Numbers, numbers and more numbers... There are about a trillion trillion gold atoms in a cubic meter of gold. The US has over 10 trillion dollars of debt.
There are about 400 billion galaxies in the universe which is about 14 billion years old. There are about 400 billion cells in a human brain a few years old. The average galaxy has about 400 billion stars. The average human cell has about 400 billion atoms.
A human cell is about 1/100 the size of a 1 mm wide grain of sand.
The world has over 6 billion people, and over 1,000 of them are billionaires.
There are over 300 million people in the US.
The odds of winning a top lottery prize is about 1 in 100 million.
Light travels almost 300 million meters per second.
There are over 30 million seconds in a year.
There are almost 3 million emails sent world wide each second.
The diameter of a human hair is about 25 millionth of a meter.
The diameter of an atom is about one tenth of a billionth of a meter.
Concentrations of mercury greater than 1 part per million is considered toxic.
How can we visualize, appreciate and understand such big and such small numbers that we encounter each day?
“Think parks” are facilities that provide a visual representation of such big and small numbers. Think parks can be set up anywhere where there is a 100m long path. This can be on the side of a sport field, a school yard, a city park, a shopping mall parking lot, a cemetery or a natural reserve.
Think parks can be used also to promote the meditation of the universe, of life in it and of where we fit into it all. Think parks can include rocks and trees of various types as well as various walks representing the universe, galaxies, our solar system and the atoms that make everything in our universe. Think parks are outdoor museums that promote education in various disciplines such as physics, chemistry, biology, geology, history and philosophy.
To visualize a thousand (1,000) a million (1,000,000) and 1 billion (1,000,000,000) take a 1m long ruler marked with 1,000mm markings. The ruler has a thousand 1mm markings.
An 1m wide square area has 1 million 1mm wide squares.
A 1m wide cube has 1 billion 1mm wide cubes.
A 10m wide cube (the size of a house) has 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) 1mm wide cubes.
A 100m wide cube (the size of a football stadium) has 1,000 trillion 1mm wide cubes.
The think park is a 100m long straight path.
A well known and preferably visible point 1km away from the start point is referenced. A city 1,000km away and a country 10,000km away are also referenced.
To visualize quantities, sizes, distances and times, ballpark figures are used and they are rounded off so that they are easier to remember. To visualize a million, a billion and a trillion, grains of sand are used.
10 fine sand grains fit into a cube 1mm wide.
10,000 grains fills a cube 1cm wide.
10 million grains of sand can be displayed for close inspection filled in a 10cm wide transparent cube.
10 billion grains fills a cube 1m wide.
10 trillion grains fills an imaginary cube 10m wide.
10 thousand trillion grains of sand fills an imaginary cube 100m wide.
To visualize the vastness of the universe, and the smallness of the atom, an imaginary 100m diameter sphere over the sport field is used.
If the universe was the sphere, then each grain of sand represents a galaxy.
If a typical galaxy was the sphere, then each grain of sand represents a solar system with a diameter 1000 times bigger than the diameter of its star.
If a typical human brain was the sphere, then each grain of sand represents a cell with a diameter 1000 times bigger than the diameter of its nucleus.
If a typical cell was the sphere, then each grain of sand represents an atom with a diameter 1000 times bigger than the diameter of its nucleus.
If an atom was represented by a 100m diameter sphere over the sport field, then the nucleus of the atom is a grain if sand 1mm in diameter in the middle of our sphere and the electrons are a fog filling the sphere.
To visualize the size of our solar system, the 100m path is used as a planet walk. The start point has a 10cm diameter sphere representing the sun.
At this scale, earth is 1mm in diameter 10m away.
Our moon is about 3.5cm away.
Mars is 15m away,
Jupiter, 50m away, and
Saturn is 1cm in diameter at the end of the 100m long path.
Uranus is 200m away, and
Neptune, 300m.
The closest star is 275km away and the closest galaxy is farther than our sun is from us.
The speed of light can also be visualized moving at a pace that takes 8.3 minutes to travel the 10m to the earth going at half a cm per second.
A proton is about a thousandths of the size of an atomic nucleus.
An atomic nucleus is about a thousandths of the size of an atom.
A small bacteria is about a 1,000 times larger and
a small cell is 1,000 larger than that.
With each multiplication of size a thousand fold we reach sizes of
brains,
ball parks like the one in the think park,
counties
countries
our earth,
our sun,
our solar system,
our neighborhood in the milky way,
galaxies,
groups of galaxies and
the entire observable universe.
Then we can see that we are in the middle of it all.
Think Parks allow us a better feel for the sizes of many small objects that many have only heard about and have only seen in pictures. 1mm is the width of a fine grain of sand.
1/10th of the grain of sand is the width of a strand of hair. If the grain of sand would be 100m wide, the strand of hair would be 10m wide.
1/100th of the grain of sand is the width of a cell. If the grain of sand would be 100m wide, the cell would be 1m wide.
1/1000th of the grain of sand is the width of a bacteria. If the grain of sand would be 100m wide, the bacteria would be 10cm wide.
1/10th of the width of a bacteria is the size of a virus. If the grain of sand would be 100m wide, the virus would be 1cm wide.
1/100th of the width of a bacteria is the size of DNA. If the grain of sand would be 100m wide, DNA would be 1mm wide.
1/1000th of the width of a bacteria is the size of molecules. If the bacteria would be 100m wide, the molecules would be 10cm wide.
1/10th of the size of molecules is the size of atoms. If the bacteria would be 100m wide, the atoms would be 1cm wide.
Think Parks allow us a better feel for the sizes of many large objects made by man and carved and grown by nature that many have only heard about and have only seen in pictures.
The Stonehenge in England was built in 3000 BC and made from 4m high, 2m wide, 1m thick 25 ton sandstone blocks.
The Giza Pyramid in Egypt was built in 2500BC and is 150m high and 230m wide at its base; It has 6 million tons of 2.3 million limestone blocks.
The Great Wall in China was built in 200BC and is 8m high, 5m wide and is 20,000km long.
The Taj Mahal in India was built in 1600AC and is 170m high made of marble.
The Statue of Liberty in New York was built in 1886 is 90m and is made of copper.
The Eiffel Tower in Paris was built in 1889 and is 325m high made of steel.
The Dubai tower was built in 2010 and is over 800m high and about 200m wide at its base.
Red woods can grow almost 100m high, 7m wide and can live 3,000 years.
The Golden gate bridge in San Francisco was built in 1937 and is almost 250m high, 30m wide and 3km long.
The Grand Canyon is 800m deep, 20km wide and 400km long.
Time is a man-made concept that acts like a clock. It is used to measure the motions of energy and matter thru space, – where they are at any moment, where they were, where they will be and how fast they are moving.
Bees flap their wings 250 times a second.
Propellers spin their blade 60 revolutions a second.
Winks or blinks take 1/10th of a second. A year has about 30 million seconds. Our universe is 14 billion years old, or 4.2 million trillion winks.
The "time walk" The "time walk" in the “Think Park” takes you thru time from the big bang of the birth of our universe to its whimpering future. 1 meter corresponds to about 300 years.
To visualize the time frame of our universe with the formation of earth and the evolution of life, the 14 billion years since our universe came into existence is scaled to start at the start line of the 100m path and goes 40,000km around the earth. This start point not only represents when the universe started at the big bang, but also represents the present “now”. The time is represented to go all the way around the Earth and returns back to the 100m mark of the path which represents 30,000 years ago with each meter corresponding to 300 years.
About 14 billion years ago, at the start point of the think park, there was a quantum fluctuation like an unexpected hiccup. The universe was born in a big bang. The universe exploded and stretched, and mini small bangs quantized space with particles and anti-particles and they jostled until they annihilated one another, like soldiers in battle. But the birth of the universe was not perfect, for there was a tiny fraction more particles than anti particles. And an ash of particles remained behind to coalesce and take form that coalesced into mass.
Mass gravitated into clumps of different sizes and the clumps spun around and got hot and ignited into stars. Stars burned like an oven and spewed forth atoms of all sizes like pastry. Atoms spewed from burned out stars gravitated and aggregated and reincarnated into new stars. One of those countless stars was our sun. Our sun was born 14,000km from the start point in the "Think Park" 4.5billion years ago. A tiny fraction of the atoms were left behind and formed rings around our sun like a fence. And with time they bumped, stuck and rolled up to form planets.
A planet called “earth” remained near a star called “sun” following it like a child follows her mother.
The heat from the sun shone on him and evaporated water which rose up in the air, moved and fell as rain.
The rain baptized and bathed him, and made lakes rivers and oceans to cool him.
Gases raised up and covered him with a warm blanket of air.
When the crust of the earth cracked, liquid rock below oozed to the surface above the waters, solidified, and formed land.
Weather carved the land and slowly eroded the rocks forming
sand.
10,000km from the "Think Park", about 4billion years ago, a soup of atoms brewed cooking basic building blocks of life that grouped and prospered and evolved.
The molecules of life grouped and formed a cell. With time cells were able to sense their environment and move when they needed to.
So they swam around looking for the sustenance of energy, and fled from the discomforts of danger. They grew in size to increase their awareness of their environment until they were too big to contain in one mass.
The cells made communication networks with each other and in this way groups of cells formed multicellular organisms. The cells having support of other cells evolved specialized functions.
A few gradually wiggled out of the seas and discovered land. And others wiggled from land and took to the air. They evolved to exploit their new environment.
1,500km from the think park, about 500million years ago, plants finally landed on land. They were soon followed by amphibians.
At the 1,000km point, 150 million years later, insects began to crawl about and fly around.
850km from the start point, 50million years later, turtles, crocodiles, dinosaurs and flowers made their appearance.
At the 500km point, about 150million years ago, a huge comet hit the earth and killed off the dinosaurs. This catastrophic event allowed mammals to start their evolution towards world domination.
The birds eventually replaced the dinosaurs and
at the 350km point, 50million years later, the bees joined the birds.
600m from the "Think Park" about 200,000 years ago, one unique life form called Homo sapiens evolved and was indistinguishable from modern man. Men developed to a point where they were able to move to wherever they wanted to.
The more they moved, the more curious they got, until they moved to every continent there was to move to. They had freedom to want, to desire, to wish, to hope and to believe. And they eventually evolved to exploit their environment. Homo sapiens inherited the knowledge of the use of stone and fire from their Stone Age predecessors homo erectus who lived at the 2km point from the think park, 600,000 years ago. At the 200m point from the start of the think park, about 60,000 years ago, man started to use words to display his emotions. Words helped man to think and enabled him to articulate and share his inner most thoughts. Talking soon led to drawing and painting. Pictures allowed his speech to be stored for later review and contemplation.
At the 100m point at the end of the think park, 30,000 years ago, homo sapiens refined this knowledge to make pottery out of ceramics. This invention gave man certain luxuries of storing and cooking his water and food and making objects to worship. Then man started to sing. Before men could talk, they groaned and grunted. Just like with crying and laughing, it was sometimes difficult to tell the difference between displays of sorrow and joy, or pain and pleasure.
Between the 55m mark, about 16,000 years ago and the 25m mark, about 8,000 years ago, the oceans rose 70m in 3 great waves of floods 4,000 years apart.
Man's technological ascent began at the 30m point about 10,000 years ago at the start of the Neolithic or "New stone age" period with the invention of polished and sharpened stone axes. These tools allowed forests to be cleared for large scale farming.
Cloth appeared soon after.
At the 20m mark, about 6,000 years ago, man discovered copper.
At the same time man started to write. Written words enabled his thoughts and his knowledge to be stored for later contemplation and to be scattered like seed to grow.
This cultivation, communication and sharing of thoughts, knowledge and experience resulted in the growth of agriculture that enabled civilizations to flourish.
1,000 years later, at the 15m mark, man discovered tin to make an alloy of copper called bronze which made his tools sharp and hard enough to cut stone. With bronze he was able to make the wheel to carry his heavy stones great distances.
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13m from the start point in the “Think Park”, about 4,000 years ago, a talented man called Abraham was born who had very much compassion for his animals. He tamed them and used them to cross vast stretches of desert that were uncrossable before. And he discovered unknown lands that he settled in. When asked which gods guided him so well to success, he claimed that it was none of the gods they knew, but a new personal god who claimed to work alone named Jehovah. Jehovah was not really a new god but a new edition of a lonely god who claimed to be superior to the other gods. This new addition to the family of gods was adapted by Abraham. Many joined his group and adopted his god as their own. They traveled to many lands and their unity made them very prosperous. One group traveled to a faraway land called Egypt, settled there, and prospered.
Many centuries later a king of Egypt saw he could exploit these hard working people and conquered them and made them work like slaves for life.
11m from the start point in the “Think Park”, about 600 years later, a slave called Moses was born in Egypt who had very much compassion for his fellow slaves. Listening to his intuition and using his wisdom he was able to unite the slaves. He knew that united they would stand but divided they would fall and he united the fleeing slaves with morals that directed people to respect nature. Moses, with the slaves he freed, spent an entire generation looking for the very best land to settle in. When they found it they killed the inhabitants and claimed the land as their own. The land became very prosperous, and the people who were once slaves became very rich and famous all over the world. When asked which gods guided them so well to prosperity, their leaders claimed that it was the personal god of Abraham. Seeing the power of this new god, people quickly converted and adapted the morals of these prosperous people, and they all prospered in the land they called Judea. They were called Jews.
It took him another 300 years at the 10m mark to discover iron.
8m from the start point in the “Think Park”, about 1,000 years later, a son of the king of Nepal was born. Gautama Buddha was a very sensitive child. Seeing suffering for the very first time when he was 30 years old left him devastated.
He came to believe that suffering was caused by people confusing their wants with their needs. He had everything and wanted nothing but inner peace. And there were poor sick men who had nothing and needed everything. Thru meditation he saw that we would all suffer less if we accepted what we were given by god and not desire anything else, believing what we are given is what we really need. He preached that suffering is an inherent part of existence and that the origin of suffering is greed.
7m from the start point in “Think Park”, about 300 years later, the quest for knowledge reached a peak. A new breed of men called philosophers evolved. One of the greatest was the private teacher of Alexander the Great of Greece. Aristotle claimed that knowledge must be sought, captured, and accumulated. Under his tutelage Alexander found knowledge from far away civilizations and accumulated it in great libraries for all mankind to exploit. Aristotle claimed that money was not a commodity of trade but rather a law of measure, claiming that money should not be equated with wealth but rather considered a human right. Aristotle claimed that we can gain understanding by investigation and extrapolation of our observation by reason and logic.
As an example he concluded that the sun revolved around the earth by observing it during the day and extrapolating its movement during the night. By observing an apple and a leaf fall, he concluded that heavy objects fall faster than light objects.
6m from the start point in the “Think Park”, about 300 years later, a poor but generous Jew was born called Jesus who had very much compassion for his fellow man.
He saw too much greed and too much arrogance in his fellow Jews. Listening to his intuition and using his wisdom he tried to unite all people, Jews and non-Jews. While Jews jealously guarded their god as only theirs, this rebel Jew Jesus offered it to everyone.
While Jews had “eye for eye, tooth for tooth” morals, the rebel Jews, followers of Jesus, insisted that it is better to get two slaps than to lose two eyes. As this was so radical to other Jews, people following this rebel were called Christians. Their belief was called Christianity. Jesus's rebellion caused the Jews to be divided, and soon after, they were not powerful enough to protect themselves.
They were conquered and dispersed all over the world. Jesus offered man a new morality for uniting all of man with nature so that he may live more and more in peace in an ever shrinking world. He taught that we must love nature that provides for all people and that we must love all her people, even if they are our enemies. He claimed that if we follow his message, we will one day find an everlasting peace. He warned and prophesied that if we do not follow his message of salvation, the world would end up just like it actually did.
At about the 5m mark, about 400 years later, Attila was born in Mongolia to a family of rulers and kings of the Huns. The Huns were a union of nomadic tribes stretching from Mongolia to Turkey along the Siberian plains. They hunted with bows and arrows on horseback and as they rode into new territories they gained a reputation for plundering and pillaging. They were barbarians who were like ploughs overturning overgrown choked gardens, clearing them of weeds and preparing them for new growth. They expanded to the outskirts of the Roman Empire where they were considered barbarians - the Hells Angels of their time. The Romans hired them whenever they needed fearless soldiers to police their outposts. Attila's relatives over many generations grew to be rulers of Europe.
Charlemagne, the greatest of them, lived 300 years later and had twenty children with eight of his ten wives. He became the founding father of all European monarchies.
At about the 4m mark, about 200 years later in 600, an inspired man called Mohammad was born in a part of the world where the people were very divided. They were neither Jews nor Christians. He needed his people to be as united as the Jews and as meek as the Christians. So he listened to his intuition and was able to unite his people under the same god that both Jews and Christians followed. They called their belief Islam, and people called them Muslims. They prospered and blossomed to a great civilization known for their gifted scientists. Christian leaders took great offence and for 200 years Christians and Muslims crusaded and killed each other in the name of the same god.
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In 1099, at about the 3m point, the Jews and Muslims fought together to defend Jerusalem against the invading crusaders from Europe. They were unsuccessful and the crusaders entered the city and proceeded to massacre the remaining Jewish and Muslim civilians and pillaged or destroyed mosques and the city itself. This started 200 years of crusades that were bloodier and bloodier with each century.
About 100 years later, the Catholic Church set up inquisitions which were attempts to convict heretics such as Jews and Muslims who had converted to Christianity but were suspected of secretly practicing their Jewish or Muslim faith. Christian healers called witches who used natural healing practices were also considered heretics. Any Christian could accuse any other Christian of heresy merely on suspicions without having to show any evidence. During the inquisition, the accused were psychologically and physically tortured until they died or confessed their sins and incriminated other people of heresy. Then they would be imprisoned for long periods, fined large amounts of money and many were forced to wear a mark showing that they had sinned. Those that did not confess and survived their torture were burned alive. This barbaric cruel practice lasted for the next 700 years.
Genghis Khan was born in 1160 in Mongolia. He learned how to ride horses before he could walk. By 6, he could hunt and fish. He was able to unite and organize many nomadic tribes. One of the Chinese emperors hired his army and they prospered and became famous for their fierce fighting power. They ended up breaching the Great Wall of China and conquered the entire country and his empire covered almost all of Asia.
Genghis Khan and his armies bridged Western Europe with Asia allowing the 2 cultures to mix and trade. They were like bakers baking bread to nourish humanity and raise it to great new heights.
In 1349, the Black Death, one of the worst pandemics in human history killing half of the population reached Switzerland and the Swiss blamed the Jews for starting it, accusing them of poisoning water wells. A systematic extermination program was started and Jews were burned alive at the stake and their wealth was expropriated. This fear, hatred, blame, extermination and expropriation spread with the plague to the rest of Europe like a wild fire.
At the 2m mark in 1398, one very clever man called Gutenberg was born. He used the Mongolian invention of paper, developed over 1,000 years before and the art of pressing images used to seal and sign letters and coins. Expanding this technology to produce books was suppressed by the church, as the church had monopoly on producing books. Gutenberg convinced the church of the profits that could be generated by printing indulgences. Indulgences, like diplomas, always had a standard text of pardon with the name of the sinner who paid the hefty price for forgiveness. Each hand written indulgence had a very high price as it took many hours to make. Gutenberg printed these indulgences for the church at the fraction of the price. He carved mirror images of the letters of the alphabet on wooden blocks and aligned them to form text.
He covered the blocks with ink and pressed their images on paper to print and mass produce indulgences that made him and the church very rich.
He used his wealth to mass produce bibles that were in Latin and except for a few priests, only a few people could read them. The printing presses and the books they produced in local languages after Gutenberg died lighted and fired men's minds all over the world.
Knowledge exploded and many thinking people began to think and to write books to protest their exploitation. Christians that protested kept their god but rejected their church leaders. They were called Protestants. Over the centuries they kept on protesting eventually forming thousands of separate groups. Over time empires divided and gradually regrouped into smaller groups called nations. People all over the world began to struggle against exploitation and started to fight for their freedom.
By 1,500 the greed of mankind evolved to great heights. They were able to build and sail ships great distances.
They used the Mongolian invention of the compass, developed over 1,700 years before, to be able to navigate back home. One enterprising queen saw that she could exploit this new technology to discover new lands to exploit.
She sent one poor brave man called Columbus born in 1441 to explore the world for new lands to exploit. Columbus discovered a continent filled with gold and fertile farm land. He conquered the land and called it America.
Martin Luther, born in 1483 in Germany was a priest who believed that sin cannot be bought off by buying indulgences.
He used Gutenberg's old printing press to print the bible in German to be read by the masses for the very first time. Many people reading the bible for the first time had a differing interpretation of it and felt that Jesus deserved more exaltation, that Mary his mother was unduly glorified and that luxurious temples filled with gold statues and paintings of nude angels were not appropriate as churches.
Luther like many other priests did not like to lead a celibate life so with time they protested, broke away from the church and became Protestants. They built their own less pretentious temples and traded the nude statues made of stone for wives made of flesh. Luther tried to convert Jews to accept Jesus as their messiah and the more the Jews stubbornly refused to accept Jesus, the more Luther saw Jews as a cancer that must be eradicated from Germany.
He printed many pamphlets calling for marking all Jews by making them wear a yellow armband. Later he even proposed burning their homes and called for their extermination.
Galileo Galilei, born in 1564, studied Aristotle and learned from him that heavier things fall faster than lighter things.
He made experiments from a tall tower with different materials from balls filled with lead to balls filled with air and discovered that they all fell at the same rate. Aristotle also claimed that the sun rotated around the earth. Galileo studied the heavens and discovered that the earth rotated around the sun, just like a polish astronomer Copernicus claimed 50 years before. Galileo invented many instruments that later allowed scientist to explore the unknown. He observed that light and images are shrunk and expanded by polished glass.
He made large pendulum devices that measured time very exactly in order to measure the motion of stars. He observed and theorized a law called the law of inertia, refuting Aristotle's claim that bodies in motion gradually lose their motion and eventually end up still.
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At the 1m mark, a few years after Galileo died, Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was born.
He developed a new language of mathematics called calculus that was like a combination of art and poetry that described the dance of planets, stars and falling bodies.
150 years later, James Watt (1736-1819) tamed the pressure of steam to make
machines more powerful than many teams of horses. This invention opened up the doors to the industrial revolution.
50 years after that, Michael Faraday (1791-1867) tamed the pressure of electrons to make
machines even smaller than steam engines.
Charles Babbage (1791-1871) used electric machines to communicate with other electric machines, to form
computing machines. Mathematicians had now a tool that allowed them to model anything they wanted with formulas. This opened the doors to the information revolution.
35 years later, James Maxwell (1831-1879) discovered that moving electrons in wires emit an invisible light much like a tuning fork emits sound. The emission radiated in space traveling thousands of kilometers.
He built devices that were able to detect this energy. Electric machines allowed man to communicate over great distances.
This invention opened up the doors to the communication revolution.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) used computing machines and his imagination and intuition to refine Newton's formulas to describe the motion of protons, electrons, and atoms. He defined the relationship between mass and energy. His theories allowed man to build many very powerful machines like lasers and
nuclear bombs that opened the doors to the nuclear revolution.
Music like a drug drove man to leap, but not to the highest, farthest or most lucrative place, but to the most beautiful one. In the middle of the 18th century, superstar musicians entertaining kings gradually started to stretch their wings. Some who stretched found a degree of freedom that beckoned them on to heights never before reached.
Haydn (1732-1809) was one of the first to carve out roads still used by pioneers breaking new ground.
With the push and tug of Mozart, (1756-1791)
Beethoven, (1770-1827) and
Strauss, (1825-1899),
Liszt (1811-1886) took these steps a leap further.
He used music from gypsies singing and dancing around campfires under the glittering stars.
He adapted this music to be played in golden walled concert halls under glittering chandeliers, so that it was heard by kings. This new feeling of freedom that this new music gave the people was enough to incite them to demand and fight for their political freedom with their lives.
In 1848 there were a series of political upheavals called Freedom Revolts throughout Europe which spread to South America. Over 50 countries were affected, but with no coordination or cooperation among the revolutionaries in the different countries, the revolutions collapsed after a year.
Mass Media became the message. The mass media that transmitted messages to the masses itself became no more than just a message because the greedy people controlling the media started to control the messages as well. Because cheap meaningless messages were more profitable than valuable useful ones, most of the messages brought little benefit to mankind.
The people became complacent and preferred to see and listen instead of to read and write.
It was seen that controlling people with the media was more effective than controlling them with fear.
And just when the mass media devices became available to exploit, they were exploited by two very greedy and brutal leaders called Hitler and Stalin. By 1939, the two were able to use fear with mass media to brainwash people all over the world to fear and hate and kill each other. Stalin slaughtered over 6 million people like cattle for fear of opposing political views. Hitler burned 6 million Jews in ovens for fear of contamination of race.
The richest of the Jews managed to escape to America where they prospered.
Judea was given back to the Jews as compensation for being almost exterminated. Their land had wasted in their absence and they soon restored it to its former glory and make it fertile once more. They disenfranchised the inhabitants and renamed the land Israel.
And what about the future?
We cannot know the future for certain except for the fact that everything living eventually dies, and everything nonliving gets cold, disintegrates and gets spread out over space. We can often learn from the past and be able to better guess what lies ahead in the far future. Continents keep moving and it is not possible to change their momentum and movement.
Africa continues its slide over and into Europe and in 100,000 years the Mediterranean Sea will have dried up.
In 1,000,000 years, Technetium 99, the waste byproduct of the present nuclear power plants which is dangerous when inhaled will have decayed and will have ceased to be a threat.
Several kilometer-sized asteroids and comets on collision courses with Earth however will become a new and even greater threat to man's well being - if he is still here to be threatened.
In 100,000,000 years, the continents we are so familiar with will be unrecognizable.
In a billion years, as if to celebrate the evolution of fish, plants and fungi from the sponges 2 billion years before, the sun will become too hot for life of any kind. It will evaporate the oceans and man will be forced to leave Earth and look for new solar systems to exploit. The last one to leave will have no need to turn off the lights.
“Think parks” are facilities that provide a visual representation of such big and small numbers. Think parks can be set up anywhere where there is a 100m long path. This can be on the side of a sport field, a school yard, a city park, a shopping mall parking lot, a cemetery or a natural reserve. 
Think parks can be used also to promote the meditation of the universe, of life in it and of where we fit into it all. Think parks can include rocks and trees of various types as well as various walks representing the universe, galaxies, our solar system and the atoms that make everything in our universe. Think parks are outdoor museums that promote education in various disciplines such as physics, chemistry, biology, geology, history and philosophy.
By 1,500 the greed of mankind evolved to great heights. They were able to build and sail ships great distances. 
They used the Mongolian invention of the compass, developed over 1,700 years before, to be able to navigate back home. One enterprising queen saw that she could exploit this new technology to discover new lands to exploit. 
She sent one poor brave man called Columbus born in 1441 to explore the world for new lands to exploit. Columbus discovered a continent filled with gold and fertile farm land. He conquered the land and called it America.
Martin Luther, born in 1483 in Germany was a priest who believed that sin cannot be bought off by buying indulgences. 
He used Gutenberg's old printing press to print the bible in German to be read by the masses for the very first time. Many people reading the bible for the first time had a differing interpretation of it and felt that Jesus deserved more exaltation, that Mary his mother was unduly glorified and that luxurious temples filled with gold statues and paintings of nude angels were not appropriate as churches. 
Luther like many other priests did not like to lead a celibate life so with time they protested, broke away from the church and became Protestants. They built their own less pretentious temples and traded the nude statues made of stone for wives made of flesh. Luther tried to convert Jews to accept Jesus as their messiah and the more the Jews stubbornly refused to accept Jesus, the more Luther saw Jews as a cancer that must be eradicated from Germany. 
He printed many pamphlets calling for marking all Jews by making them wear a yellow armband. Later he even proposed burning their homes and called for their extermination.
Galileo Galilei, born in 1564, studied Aristotle and learned from him that heavier things fall faster than lighter things. 
He made experiments from a tall tower with different materials from balls filled with lead to balls filled with air and discovered that they all fell at the same rate. Aristotle also claimed that the sun rotated around the earth. Galileo studied the heavens and discovered that the earth rotated around the sun, just like a polish astronomer Copernicus claimed 50 years before. Galileo invented many instruments that later allowed scientist to explore the unknown. He observed that light and images are shrunk and expanded by polished glass. 
He made large pendulum devices that measured time very exactly in order to measure the motion of stars. He observed and theorized a law called the law of inertia, refuting Aristotle's claim that bodies in motion gradually lose their motion and eventually end up still.
Africa continues its slide over and into Europe and in 100,000 years the Mediterranean Sea will have dried up. 
In 1,000,000 years, Technetium 99, the waste byproduct of the present nuclear power plants which is dangerous when inhaled will have decayed and will have ceased to be a threat. 
Several kilometer-sized asteroids and comets on collision courses with Earth however will become a new and even greater threat to man's well being - if he is still here to be threatened.
In 100,000,000 years, the continents we are so familiar with will be unrecognizable.
In a billion years, as if to celebrate the evolution of fish, plants and fungi from the sponges 2 billion years before, the sun will become too hot for life of any kind. It will evaporate the oceans and man will be forced to leave Earth and look for new solar systems to exploit. The last one to leave will have no need to turn off the lights.
