Deep time sped up — plates advected over geologic ages across a deformable surface, the slow machinery of a planet made watchable.
Plates advected over geologic time across a deformable surface.
Drop an asteroid on the planet and watch the crater excavate — shockwave, ejecta curtain, rim and central peak — with energy, magnitude and crater size from real π-scaling laws.
Cut the planet open and read it: a cutaway from crust to inner core with real depths, temperatures and pressures — then fire P- and S-waves to watch the S-wave shadow zone reveal the liquid outer core.
Erupt a volcano into being and watch its silhouette — broad shield or steep stratocone — fall straight out of its magma’s viscosity and gas.
Drifting cratons ride a convecting mantle, suture into a Pangaea, then a heat-trapped plume rifts them apart — the Wilson cycle, looping.
Watch a cold oceanic slab dive beneath a continent — carving a trench, fluxing melt into a volcanic arc, and shaking the Wadati–Benioff zone.
A living rock cycle — parcels of mass travel between magma, igneous, sediment, sedimentary and metamorphic rock as weathering, burial, melting and crystallization turn the wheel.
Watch a river snake across its floodplain — bends grow where the current bites the outer bank, until a neck pinches shut and an oxbow lake is born.
Drag drifting plates to raise mountains, tear open rifts, and unleash earthquake blooms along living boundaries.
How slow wobbles in Earth’s orbit — eccentricity, tilt and precession — pace the ice ages by dimming and brightening the northern summer Sun.
A box of rock heated from the core and chilled at the surface — buoyant plumes rise, slabs sink, and convection cells spread the plates above them.
Pour a river of ice down a V-cut valley and watch it grind the bedrock into the broad U-shape, cirques, and fjords that ice leaves behind.
Drive a geyser as a relaxation oscillator — watch the deep water flash to steam the instant the column’s own weight stops holding its boiling point at bay, then erupt, drain, and recharge.
Loose a million raindrops on a fractal mountain and watch them carve river valleys and braid ridgelines into existence.
Blow wind across a sheet of sand and watch ripples and crescent dunes self-organize out of nothing but slabs hopping downwind.
A sediment-laden river meets standing water and drops its load — watch distributary channels bifurcate, aggrade, and avulse into the branching delta of the Mississippi or the smooth fan of the Nile.
A box model of the planet’s carbon — emissions surge into the air, the ocean and land draw it back down, and the deep sea sets the long tail.
A cross-section of the hidden water beneath your feet — watch rain recharge the aquifer, wells carve cones of depression, and the water table rise and fall with every drought and pump.