In the beginning, the Earth was flat, and covered by a sky dome with pinholes through which heavenly light shone, so it was believed.

All things were created 6000 years ago, so millions still believe, but the Earth did became round, though fixed at the center of the Cosmos,

around which all heavenly bodies revolved - the moon, the planets, even the Sun.  What lay beyond the outermost sphere of the stars

was forbidden.  Man was the be-all and end-all of all creation, and all things were created for him, and he had dominion over the Earth.

The custodian of the above doctrine in the Middle Ages was the Catholic Church.  Any deviation from it was punishable by the Inquisition.

Neighbors turned in one another. The victims would be tortured until they confessed to be witches or heretics, then publicly burnt alive at the stake.

Most of the victims were spinsters and widows endowed with estate.  After they had been burnt, their estates would be confiscated.

In the 3 centuries of the Inquisition, 450,000-9,000,000 victims, mostly women, were burnt. Some called this the Women's Holocaust.

In the height of the Inquisition, Polish astronomer Nicholas Copernicus conceived of the sun-center model of the Solar System.

He wrote his magna opus, but did not dare to publish it until he was in his death bed in 1543, for fear of being burnt at the stake himself.

In 1548 Giordano Bruno was born. He read Copernicus and went farther to write that stars were distant suns, each with its own planets.

He lectured in Italy on the subject, but was rejected.  He traveled to Western Europe and England, and won acceptance and honor.

In 1592, he was lured back to Italy with promises of fair hearing, and was promptly arrested.  For 8 long years, he was repeatedly tortured.

Steadfastly, he refused to recant his writings and teachings.  Finally, in 1600, with his racked arms hanging uselessly, he was burnt at the stake.

In terms of vision, conviction, courage and truth to oneself, Giordano Bruno is my personal hero, on par with Jesus Christ himself.

But whereas the religion established in Christ's name became the most evil institution, astronomy has become the science of light.

Light in this universe began 12.7 billion years ago, not 6,000, with the Big Bang, when God set the physical laws and switched it on.

A 3-D cube of a small portion of today's expanding Universe, with each strand comprising thousands of galaxies, which total 100 billion.

A magnified segment of one of the strands, showing individual galaxies.  Each galaxy comprises 200 billion stars, each a sun.

The Andromeda Galaxy, our Milky Way Galaxy's closest neighbor, 2.7 million lightyears' distant, in which stars are born, age, and die.

The elements are created by means of nucleosynthesis in the interiors of stars. When stars explode, these elements eventually form planets.

The Crab Nebula inside our Milky Way Galaxy, the remnant of a supernova explosion, in which new planetary systems are born.

The Orion Nebula of our Milky Way Galaxy. As in the Crab Nebula, some of these new planetary systems will eventually give rise to life.

There are 300 billion stars in our Milky Way Galaxy, most should have planets, some may have life, a few may have civilizations.

The planet Earth of the star Sol was formed 4.6 billion years ago. It has been changing ever since, with not two epochs the same.

The supercontinent Pangaea.  Continents are lighter solid rock floating on heavier liquid rock, and drift with the currents.

Pangaea as it might have looked from space 200 million years ago..

Continental drift - 225 million years ago to present.

Vulcanism is an integral part of geological development.

It created the hydrosphere and atmosphere.

It could have played a part in the origin of life

as well as drastically altered the paleo-climate.

The Deccan Traps involved a huge and sustained outpouring of basaltic magma as well as a massive outgassing of greenhouse gasses.

The magna could also have melted extensive beds of methane clathrate, releasing methane into the atmosphere by the billions of tons.

What

terminated

the

dinosaurs.

If this list were 120 km long

history spans the last 5 mm.