Your artificially aged Earth

You know those pictures of missing kids that have been artificially aged with computer graphics? Well, suppose the earth went missing for 250 million years, and you needed to find it. Walking across a city park, you stumble across an old planet sleeping under a dirty blanket. It might be your earth, but is it? Here’s a video that I found on Kevin Kelly’s site that might help. It shows tectonic plate activity from the remote past (400 million years) and well into the distant future. I can’t vouch for the legitimacy of the geology, but it’s fun to watch south Asia take it in the shorts from the Indian subcontinent at around 30 seconds in. India comes smashing in from the south with the irresponsible speed and driving skills of a teenager texting his girlfriend.

BAM! “Yow! Right in my Himalayan flat lands!”

“Oh… sorry about those mountains, dude. That swelling will probably go down in a few million years.”

Say, now that I’m thinking about it, I wonder if the Onion has anything tasteful to say about computer-assisted age progression? Age-Progression Technology Indicates Missing Child a Prostitute By Now.