A moment in time

摘要

It's difficult to think in terms of geological time. For example, if we could watch a DVD of the earth's estimated 4.54 billion year history condensed into 24 hours, the first honey bee would appear 30 seconds before the end of the movie and the firstupright primate (australopithe-cus) one-and-a-half seconds from the end. Civilized man would flash so fast across the screen as to be invisible to the viewer. The last 10 minutes of the movie begin with the appearance of the first plants - ferns, conifers and cycads -that were dependent on the wind for pollination. It's an inefficient and wasteful system of transfer; the chance that the pollen of one pine will be blown by the wind to another pine cone is about 1:1,000,000.