I wish I had two short movies that covered the history of the Universe and Earth. Both would be in exponential time (like PowersOfTen runs exponential in visual field). The Universe's history would start at 0 time and cover the initial fractional seconds, expanding (then contracting, then expanding again) until we get to the bloom today.

Similarly a history of Earth could run backwards from now (like TheAncestorsTale) showing the short history of humans, the ramification of species, and the drift of contintents. It'd be nice to zoom in though on events where the world changed rapidly, like the Permian or KT events.

Although both films' time run opposite to each other, they could be joined together. Either way, I'd still like to have that scope.

Related: Globe4d (http://www.globe4d.com) lets you view contential drift.

Imagine having one of those when you were a kid....

In fact, the people who built it were aparently undergraduates and it doesn't look that complicated. A trackball, a garden table, an overhead projector, a mousewheel, some OpenGL code? (It's all in the video: http://www.globe4d.com/wow/). You could hack one of these together in a couple of weekends.

Hmm. Not sure about the couple of weekends. But you're right, it'd be a good project. The datasets should be available.