The 13.8 billion year history of the universe mapped onto a single year, as popularized by Carl Sagan. At this scale the Big Bang takes place on January 1 at midnight, the current time is December 31 at midnight, and the longest human life is a blink of an eye (about 1/4 of a second).
The Cosmic Calendar is a method to visualize the vast history of the universe in which its 13.8 billion year lifetime is condensed down into a single year. In this visualization, the Big Bang took place at the beginning of January 1 at midnight, and the current moment is mapped onto the end of December 31 at midnight.[1] At this scale, there are 438 years per second, 1.58 million years per hour, and 37.8 million years per day. This concept was popularized by Carl Sagan in his book The Dragons of Eden and on his television series Cosmos.[2] In the 2014 sequel series, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, host Neil deGrasse Tyson presents the same concept of a Cosmic Calendar, but using the revised age of the universe of 13.8 billion years as an improvement on Sagan's 1980 figure of 15 billion years. Sagan goes on to extend the comparison in terms of surface area, explaining that if the Cosmic Calendar is scaled to the size of a football field, then "all of human history would occupy an area the size of [his] hand".[3]
The Cosmic Year
Big Bang
Date in year calculated from formula
T(days) = 365.25 days * ( 1- T_bya/13.8 )
Evolution of life on Earth
Human evolution
History begins
| Date / time |
kya |
Event |
| 31 Dec, 23:59:46 |
6.0 |
First cities of Mesopotamia |
| 31 Dec, 23:59:47 |
5.5 |
First writing (marks end of prehistory and beginning of history), beginning of the Bronze Age |
| 31 Dec, 23:59:48 |
5.0 |
First dynasty of Egypt, Early Dynastic period in Sumer, Astronomy |
| 31 Dec, 23:59:49 |
4.5 |
Alphabet, Akkadian Empire, Wheel |
| 31 Dec, 23:59:51 |
4.0 |
Code of Hammurabi, Middle Kingdom of Egypt |
| 31 Dec, 23:59:52 |
3.5 |
Mycenaean Greece; Olmec civilization; Iron Age in Near East, India, and Europe; founding of Carthage |
| 31 Dec, 23:59:53 |
3.0 |
Kingdom of Israel, ancient Olympic games |
| 31 Dec, 23:59:54 |
2.5 |
Buddha, Confucius, Qin Dynasty, Classical Greece, Ashokan Empire, Vedas completed, Euclidean geometry, Archimedean physics, Roman Republic |
| 31 Dec, 23:59:55 |
2.0 |
Ptolemaic astronomy, Roman Empire, Christ, invention of numeral 0 |
| 31 Dec, 23:59:56 |
1.5 |
Muhammad, Maya civilization, Song Dynasty, rise of Byzantine Empire |
| 31 Dec, 23:59:58 |
1.0 |
Mongol Empire,Maratha Empire , Crusades, Christopher Columbus voyages to the Americas, Renaissance in Europe, classical music to the time of Johann Sebastian Bach |
The current second
See also
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2
References
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- ↑ Cosmos, episode 1 (1980)
- ↑ [1]
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- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Early edition, published online before print.
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- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (@35min)
External links
