{"id":71416,"date":"2014-01-30T14:44:03","date_gmt":"2014-01-30T19:44:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=71416"},"modified":"2016-07-01T11:14:23","modified_gmt":"2016-07-01T15:14:23","slug":"bates-students-travel-4-6-billion-years-in-100-yards-of-garcelon-turf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2014\/01\/30\/bates-students-travel-4-6-billion-years-in-100-yards-of-garcelon-turf\/","title":{"rendered":"For geology students, a walk on Garcelon Field becomes a trip back, way back, in time"},"content":{"rendered":"

The next time defensive back Luke Combs ’15 takes to Garcelon Field, he’ll see a lot more than 100 yards of FieldTurf in front of him.<\/p>\n

He’ll also see 4.6 billion years of geologic history.<\/p>\n

Combs was among a couple dozen students in Geology 103, “Earth Surface Environments and Environmental Change,” who tromped over to Garcelon Field on Monday to get their minds blown, geology-wise.<\/p>\n

They executed a simple but effective time-space drill, using the length of Garcelon Field to illustrate the span of Earth’s history.<\/p>\n

\"Each<\/a>

Each student standing on Garcelon Field shows an event in Earth’s history. The depth of geologic history is evident: a few students at the beginning of Earth’s history (far left), then a long time before the emergence of life, indicated by students at far right. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

Their professor, Mike Retelle, explained the project by saying that people have a short attention span, in more ways than one.<\/p>\n

“People tend to think in terms of a single year or maybe a decade. At best, they think in terms of generations,” he said. “It’s hard to put events in Earth’s history into geological context. It’s hard to comprehend billions of years.”<\/p>\n

If the Earth’s been around for 4.6 billion years, simple math says that each yard of a 100-yard football field equals 46 million years.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Retelle’s students placed themselves at various yard lines. Each group held a poster noting a key event and how many years ago it happened.<\/p>\n

The first group stood near one end zone with a sign noting that the Earth’s crust was formed just after the planet’s formation. A few yards later, at about the 15-yard line, was a poster stating that the oldest rocks were formed 3.93 billion years ago.<\/p>\n

\"Students<\/a>

Students create posters showing events in geologic history, using a Google Earth photograph of Garcelon Field for reference. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

After that, it was yards and yards of nothing. Like a runner scampering free down the sideline, the planet Earth was all alone for another 70 yards, or 3.3 billion years.<\/p>\n

In football, inside the 20-yard line is called the red zone, where scoring action is expected. You could say that there’s a planetary red zone, too.<\/p>\n

“Everything happens inside the 15-yard line,” explains Combs, an economics major and Asian studies. “There’s a huge gap from when the Earth was formed to when animals start to appear,” about 600 million years ago.<\/p>\n

“It’s crazy to see,” he said, reviewing the snow-dusted field, dotted with students. “You have a few students on one end of the field, a huge distance, then everyone crowded inside the 15.”<\/p>\n

\"When<\/a>

When Earth events are plotted on Garcelon Field, most of the action (including crucial events like the first bobcat) takes place near the goal line.<\/p><\/div>\n

True that. At the 10-yard line, a student held a poster announcing the arrival of fish, 460 million years ago. At about the 5-yard line (248 million years ago), the dinosaurs arrived, followed by mammals, 200 million years ago. Our ancestors, the first primates, showed up just outside the 1-yard line, or 55 million years ago.<\/p>\n

The first bobcat, 2.5 million years ago, was noted on one poster, though it was hard for that student to stand the required 2 inches from the goal line without getting pushed into the future, err, the end zone.<\/p>\n

Another tight fit was the student hoisting a poster noting the rise of the Roman Empire some 2,000 years ago: That needed to be a thousandth of an inch from the goal line.<\/p>\n

The final student held a poster noting the founding of Bates in 1855.<\/p>\n

From my calculations, that moment, 159 years ago, needed to be spotted one ten-thousandth of an inch from the goal line. Or should we ask the refs for a measurement?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“It’s hard to comprehend billions of years,” says geology professor Mike Retelle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":71418,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,24,44,130,224,11009],"tags":[3748,10841,10896],"class_list":["post-71416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-athletics","category-enewsletter","category-collaboration","category-society-culture","category-the-college","tag-garcelon-field","tag-geology","tag-mike-retelle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71416"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95645,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71416\/revisions\/95645"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}