Geologic time

To have an inkling how insignificant a human is in the universe it suffices to ponder on geologic time. Imagine a film of the history of the earth, one frame per year. That's a speed-up of about 789 million times. In this film, the earth was born some 5.7 years ago. Multicelled organisms appeared just over a year ago. Mammals are about 2 months old. A configuration of the continents that we would perceive as similar to our map of the world is about a month old. Modern humans appeared about 2 hours ago (just about the length of a feature film). The industrial age is the last 10 seconds of the film, and a human lifetime is about 3 seconds.


In this film, the seemingly static lakes and gorges are but transient features. Vintgar Gorge was created about 15 minutes ago when a river flow changed its course after the last ice age. And Lake Bohinj, being a glacial feature too would be around the same age.


In this film the earth has 5 or 6 more years to live. By then the sun will have exhausted all its hydrogen, switched to burning helium, and expanded to engulf the Earth. Effectively this is the end of life on Earth, assuming we haven't killed ourselves off or escaped elsewhere before then. The universe is supremely indifferent as to whether we go down in a big mess in the next couple of seconds, or grow out of our predator ways and stay till the end of the film, and just maybe into the next one. If humanity never leaves this pale blue dot, then the only things left of us in the galaxy will be the unmanned spacecraft that have left the solar system and our radio signals. It all gets wiped out in the end. If we survive it will be because we care; the universe doesn't.


I marvel that some minuscule pieces of the universe called people have attained awareness of the cosmic picture. Yet I'm a little sad if only for the sake of curiosity that I won't know how the human story continues, even though the end for the planet is known. I can only hope that humanity prevails.