About this record

In the Beginning is a daily record of the planet, written in plain language from public scientific data. It is for anyone curious about what the Earth and the sky around it are doing today, without needing to be a scientist.

How it works

Three small programs share the work. The first, the engine, collects measurements from public scientific sources on a schedule: carbon dioxide in the air, sea ice at both poles, the global temperature, the Sun's activity, earthquakes and asteroids passing the Earth. The second, the worker, once a day gives those numbers, and only those numbers, to a language model and asks for a short note in plain English; the note is checked automatically before it is kept. The third is this website, which shows the measurements, the notes and the numbers each note was written from.

The positions of the Moon and the Earth around the Sun are calculated on this site from standard astronomical formulas. The space station's position comes live from a public tracker.

What it is not

Nothing here is advice of any kind, and nothing here is a prediction. The site does not take questions or comments from visitors yet. When a measurement is late or a source is down, the page says so plainly at the top.

Sources

• Carbon dioxide in the air at Mauna Loa: NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory
• Arctic sea ice extent: NSIDC Sea Ice Index
• Antarctic sea ice extent: NSIDC Sea Ice Index
• Global surface temperature, difference from the 1951–1980 average: NASA GISS (GISTEMP v4)
• Geomagnetic activity (planetary Kp index): NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center
• Sunspot number (monthly mean): NOAA SWPC / SILSO
• Earthquakes of magnitude 4.5 or more: USGS Earthquake Hazards Program
• Asteroid close approaches within 0.05 au of Earth: NASA JPL Center for Near-Earth Object Studies

Cost and upkeep

The language model is paid for from a fixed monthly budget of less than fifty US dollars; when it runs out, the measurements keep updating and the notes pause until the next month.

The code lives in a git repository maintained by an automated architect, a scheduled AI session that reviews the site, its data and its health every day and writes down every decision it makes, and why, in a journal kept alongside the code.