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I recently watched the 1997 movie "Contact" for a second time. The movie, based on the book of
the same name by the late astronomer Carl Sagan, starred
Jodie Foster.
Foster's character is involved in the search for extra-terrestrial life. In case the reader has not
seen the film, I don't want to give away too much of the story, but suffice to say that eventually a
signal is received from a planetary system 25 light years from Earth.
The concept of the light year is easily understood, but the actual distance represented by a light
year is difficult to grasp. A light year is the distance that light travels in one
year. At
approximately 186,000 miles per second, a light year is just short of six trillion
miles. In the
movie, the signal received from space is a retransmission of a television signal that was
broadcast from Earth over 50 years earlier, taken 25 years to reach the alien planet and another
25 years to return to Earth.
The distances between objects in the universe are so enormous in terms of the distances to
which we can relate, that they are truly mind-boggling.
The concept of time is also easily understood but again, when discussing time on a geologic
scale on Earth or on a universal scale, the magnitude is difficult to grasp.
Scientists estimate the age of the universe at 12 to 14 billion years. We can bring this down to a more understandable
scale by assuming the age of the universe as 12 billion years and assigning a month of "human"
time to equate to one billion years, thus we'll treat the age of the universe as one "year."
Using this model, we assume that the "big bang" occurred at the dawn of the New Year on
January 1 and today is immediately prior to the stroke of midnight on December 31.
If the universe came into being on January 1, the Earth did not exist until August 15, using the
assumption that the Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old. The extinction of the
dinosaurs occurred about 65 million years ago, or on our yearly scale, about two days before the end of the
year, on December 29.
Scientists have estimated that humans have roamed the Earth for approximately 200,000 years.
On our yearly scale, 200,000 years is about 8 minutes and 45 seconds. In other words,
humans first appeared on Earth at 11:51:15 p.m. on December 31, in time to pour a glass of champagne
at a New Year's Eve party.
The life of Jesus Christ as described in the Bible, occurred just five seconds before midnight, at 11:59:55 p.m.
The signing of the Declaration of Independence was at 11:59:59.4, in the last six tenths of a
second of our year.
As you can see, relating the twelve billion year age of the universe to a single year doesn't
necessarily make the task of grasping of the age of the universe any less mind-boggling.
Now we get to the heart of the matter. An 80 year old man today was "born" just 0.2 seconds
ago, or at 11:59:59.8 p.m. on December 31. His entire life, 80 years, will be complete in less
time than it takes to blink an eye.
Everything that has occurred this "year," holidays, graduations, vacations, the dawn of life, the Ice
Age, etc. are distant memories as we approach the New Year. The ball in Times
Square is just about to light and in that last 200 milliseconds before Dick Clark says "Happy New Year," our 80
year old is born, goes to school, marries, has children, grows old and dies.
With respect to the age of the universe, our time on Earth is microscopic by comparison.
What is the point of all this? There are two ways we can live our lives. We can choose to dwell in
our self-importance, stress over the little things and go through life unhappy and unfulfilled or
we can stop to smell the roses and live our lives to the fullest. Either way, the old adage that "life is
short" hold true. It is over in the blink of an eye.
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Contact
(Click here to buy it)
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