i keep myself up at 2am thinking about Deep Time stuff. recently it was how, for most of earth's history, we've just kind of been Rock (With Things Happening In Ocean). because terrestrial plants, in geologic time, are a recent invention. as in, kind of just one tenth of earth's history. a tenth!!! we have NOT had vegetation for more time than we HAVE. forests NOT A THING.
then my roommate asks me how i slept and i go "Deep Time again" and she goes ah.
all this to say i have an Excel spreadsheet that turns any given geologic date into a corresponding dd/mm/yy hh:ss time, if you shove the 4.54 BILLION years we've been around into 365 days.
(earliest fossil evidence of plants is November 23rd, 23:20, btw)
(other highlights include:
oldest mineral: January 11th
oldest rock (controversial q): mid-February probably
the Cambrian explosion: end of November
Pangea is now a Thing: beginning December
Chicxulub wrecks some shit: December 26th
Oldest homo sapiens fossil: December 31st, 23:25!)
a while ago i was shifting through a 2am Deep Time thought, trying to figure out how crazy it is humans have figured out a) that plate tectonics are a thing and b) what the age of the earth is. as in, how lucky are we to be ALIVE during a time where we have that type of meta-awareness about the earth. sick af imo.
answer to that question: plugging in a very rough "1960" got me 14 seconds to spare before the New Year. i spent maybe a solid month thinking about that number. 14 seconds?? i can count out 14 seconds—then i still have the REST of the YEAR to go.
it takes me longer to eat dinner than the time we've known. it takes me longer to write this out than the time we've known. it takes YOUR MOM longer to etc etc.
the issue is i fucked up my math. frequent occurrence! i was a literary studies major first!
forgot that normal people dates ≠ geology dates. what i should've plugged in was closer to "60" (=2020s minus 1960s). the answer to this wouldn't even show up in the automated cells. i had to fuck off into a corner, and then adjust the formatting, because it was showing me 0.
the answer (rounded): 0.417 seconds.
we've known the AGE of the EARTH. proportionate to the ACTUAL AGE OF THE EARTH into a year's time. for very roughly half a second!
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