The Cosmic Calendar

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]Okay, let's embark on a thought experiment.

[00:00:03]Let's imagine we compress the entire history, I mean the known history of our universe into a single calendar year.

[00:00:11]So, in this calendar the Sun and Earth form at the beginning of September.

[00:00:16]So, for 2/3 of the universe's history, Earth didn't even exist.

[00:00:23]Now, single-celled life appears in the oceans around September 20th and it stays that way, and I mean simple organisms, all the way until December [music] 17th. Then, things start to ramp up a little bit. So, on the 17th, we get arthropods, 18th, [music] fish, December 19th, the first plants and they finally begin colonizing dry land, because before that, all life had stayed under water.

[00:00:50]The 21st, [music] insects, the 22nd, amphibians, the 23rd, reptiles and first trees. On Christmas Day, >> [music] >> uh presents, dinosaurs they finally appear. On the next day, we get the first mammals. Finally, on December 27th, birds, December [music] 28th, the first flowering plants.

[00:01:09]Early morning on the 30th, an asteroid ends [music] the reign of the dinosaurs.

[00:01:14]Our great ape ancestors, they appear on the 31st of December at noon.

[00:01:20]Now, [music] us, Homo sapiens, we finally arrive when the cosmic clock reads 11:45 p.m. That means that all of human history every civilization, every war, every discovery, everything you know or you think you know, occurred in the last 15 [music] minutes of the last hour of the very last day of that cosmic year.

[00:01:43]We are very, very young, indeed. [music]