If you condensed 15 million years -- the age of the universe -- into a 365 calendar, on what day and at what time did the human species arrive?
Subject: Time - Sagan’s Cosmic Calendar
Event: December 31
The construction of such tables and calendars is inevitably humbling….dinosaurs emerge on Christmas Eve; flowers arise on December 28th; and men and women originate at 10:30 P.M. on New Year's Eve. All of recorded history occupies the last ten seconds of December 31. -Carl Sagan
In his 1977 book Dragons of Eden, astronomer Carl Sagan tackles the problem of trying to illustrate how old the world is relative to how young human beings are. To do this he constructs what he calls a Cosmic Calendar. In this calendar, Sagan asks the reader to imagine the 15 billion years condensed and recorded on a 365-day calendar.
On the Cosmic Calendar, the key event on January 1 is the Big Bang (the beginning of the universe). Other key events don’t occur until September, such as the formation of the earth on September 14 and the origin of life on Earth on September 25.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
If you represented the Cosmic Calendar as the length of a 100 yard football field, the whole of human history would represent a length no larger than the size of a hand.
The key day on the Cosmic Calendar for humankind, therefore, is today: December 31. It should be humbling to realize how recently our species has appeared: 10:30 PM on December 31st. Fire became an available tool minutes ago, at 11:46 PM and the first cities appeared at 11:59:35 PM. Because the alphabet was invented just seconds ago, at 11:59:51 PM, all of recorded human history must be squeezed into a period of just ten seconds. In Sagan’s words, “Every person we’ve ever heard of lived somewhere in there. All those kings and battles, migrations and inventions, wars and loves. Everything in the history books happens here, in the last 10 seconds of the cosmic calendar.”
The point of the Cosmic Calendar is to give us some perspective about how long our species has been on Earth relative to how long the universe has been in existence. Although we as humans are newcomers, arriving just 90 minutes before the clock strikes twelve, beginning a new year, we still have enormous power to influence the next cosmic year. As Sagan puts it, “We have a choice: we can enhance life and come to know the universe that made us, or we can squander our 15 billion year heritage in meaningless self destruction. What happens in the first second of the next cosmic year depends on what we do.”
Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason: At what time on the cosmic calendar do humans first appear?
Challenge - It’s the Time of the Season: What is the best thing anyone has ever said about time? Do some research to find quotations. Write down the one you like the best, and explain why you think the quotation is insightful.
ALSO ON THIS DAY:
December 31, 1930: On this day in the 1930s, Jay Hormel hosted a New Year's Eve party where he challenged his guests to create a name for his latest invention, a canned pork product. On that night not only was a new year born but also one of the most successful and most recognizable brand names in history came into being: Spam. The winning name was formed from the contraction of sp(iced h)am; the winner of the contest was awarded $100. Thanks to a sketch and song from the British television show Monty Python's Flying Circus, the word Spam lost its capital letter and became a lowercase common noun referring to unsolicited e-mail. In the sketch, which first appeared in 1970, a waitress recites a list of menu items, all including Spam. As the menu is being recited, a song begins where male voices chant the word Spam more than 100 times. It's this seemingly endless, repetitive chant that inspired computer users to select spam as the appropriate appellation for unwanted, disruptive email in 1994 (2).
Sources:
1-Sagan, Carl. The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence. New York: Ballantine Books, 1978.
2-Steinmetz, Sol and Barbara Ann Kipfer. The Life of Language. New York: Random House, 2006.
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