The Wiki History of the Universe in 200 Words or Less

Quantum fluctuation. Inflation. Expansion. Strong nuclear interaction. Particle-antiparticle annihilation. Deuterium and helium production. Density perturbations. Recombination. Blackbody radiation. Local contraction. Cluster formation. Reionization? Violent relaxation. Virialization. Biased galaxy formation? Turbulent fragmentation. Contraction. Ionization. Compression. Opaque hydrogen. Massive star formation. Deuterium ignition. Hydrogen fusion. Hydrogen depletion. Core contraction. Envelope expansion. Helium fusion. Carbon, oxygen, and silicon fusion. Iron production. Implosion. Supernova explosion. Metals injection. Star formation. Supernova explosions. Star formation. Condensation. Planetesimal accretion. Planetary differentiation. Crust solidification. Volatile gas expulsion. Water condensation. Water dissociation. Ozone production. Ultraviolet absorption. Photosynthetic unicellular organisms. Oxidation. Mutation. Natural selection and evolution. Respiration. Cell differentiation. Sexual reproduction. Fossilization. Land exploration. Dinosaur extinction. Mammal expansion. Glaciation. Homo sapiens manifestation. Animal domestication. Food surplus production. Civilization! Innovation. Exploration. Religion. Warring nations. Empire creation and destruction. Exploration. Colonization. Taxation without representation. Revolution. Constitution. Election. Expansion. Industrialization. Rebellion. Emancipation Proclamation. Invention. Mass production. Urbanization. Immigration. World conflagration. League of Nations. Suffrage extension. Depression. World conflagration. Fission explosions. United Nations. Space exploration. Assassinations. Lunar excursions. Resignation. Computerization. World Trade Organization. Terrorism. Internet expansion. Reunification. Dissolution. World-Wide Web creation. Composition. Extrapolation?

Copyright 1996-1997 by Eric Schulman.

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3fs8i/hist/histwiki.html

Isn't that a Barenaked Ladies song?

One of my most prized possession is a set of dog eared paperbacks based on Jawaharlal Nehru's prison letters to his daughter (yes, Indira) taking up the task of teaching first world history and then the history of India. Written with scant references and of course no hyperlinks those volumes have a sweep and depth that these 200 links don't approach. This is basically a science geek-Western-USAer's version of "a world map of Bilbao."

To me it sounds more like Ten Years After:

Here's the book version of the thread-starting history.

The original post gives about 35% of the content to human events, which account for only about (what?) 0.000035% of the span of the universe's course through time. How arrogant.

But how necessary. What should an educated person know? We reserve the right to focus on the near and recent. Otherwise you get 99.999+ % of stuff about the doings of gas and dust, and (even when we get to Earth) 99.999+% of the rest on the doings of bacteria and trilobytes. I love that stuff, but will most of it get me a hired or valued?

Even this list is a skewed one toward pure knowledge for its own sake. If we were focused on teaching kids what they needed to know to survive, be happy, and prosper, we'd probably leave out all the astronomy, evolutionary biology, and ancient history entirely. You can pick that up later, but meanwhile you need to be able to be kind, responsible, do simple math, know how to type, understand money and credit, respect for others, and know something about daily attension to your family, job, housing, body, teeth....

Far as you know. Might be totally wrong.

And yeah, us monkeys are an arrogant bunch.
Call me up a UFO, I want off this mudball.

This biggest news story of the week was the issue of whether or not the cops are stupid.

That may not be the history of the universe, but it's the history of governance at Wikipedia and beyond.

...which went to show how, when you're the President of the United States, you have to be really careful what you say. Ordinary mortals, in a country with freedom of speech, have the right to pontificate about how stupid others are even when they admit they don't actually know all the facts. (WR members do it all the time!) The President had better not do it, though!

It would have been a more interesting story if Obama had opined on the parallel question here of whether Wikipedians are Wikipediots or not.

Might be totally wrong. But it's a funny coincidence when a general theory of particle formation from pure hot matter (gained from accelerator experiments) gives you the right numbers for elements (say H/He ratios in the universe-- accounding for 98% of ordinary mass) without any fudging or extra addition of stuff. Same with the blackbody radiation predicted from the Big Bang-- that was predicted before we saw it, and at about the right temperature, too. At some point the protons and helions captured the electrons and there was a nice warm 3000 K glow let out. Compensate for time and stretching of space and by now it should be 3 K or so. And (lo!) it is.

I split at every punctuation mark and removed duplicates to make a pretty list. (Yay for regex!) 97 entries total: 55 blue links and 42 red links currently, though there are some "and" entries that are still a bit screwy. Some of the red links are pretty surprising (e.g., "Animal domestication").

Not according to Sarah Palin. Let's see, 1-5/2194745 or so equals 99.9997722%



Probably under [[Non-human animal domestication]]...

Also, no matter how important the fact that the Earth formed and how, and that microbes were dividing for tens of thousands of millions of years before more complex forms came along, that these events can be covered in one or two simple sentences. The complexity of life on Earth, and how it has effected the Earth, and the influences of the higher forms of animals including the human family, may have happened in the last tiny fraction of the timeline to date but have had effects upon the planet out of all proportion to that timeline is properly covered. i.e. Bacterium may have broken down the complex carbon based compounds to create oxygen and water over those tens of thousands of millions of years, but a species that has been around for only a hundred thousand years or so has learned very recently how to break down atoms and release energies that are small echoes of the events that formed the Earth.

Perspective is a two way thing.

I think due to SlimVirgin and Crum and the other bums, "Animal domestication" will need to be pipe-linked to Animal rights.

That's just a random list symptomatic of not having defined or understood what the scope of "the Universe" actually is.

What was Buddy Holly doing in 1960? Lots of fun, though. I remember it all (or remember it by proxy, due to the magic of video replay).