When we humans experience time, we tend to see things in terms of the common units we use to measure time: seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years.
That one really drives the point home when the narrator, at the very end, goes "Don't blink, or you might miss all of human history," which then takes up under a second of the video's total 1-hour runtime.
It's a great way to begin to try and wrap your head around it.
Most people don’t need to function outside of the time range of their close ones. Enough time needs to pass to provide context to a close history. Perhaps it might provide some encouragement to a survival strategy. I can see why seeing the universe around us in deep time isn’t that relevant to many, but I do see your point.
To your point and more so, is time linear? Are there better ways of conceptualizing time?
The measure time even though there is a chance that the time will be revoked. This is actually what I am working on with game Theory and Climate Change.
Deep time is one of my favorite concepts. My normal analogy is imagining a day at the beach. Then contemplate that every animal, plant, bug, virus or other life form also lived life at the speed of one day at the beach. All of them. For all time. There’s more, but those aspects are for another time. :)
We say that someone who lived over a hundred years is old, but that is .00000000071 of the universe’s age. Actually, I’m probably missing some zeros there. I get restless waiting for an hour at the doctor’s office, so deep time is a fascinating thought but not something we can fathom.
We were born then, and then again when the star exploded that made the heavier elements we're made of, and then once again when life first cropped up here!
It certainly helps. But it's most useful for understanding the history of nations. England, for example, has a history span going back over a millennium, so it's hard to understand how it evolved without a deep time philosophy.
As a historian, I'm required to have an understanding of how deep time works. We study all aspects of time from the Stone Age to just a few years ago. Although the particular areas of study I deal with are primarily 20th century phenomena.
Yeah these timelines are tough to grasp to our fragile human brains.
Remember the Kurzgesagt video I'd shared a while back? "4.5 Billion Years in 1 Hour."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7TUe5w6RHo
That one really drives the point home when the narrator, at the very end, goes "Don't blink, or you might miss all of human history," which then takes up under a second of the video's total 1-hour runtime.
It's a great way to begin to try and wrap your head around it.
This video and Sagan's Cosmic Calendar are two really good ways to visulize this.
Most people don’t need to function outside of the time range of their close ones. Enough time needs to pass to provide context to a close history. Perhaps it might provide some encouragement to a survival strategy. I can see why seeing the universe around us in deep time isn’t that relevant to many, but I do see your point.
To your point and more so, is time linear? Are there better ways of conceptualizing time?
The measure time even though there is a chance that the time will be revoked. This is actually what I am working on with game Theory and Climate Change.
Time could be an illusion, like a flipbook our brain puts together for us.
Whether illusion or not, we experience it.
Deep time is one of my favorite concepts. My normal analogy is imagining a day at the beach. Then contemplate that every animal, plant, bug, virus or other life form also lived life at the speed of one day at the beach. All of them. For all time. There’s more, but those aspects are for another time. :)
I thought for sure you were heading for the Clock of the Long Now here. Or did you do that already?
Not yet, but I should!
We say that someone who lived over a hundred years is old, but that is .00000000071 of the universe’s age. Actually, I’m probably missing some zeros there. I get restless waiting for an hour at the doctor’s office, so deep time is a fascinating thought but not something we can fathom.
Suddenly, I feel young! And, in some ways we were born 13.7 billion years ago ... so much to think about.
We were born then, and then again when the star exploded that made the heavier elements we're made of, and then once again when life first cropped up here!
It certainly helps. But it's most useful for understanding the history of nations. England, for example, has a history span going back over a millennium, so it's hard to understand how it evolved without a deep time philosophy.
I've begun doing this over the last few years! It's super helpful in understanding today's geopolitical mess.
As a historian, I'm required to have an understanding of how deep time works. We study all aspects of time from the Stone Age to just a few years ago. Although the particular areas of study I deal with are primarily 20th century phenomena.
Do you find that thinking in terms of deep time is helpful in putting 20th century innovations into perspective?