Quote:
Originally Posted by gary
What I find surprising is that numbers such as the age of the universe aren't
mind-bogglingly large, but in fact humanly finite.
Take the age of the universe, currently at around 13.82 billion
years old.
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Yes, on the one hand, "13.8 billion years" is a long time, and not really within human comprehension to envisage, but I am also astounded that the Earth itself is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old (about 1/3 the age of the universe), and the first evidence for life is at least 3.7 billion years ago, possibly as much as 4.2 billion years - that is, "just after" the Earth itself formed.
To have matter other than hydrogen and helium with which to form a solar system, implies that we are formed from the remnants of at least second-generation if not third-generation stars.
So on the one hand, "deep time" is very deep indeed - and yet, the Earth is a significant fraction of the age of the universe, and life on Earth has existed for most of that time.