Evolution

Abstract

From the western part of The Netherlands a continuous auto route leads to Paris, by way of Antwerp and Lille. The road is quiet at night, enabling the driver to keep the car in fourth gear. We are looking for a comparison to illustrate the passage of a million years. Running in fourth gear, when a large Volvo achieves about 110 km h^-1, the crankshaft rotates 4000 times a minute, 240,000 times an hour or a million times in 4 h and 10 min. If we use one rotation of the crankshaft to symbolize a year, less than 30 s, or about 0.9 km of road, will have returned us to the beginning of the Christian era. After 4 h and 10 min, covering approximately the distance between Paris and The Hague, we will have gone back a million years.