracts]
TI: Storytelling Through the Temporal Bands: Collapsing Time With the Power of Ten
AU: * McCaffrey, M S
EM: mark.mccaffrey@colorado.edu
AF: Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, 1540 30th Street, Boulder, CO 80309 United States
AB: Framing the history of the universe with a logarithmic axis in time provides an opportunity to break the temporal continuum into specific segments within the continuum of time. In recent years, the log-ten approach to temporal scaling has been used as a scientific and educational scaffolding for a variety of cosmic and Earth system processes and events, such as in J.M. Mitchell's 1976 "An Overview of Climatic Variability and Its Causal Mechanisms," (Quaternary Research 6, 481-493) and the "temporal bands" presented in the 1986 Bretherton Report and follow-up "Earth System Science: A Closer View (1988, NASA). Other efforts, such as the NOAA Climate TimeLine Information Tool (http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/ctl) have begun to further flesh out the "powers of ten" framework, which allows time to be effectively collapsed in order to focus on particular aspects of the evolution and existence of the universe. We will present an overview of past efforts to capture the breadth of the universe using log-ten temporal scaling. In addition, particular "stories" from each time scale will be proposed: from the first seconds of the Big Bang (+1010Yrs.) to the development of light, galaxies and solar systems and planet Earth (109Yrs.), from the tectonic processes, evolution of biologic life, and mass extinctions that have occurred at the scales of millions of years, to the orbital processes that serve as the primary trigger of Ice Ages over hundreds of thousands of years, then focusing on the emergence of Homo sapiens from Africa in the past 100,000 years, the development of agriculture and civilizations in the past 10,000 years or so during the Holocene, and then concentrating on shorter time-scales and the events and processes they span. Whether beginning at the beginning (The Big Bang) or beginning at the sub-annual scale in which our everyday lives are lived, the "powers of ten" provide a scientific framework that holds strong potential for communicating the history and nature of the universe.
DE: 5455 Origin and evolution
DE: 1035 Geochronology
DE: 0800 EDUCATION
DE: 0815 Informal education
DE: 1010 Chemical evolution
SC: Education and Human Resourcese [ED]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting