The “Cosmic Year”, the best tool to understand remote History –

When we talk about dinosaursof the history of the life in the Land, Or the evolution of the man We refer to amounts of weather very, very big. So large that it is very difficult for us to understand the dimension of these periods. That is why I propose you to carry out a very interesting exercise that will open your mind to interpret in depth the long time.

The best way to understand these large numbers of years was devised by the scientific Carl Sagan. Via book the dragons of eden and of the TV series Cosmos, the call went outcosmic year”. The exercise is very simple: we compare the evolution of the universe with one year.

So what sagan proposes us is to think that on January 1 at 00 hours of the cosmic year It corresponds to origin of the universe: the big Bang (15,000 million years ago). And the last second of December 31 is the current moment. So, simply what is done is to draw equivalences and date the main moments and historical facts. According to him cosmic yearour galaxy -the Milky Way– emerged on May 1 and Solar system only on September 9. The planet Earth appears somewhat later, on September 14. The life in the Land begins October 2. Something very impressive, since it means that in 3/4 parts of the history of the universe life did not exist (or at least not that we have evidence of).

If the first living organisms – the bacteria- inhabit the planet Earth Since the beginning of October, the dinosaurs –for example- they appear much later: The 24th of December. The long era of dinosaurs (about 160 million years) only lasted from December 24 to 28 of Year Cosmic. Now, the most distant ancestors of the human species just appear in Sagan’s Cosmic Calendar on December 31, at 10:30 p.m. The hundreds of thousands of years of the evolution of man are reduced to a few minutes of cosmic year. The history of mankind (from 3,000 BC) is compressed in just 10 seconds!! This shocking exercise leaves us with an important conclusion: humans We have only been a few brief moments in the enormous history of life on our planet…and not to mention that of the universe!!! To think, right…? Sources: Geological time scales, in Kalipedia Cosmic Year, in Wikipedia Images: Cosmic Calendar, on Google Video: Cosmos Series, Carl Sagan «>on Youtube