Science Cafe - Deep Time

I saw the sign in the window of the Swan when I was on my way to Tai Chi at the Masonic Hall, and I thought it looked interesting.
Lawrence Matthews gave the talk to about nine of us in the room by the front door of the Swan (the same one we use for Stitch and Bitch).
The idea of the talk was to give us tools to envisage history and prehistory - and right back to the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago - so that we could have a better idea of the order things happened in, and how far back we were going. After all, 13.8 billion years is just a number - it's very hard to imagine that length of time.
So Lawrence suggested that we think of one year as one millimetre. He had written out a timeline on a roll of paper 2 metres long - and that took us from Now to Caesar Augustus and the birth of Christ. 2m is about the height of an adult human, so we could think of Queen Victoria sitting on our noses, while Augustus was getting his toga wrapped round our feet.
So that's 2,000 years and 2 metres - what about dinosaurs? On this scale, there they are in France, wearing berets and waving baguettes around. Or the formation of the earth? At the same scale, that takes us to the deserts of Mesopotamia (or modern Iraq). And what about the Big Bang? Well, we're right round the earth in Australia for that (with kangaroos flying out of the way as the Big Bang explodes!). There was also a vivid image of Hansel and Gretel in a VW camper van (to remind us we're in Germany) where the 12 different branches of life split off - insects, vertebrates, and so on.
As you can see, explaining it in that way certainly worked for me!

The Science Café meets on the fourth Tuesday of the month (though they may be changing it to a Monday if that suits more people). They are having a break over the summer, but will be starting up again in September.