Very Short History of the Planet Earth

John Baez has written a Very Short History of the Planet Earth. He says, “The Earth has survived some remarkable disasters. To keep our tale brief, let us focus on four: the Big Splat about 4.55 billion years ago, the Late Heavy Bombardment about 4 billion years ago, the Oxygen Catastrophe roughly 2.5 billion years ago, and the Snowball Earth events about 850 million years ago. The details of these events — and indeed, whether they even happened at all — remain controversial. We shall present some widely accepted theories without dwelling on caveats or alternative scenarios. In every case, there is interesting physics involved in testing these theories.”

It’s not the whole history, but select dramatic parts, told simply and quick. It includes many scenes I was not aware of.

The dust cloud that is the precursor to Earth.