ChronoZoom is a free open source project that visualizes

time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

on the broadest possible scale from the

Big Bang The Big Bang event is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models of the Big Bang explain the evolution of the observable universe from the ...

to the

present The present (or here'' and ''now) is the time that is associated with the events perception, perceived directly and in the first time, not as a recollection (perceived more than once) or a speculation (predicted, hypothesis, uncertain). It is ...

day. Conceived by

Walter Alvarez Walter Alvarez (born October 3, 1940) is a professor in the Earth and Planetary Science department at the University of California, Berkeley. He is most widely known for the theory that dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid impact, developed in c ...

and Roland Saekow and developed by the department of Earth and Planetary Science at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

in collaboration with

Microsoft Research Microsoft Research (MSR) is the research subsidiary of Microsoft. It was created in 1991 by Richard Rashid, Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold with the intent to advance state-of-the-art computing and solve difficult world problems through technologi ...

and

Moscow State University M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...

, Alvarez unveiled the first ChronoZoom prototype at UC Berkeley's 2010 Faculty Research Lecture. Although that demo is no longer available to the public online, a second version rewritten in

HTML5 HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HTML ...

is now available and open source. ChronoZoom was inspired by the study of

Big History Big History is an academic discipline which examines history from the Big Bang to the present. Big History resists specialization, and searches for universal patterns or trends. It examines long time frames using a multidisciplinary approach ...

, and it approaches the documentation and visualization of time and history in the same way that

Google Earth Google Earth is a computer program that renders a 3D computer graphics, 3D representation of Earth based primarily on satellite imagery. The program maps the Earth by superimposition, superimposing satellite images, aerial photography, and geog ...

deals with

geography Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and ...

. ChronoZoom allows users to see the true scale of time over cosmic, geologic, biological and social periods.

Purpose

The primary goal of ChronoZoom is to make time relationships between different studies of history clear and vivid. In the process, it provides a framework for exploring related electronic resources. It thus serves as a "master timeline" tying together all kinds of specialized timelines and electronic resources, and aspires to bridge the gap between the humanities and the sciences and to bring together and unify all knowledge of the past. ChronoZoom is planned as an educational tool as well as a research tool, by allowing researchers to plot various time series data next to each other for comparison.

Versions

The 1.0 proof of concept was released on April 29, 2010 at the 97th Annual Faculty Research Lecture Series given by Alvarez. A 2.0 beta was released on March 14, 2012, completely rewritten in

and available as open source via the

Outercurve Foundation The Outercurve Foundation was an independent 501(c)(6) non-profit corporation founded by Microsoft. Its goal was to "enable the exchange of code and understanding among software companies and open source communities." They ran several software ...

. Work continued through 2014 supported by Microsoft Research (Redmond). The work continues as of 2015 supported by Axiell (Sweden),

Fontys University Fontys University of Applied Sciences is a Dutch university of applied sciences with over 44,000 students in several campuses located in the southern Netherlands. The three largest Fontys campuses are located in the cities of Eindhoven, Tilbur ...

(

Eindhoven Eindhoven () is a city and municipality in the Netherlands, located in the southern province of North Brabant of which it is its largest. With a population of 238,326 on 1 January 2022,University of Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, nl, Universiteit van Amsterdam) is a public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The UvA is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the other being ...

. The project code is freely accessible on

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...

.ChronoZoom on Github
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Awards

* 2013 SXSW Interactive Awards Winner (Educational Resource) * 2012 Digital Education Achievement Award Winner (University Project)

References

External links

ChronoZoom HTML5ChronoZoom at the Outercurve FoundationMicrosoft Research Summit 2010: Visualizing a Universe of Data
ChronoZoom: travel through time for education, exploration, and information technology research {{Microsoft FOSS History websites of the United States Computer-related introductions in 2010 Microsoft free software Software using the Apache license Timeline Software

Purpose

Versions

Awards

See also

References

External links