Explore an interactive timeline of Earth's 4.5-billion-year history to visualize shifting landmasses and oceans, view the locations of significant asteroid impacts, and learn about major geological and biological events.

Travel through deep time with this interactive Earth

Explore key moments in Earth’s transformative history as continents drift and climate fluctuates over 4.6 billion years. The Smithsonian presents a series of interactive snapshots of the earth. From its toddler years during the Hadean period, when its surface was mostly molten, to the mostly unidentifiable landmasses of the future earth, 100 million years from now.

Explore an interactive timeline and map of dinosaurs across the globe

This tool maps dinosaur habitats based on fossil sites around the world. It includes short articles and additional information—including size, diet, and weight—about each dinosaur. A timeline and data table also allow users to compare dinosaur emergence and extinction dates.

An interactive timeline of history, from beginning to middle

The history of humanity is a long, winding road, and the history of everything else is even more complex and interwoven. This interactive timeline takes users through the history of the world and includes links to related videos, blurbs, and events. Each event in history is represented by a dot, providing users with a glittering horizon filled with moments of intrigue and impact.

Explore the Museum of the World

This collaboration between the British Museum and Google presents an interactive timeline showing artifacts from five world regions. Go back in time and learn about each item from the museum.

The weather time machine

A fun interactive on how old ships’ logs are giving scientists new insights into the past and future of the Earth’s changing climate (w/maps and pictures).

Explore an interactive map of volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis from 2150 BCE to the present.

View the past month of earthquakes worldwide with this digital globe, which displays data from the US Geological Survey.

Explore an interactive timeline of technological inventions and social structures since 1500.

Visualize real-time and historical atmospheric conditions from around the world

This tool provides live maps of wind, rain, thunderstorms, and other atmospheric phenomena overlayed on an interactive map of the Earth. Users can enter their location to explore local atmospheric dynamics and review historical weather conditions dating back to 1979.

Explore an interactive visualization of the solar system

This tool allows you to view the orbits of planets, dwarf planets, moons, asteroids, and other significant objects in the solar system. Clicking on an object reveals key facts and historical data.

Explore Earth's future climate under different levels of warming

An incredible interactive project showing how global warming is projected to affect the world, from temperatures to rainfall, droughts and flooding, and more.

Create digital maps of Earth with custom sketches and labels

In this interactive, users can apply layers to various base maps to display natural and human features, including geological activity, biomes, ocean currents, population densities, and light pollution. Custom legends, markers, and drawings can be used to highlight prominent features.

Charting 4,000 years of human history

Care to hang all of human history on your wall? This data visualization charts 4,000 years of humanity. This "histomap" was originally published in 1931 and sold for $1 per copy of the 5-foot-long chart. It was said to detail the course of...

Watch 1 billion years of tectonic plate movement in 40 seconds

Researchers at the University of Sydney developed the model, incorporating changing plate boundaries rather than just moving continents, to better understand the changes to biological and climatic systems throughout Earth’s history.

Explore the major archaeological sites of Egypt's 3,000-year history.

With

View maps of seafloor topography, earthquakes, and volcanic activity, which scientists use to create outlines of Earth's tectonic plates.

What did Earth look like when dinosaurs roamed?

The face of the Earth isn’t remotely the same as when the dinosaurs ruled the roost. The passing of millions of years, plate tectonics, and a spotty track record with asteroid collisions have changed the planet’s surface. Use this interactive globe to see what the Earth looked like millions of years ago.

Explore an interactive periodic table of each element's history, properties, and uses.

Explore Earth's atmosphere and what its layers contain in this interactive adventure

In this interactive, users can move from Earth's surface up through its atmosphere, exploring the natural phenomena found in each layer, including atmospheric rivers, auroras, and meteor showers. Artificial structures such as weather balloons and the International Space Station can also be found on the adventure.

Interactive human migration map

Using archeological, genetic, and climate data, scientists have pieced together an outline of the human odyssey—the journey that took our species from Africa to all corners of the globe. Experience this 200,000-year migration using an interactive human migration map.

Discover trends in Earth's climate system: What are indicators of climate change?

A comprehensive deep dive tracking components of the climate system over time, such as temperature, sea level, sea ice amounts, ocean heat, greenhouse gases, and more (w/charts and graphs).

An interactive timeline of history's famous figures

The past few millennia of humankind have produced numerous figures who left their mark on culture and society in their respective era. This interactive timeline from data visualization expert Jan Willem pulls data from Wikipedia to illustrate history's most important people relative to their prominence in modern-day thought.

Explore a gallery of space-based images and animations of Earth

This collection compiles shots of well-known locations, such as US national parks, and natural features, including aurora borealis and fall foliage, to provide a high-level view of Earth's surface.

An overview of the anthropocene: the scale of human influence on Earth

Human activity has fundamentally changed our planet. We live on every continent and have directly affected at least 83% of the planet’s viable land surface.

Explore the lunar surface, orbit, and rocks with NASA's moon interactives

This webpage offers tools to explore the moon digitally, including MoonTrek, a 3D lunar surface explorer, and the Daily Moon Guide, an interactive map for tracking the moon each day of the year.

Watch visualization of different-sized asteroid impacts

The animations range from a 4-meter-wide asteroid that would burn up in the atmosphere with the impact of 0.6 Hiroshima nuclear bombs to a 940-kilometer asteroid the size of the dwarf planet Ceres, which would produce a mass extinction event.

Explore an interactive timeline of the most important moments in the WEF’s history

This interactive traces the World Economic Forum’s evolution from a small European meeting in the 1970s into a global power hub, highlighting pivotal moments in Davos, landmark speeches, and turning points that have shaped its outsized influence on world affairs.

View a map of the world's major earthquakes from 1956 to 2022, which can be used to identify tectonic plate boundaries.

Learn how the Earth was made

Four and a half billion years ago the Earth formed from dust in space to become a molten ball of rock orbiting the sun. Travel back in time to investigate how the Earth was made.

Explore the Earth at night from space

See the planet in all its luminosity with this NightEarth app, an interactive spherical globe showing real satellite imagery of Earth. Toggle between views of real-time clouds, aurora borealis activity, and more.

Track all future solar eclipses and their projected paths of totality around the world

Solar eclipses are among the most awe-inspiring natural phenomena a person can witness, occurring when the Earth, Moon, and Sun align. This tool provides an interactive, data-rich visualization of the dramatic world events across time.

Visualize the path of every solar eclipse from 1900 to 2099 and see what each looks like when observed from different locations on Earth.

View an interactive collection of historical documents from the Viking project

This collection includes original mission bulletins, engineering and planning documents, and interview segments from more than 80 Viking team members who made the historic exploration of Mars’ surface by a lander possible.

Explore a map of global native lands

This interactive map visualizes Indigenous territories across the world. Users can search by location, language, or tribe to explore the histories, cultures, and present-day communities connected to specific lands.

An interactive of the deep sea

Experimenting with space-time

Einstein's theory of general relativity—that mass literally bends space and time—can be difficult for the human brain to imagine. This interactive resource lets you create celestial objects, imagine their effect on space-time, and see how they interact with each other (best viewed on desktop).

Simulate geological activity at plate boundaries

You are given a planetary model with optional rock formation and your choice of the number of tectonic plates and their densities. Draw continents, assign forces and plate boundary types, and run the simulation across map types to observe earthquakes, volcanoes, and other geological activity.

The history of the world map

What did people used to think the world looked like? From the beginning of human history to right before the age of exploration, learn how the world maps were created.

Explore how far you've traveled through space while living on Earth

Using the "Cosmic Odometer," users can enter their birthday and learn how far they have moved through space due to the combined effects of Earth's rotation around its axis, the planet's orbit around the sun, the solar system's trajectory through the Milky Way, and the galaxy's motion through the universe.