by Vincent Sapone 1

Cosmic Scales

The Universe in a Year

By Vincent Sapone

by Vincent Sapone 2

Overview

What would a yearly Calendar look like if the entire history of the Universe was compressed into one year?

by Vincent Sapone 3

Parameters

ondsonds

year

daysyear sec

day

sec 000,536,311

400,86

1

3651

Actual Age of the Universe: 13.7 Billion Years Old

ond

yearsonds

years

secsec

4241502.434000,536,31

000,000,700,13

1 Second on our Calendar equals 434.4 years

by Vincent Sapone 4

Your Birthday

1 Day = 37,534,246.58 years

Therefore, each of our Birthdays corresponds to a cosmic history of 37.5 million years.

Did anything special happen on your birthday? Considering the large time span something must

have happened, shouldn’t it?

by Vincent Sapone 5

Final Questions

Before proceeding, think about this question to yourself: On what Calendar day will human history begin?

The next page has a hint

by Vincent Sapone 6

Human Life Range

Taking 75 years as the average life expectancy yields a time of 0.17 seconds for the life of an average human being.

by Vincent Sapone 7

Calendar Days

January through June

by Vincent Sapone 8

Difficulties

During this early period it is difficult to nail down precise dates.

In fact, usually a range is given. For instance, the study (WMAP) which suggests the universe is 13.7 billion years old that we are using has a plus/minus caveat of 200 million years (13.7 +/- 0.2 bya)

General estimates will be provided.

by Vincent Sapone 9

In The Beginning

The Big Bang : January 1st at 12:00 AM

On this day the universe as we know it came to be; violently expanding

outward in all directions.

by Vincent Sapone 10

Origin of Milky Way (13.6 +/- .8 bya*)

January 3rd at about 4:00 PM marks the origin of our home galaxy.

*Numbers are taken from the 2004 study which used the UV-Visual Echelle Spectrograph of the VLT to study Beryllium content in two stars of a globular cluster.

days664233576.258.246,534,37

000,000,100

by Vincent Sapone 11

Eons of time.

Lots of stuff happens within the coming months but the next really significant event we can speak of is our solar system’s formation.

by Vincent Sapone 12

Solar Nebula

Modern theory tells us the sun and other objects within our solar system formed from a solar nebula about 4.6 billion years ago

by Vincent Sapone 13

Earth’s Origin

Earth formed 9.1 billion yeas into our universe’s history. Roughly 242.5 days into our year.

445.24258.246,534,37

000,000,100,9

by Vincent Sapone 14

Earth

August 31th at about 12:00 PM marks the origin of our solar system and Earth.

by Vincent Sapone 15

The Cosmos

The entire Cosmos is Here. All the galaxies, stars, planets and large scale matter//mass structures of the universe are in existence.

by Vincent Sapone 16

Almost Home

Two Thirds of the History of the Universe has unfolded and all the life we know of today has not appeared in our solar system yet.

by Vincent Sapone 17

Formation of Life

Life is most commonly thought to have formed on Earth some time about 3.8 billion years ago. That is 9.9 billion years into the universe’s history.

by Vincent Sapone 18

Formation of Life

759.26358.246,534,37

000,000,900,9

September 21th at just after 6 PM marks the formation of life on Earth.

by Vincent Sapone 19

Goodbye Dinosaurs

The Dinosaurs went extinct about 65 million years ago. That is about 13,635,000,000 years into the universe’s existence.

268.36358.246,534,37

000,000,635,13

by Vincent Sapone 20

Dino-bite the dust..

They went extinct on Dec 30th sometime around 6 am.

by Vincent Sapone 21

Human Civilization

Humans can go back millions of years depending on how you define us.

by Vincent Sapone 22

Primates and Humans

Anatomically modern humans can be very roughly dated to the last 100,000 years.

by Vincent Sapone 23

Percentage

Compared to the total history of the universe, the entire existence of man is only 100,000 out of 13,700,000,000 years.

by Vincent Sapone 24

Of Men and Mice

That means the history of the universe is 137,000 times longer than the existence of all modern human civilization.

by Vincent Sapone 25

100,000 Years Ago

That is 13,699,900,000 years into the universe’s existence.

9973.36458.246,534,37

000,900,699,13

by Vincent Sapone 26

The Dawn of People

Humans arrived on December 31th at 11.56 pm.

by Vincent Sapone 27

Perspective

Only 4 minutes are left of the entire history of the universe and modern humans have just arrived.

by Vincent Sapone 28

Two Other Key Facts

For Perspective on “Important” Events in the History of the world look at the following two time periods:

by Vincent Sapone 29

The United States of America

America has existed as its own nation for just over 230 years.

by Vincent Sapone 30

Percentage Wise

The history of the universe is almost 60,000,000 times longer than the history of the United States.

by Vincent Sapone 31

World History

On Cosmic Scales, our lives and the entire history of human civilization are nothing more than a fleeting dust particle in the sands of time.

Humility

The sheer size, scope and age of the universe in which we live are very humbling.

by Vincent Sapone 32

by Vincent Sapone 33

Guide to Key Dates

Jan. 1st 12.00 AM : Big Bang Jan. 3rd 4.00 PM: Galaxy Forms Aug. 31st 12.00 PM: Solar System Sep. 21st 6.00 PM: First Life Dec. 30th 6.00 AM: Dinosaurs Dec. 31th 11:56 PM: Humans