Experimental Elwood Herring
Deep Time

DEEP TIME deals with nothing less than the formation of the Earth and evolution of life. The piece lasts exactly 80 minutes, each second of which represents a million years of the Earth's age - on that scale, three whole minutes are devoted to dinosaurs (180m years or 180 seconds), and the whole evolution of Mankind is crammed into the final couple of seconds. My goal was primarily to demonstrate the vast amount of time that has elapsed since life first got started, and the long slow process that led to us humans. It's interesting to note that the YEC "theory" that the world was created 6,000 years ago would only amount to 0.006 of a second - which I have depicted at the very end of the piece as an almost imperceptible "click".

Now I know the Earth is only 4,500 million years old at the most, but I've added a 3 minute section at the beginning which depicts the ignition of the sun and the formation of "Proto-Earth" - five minutes into the piece (300 seconds or 300 million years) our newly-formed Earth got whacked by another planetary body which resulted in the formation of the Moon. I wanted that in the piece so I had to work to a 4,800 million year timeline instead.

All the events described and represented in the work are accurate to the best of modern scientific knowledge and to the best of my ability to mix the various sounds. (Please note also that this piece is not "music" as such, and isn't meant to be. It's more of a sound collage.)

m.y.ago Time
4800 0:00 Sun ignites; Proto-Earth forms from dust cloud
4500 5:00 Formation of the Earth proper, creation of Moon
3800 16:40 Beginning of life on Earth.
2500 38:20 Great oxidation event
2300 41:40 First "snowball Earth"
900 65:00 First multicellular life
770 67:10 2nd Snowball Earth
535 71:05 Cambrian explosion begins
489 71:51 Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event begins
465 72:15 Plants begin colonising the land.
408 73:12 Oldest known insect
385 73:35 Oldest fossilised tree
365 73:55 The first tetrapods evolve.
251 75:49 Greatest mass extinction in history.
208 76:32 Another mass extinction paves the way for dinosaurs.
130 77:50 First flowering plants emerge
100 78:20 Cretaceous dinosaurs reach their peak in size.
65 78:54 K/T extinction wipes out a swathe of species.
55 79:05 The Palaeocene/Eocene extinction.
40 79:20 New World monkeys
6 79:54 Humans diverge.
6 79:54 Hominins begin walking on two legs.
3.5 79:56 Australopithecines appear, meat eating begins
2 79:58 First stone tools, Homo Habilis, Homo Erectus
1.8 79;58 Migration out of Africa, first use of fire
0.5 79:59 First purpose built shelters, cooking
0.2 79:59 Homo Sapiens appears