Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Cosmic Calendar 2

Cosmic Calendar

Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes. Voting period ends on 6 Apr 2011 at 21:19:04 (UTC)

Original - The 13.7 billion year lifetime of the universe mapped onto a single year. At this scale the Big Bang takes place on January 1 at midnight, the current time is December 31 at midnight, and each second is 434 years.[1] The scale was popularized by Carl Sagan in his book The Dragons of Eden and on the television series Cosmos, which he hosted.

Reason: This is a valuable teaching tool for putting cosmology, evolution, and written history in context. In addition to dates of important events, dates for availability for different types of evidence are shown. The image is designed to be used in school classrooms with projectors to ground discussion. I found no other high quality images for the Cosmic Calendar in searching with Google, although Discovery Channel has a low quality version with typos.
Articles in which this image appears: Cosmic Calendar
FP category for this image: Sciences
Creator: Eric Fisk

Support as nominator --Efbrazil (talk) 21:19, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comments. The arrow from month to minute should be positioned beneath "11:59 PM" and the minute should be highlighted somehow (colored in red or blue perhaps). Otherwise it is difficult to understand the transition from the middle chart to the bottom chart. Also, the bitmapping around the stopwatch looks bad. Kaldari (talk) 22:10, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks! Arrow is now beneath the last minute. I played with highlighting the final minute but I think it distracted more than helped. I fixed the stopwatch edges (they were bad!) and sourced it correctly in the comments. --Efbrazil (talk) 23:17, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
~~Oppose~~ the image looks good, except for the first row: (1) so the Big Bang took 1.5 months? (2) there are just too many empty months. Nergaal (talk) 23:58, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- The most important events are included for the purpose of discussion. The big bang background radiation I resized to fit in January, so it's clear it is an event in that month instead of multi-month. --Efbrazil (talk) 23:17, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - Please don't make the big bang picture round. Keep the same proportions as in File:WMAP 2010.png. Nergaal (talk) 17:05, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    - The distortion was my mistaken attempt to fix the fact that the cosmic background radiation picture isn't very recognizable at such a small size. To fix things I switched the image out for the big bang image that shows expansion. I think it fits more nicely into the month by month layout- the rectangular projections appear to flip into the months. Does that work for you?--Efbrazil (talk) 06:40, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Note, previous nomination: Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Cosmic Calendar. Jujutacular ^talk 00:04, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks! --Efbrazil (talk) 23:17, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support Gives all the information relevant to the concept in an effective manner. Only complaint might be the pixelized stopwatch; I think removing it may be the easiest solution. Cowtowner (talk) 01:22, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks! Stopwatch fixed. --Efbrazil (talk) 23:17, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Can you please link the source for the two background images (tree and city), or specifically note if they are your own work? As it stands, this image is at risk of being deleted as a copyvio derivative work. --99of9 (talk) 00:17, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks- done! The picture of shanghai is from wikipedia and I updated sources to point to it. The picture of the tree I updated to be a redwood forest from wikipedia and I updated sources to point to it as well. --Efbrazil (talk) 23:17, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - Thanks for changing the tree background to a freely licensed one, and for providing the link to the city. The stopwatch you've changed to and linked is not free unless it explicitly says so, so I think you need to find a new (free) stopwatch, or otherwise your work is still a copyvio. --99of9 (talk) 00:24, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - Also, what is the source for the picture of cells with a nucleus? --99of9 (talk) 00:27, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    - Thanks for bearing with me on this. The stopwatch image I changed to be the standard wikipedia stopwatch image and the cell was the standard eukaryotic cell in wikipedia. I have updated the description page to include the links.--Efbrazil (talk) 04:33, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      - Ok, good job, I think you're now safe on the copyright front! The new stopwatch has an unfortunate reflection on it :-(. --99of9 (talk) 04:42, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        Yeah, that bugged me too but I was being lazy- thanks for being my conscience, I smudged out the glare.--Efbrazil (talk) 04:56, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        It gets better all the time! Off to the left of the stopwatch there is a red and white mark over some of the city buildings, I'm guessing it's a bit of the stopwatch image you missed when masking it. --99of9 (talk) 05:08, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        Hopefully best now?--Efbrazil (talk) 16:23, 30 March 2011 (UTC)*[reply]
        Ok, you've got my Support :). 99of9 (talk) 23:37, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What was the multicellular life in November? But ignore Nergal with his second point. That's the point of the whole thing! I'm sorry if the evolution wasn't exciting enough for you - maybe we should head back there and add some pretty colours or racetracks to keep it interesting! :P Aaadddaaammm (talk) 20:09, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- The dates are mostly derived from the "Timeline of Evolution" in wikipedia, which places multicellular life at 1 billion years. The image is of red algae, which wikipedia places as being similar to life 1.2 billion years old. Multicellular life is one of the most tricky dates to firm up, as some forms trace to 2.1 billion years ago (see news articles from last December), but the Cambrian explosion 600 million years ago is when most fossil evidence emerges. --Efbrazil (talk) 23:17, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Conditional support, three things: keep the CMBR map at normal proportions, per Nergaal above, italicize Homo erectus, per convention, and change to "Human evolution" (lowercase 'e'), as it is not proper. Other than that, very nice work. I remember this concept very distinctly from a cosmology class I took in college, it is very notable and interesting. Jujutacular ^talk 02:42, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks! All fixed. See comment to Nergaal about the picture switch at the beginning.--Efbrazil (talk) 06:40, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - I don't see "evolution" and "Homo erectus" changed? Jujutacular ^talk 11:55, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    - Sorry- I must have uploaded the wrong version. Fixed.--Efbrazil (talk) 15:47, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      - Thanks! Looks good to me now. Jujutacular ^talk 19:41, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support Very cool! upstate NYer 22:30, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support, while not quite ideal yet, I think this image is a great addition to wikipedia. Good quality and really high EV. Nergaal (talk) 18:47, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: the time given to "Peak of last glacial period, humans on every continent" seems fine for the Last Glacial Maximum (~20,000 years ago), but I gather "humans on every continent" isn't likely to have occurred exactly then. Of course this depends on the definition of continent. If you count the Americas as one continent, maybe it's okay, but even then the range of dates for humans arriving in Alaska (40,000-16,500 years ago according to Americas#Settlement) is centred much earlier. If you count Africa-Eurasia-America as one continent (as it would have been during most ice ages), the date goes back even further to the settlement of Australia (~48,000-42,000 years ago). But I think most en wiki readers would interpret "humans on every continent" as meaning they had reached South America, and I believe the earliest dates for that are around 15,000 years ago (35 seconds to midnight on your scale) - see e.g. Monte Verde. A difference of more than ten seconds seems quite large to gloss over. --Avenue (talk) 02:28, 5 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Further comments: If it's not too difficult, it would be great to have a version without text (except perhaps numerals) to make it easier for anyone wanting to translate this, and in case any corrections are needed in the future. Also, I appreciate the need to keep the text brief, but one item seems so brief that it's misleading: "... megafauna dies out" (at 11:59 pm). This is too sweeping a statement, since much Eurasian megafauna survived a lot later than this item indicates (e.g. mammoths, aurochs, Irish elk), to say nothing of New World and island megafauna. One option would be to say "some megafauna" instead, if there's room. --Avenue (talk) 01:56, 6 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

- Thanks for taking the time to review this and being so helpful! The "humans on every continent" I pulled for "humans migrate to the Americas" as I think it gets the Siberian land bridge idea across and avoids the issue of Antarctica. I also think it's vague enough to be interpreted as Alaska or central North America or South America, depending on where all the pre-clovis debate ends up. Regarding "megafauna die out", that's meant to capture that Neanderthals were one of many larger species wiped out by the spread of humanity. Your point about time frame and scope I tried to include by changing the text to the more complicated (but also more accurate) "megafauna stressed" (if I had more space I'd say "megafauna extinctions begin"). If I get this as a featured image then I'll upload a text-free version and a few more resolutions- let me know if there's a good example of that. Thanks again!--Efbrazil (talk) 20:08, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: A few tweaks: "Old Testament" needs to be capitalized. The "1 second to midnight" should probably have the 1 spelled out as "one". Spencer^T♦C 22:08, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Both issues fixed. Thanks!--Efbrazil (talk) 18:12, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - Sorry, this was the first time I looked at this, I have a few more for you. There seems to be an extra space between "Neanderthals" and "die" at 11:59 PM. The name "Mohammed" should probably be "Muhammad". Maybe "Jesus of Nazareth" or "Jesus Christ" instead of just "Christ". Makeemlighter (talk) 04:58, 12 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    - Additionally, the month of June should be labeled in the chart. There is a blank box between May and July. Spencer^T♦C 03:24, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      - FWIW, the June heading was there in previous versions. --Avenue (talk) 04:01, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
After deadline oppose. (saw this sitting here.) Great diagram and love this sort of thing. But don't see how to use it in an article. This would make more sense as a Commons FP where they have maybe more interest in a poster sized image.TCO (talk) 07:00, 30 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Not Promoted --Makeemlighter (talk) 16:29, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing happening with this image. Makeemlighter (talk) 16:29, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]