The Impossible Hugeness of Deep Time

↓↓↓ More info and sources below ↓↓↓

Humans have a hard time with really big numbers, especially when it comes to DEEP TIME. The history of the Earth took a lot longer than you think, trust me. But I’m here to help you put it in perspective. With some string.

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It’s Okay To Be Smart is hosted by Joe Hanson, Ph.D.
Director: Joe Nicolosi
Researcher: Sarah Jenevein
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Produced by PBS Digital Studios
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[besmart]

What other events would you add from Earth's history?

[Spika]

Man, I really wish I could just spectate the earth and rewind as much time as I wanted to see how it was at any time I wanted. It would be so fascinating and exciting.

[tc]

Sooo, to Cleopatra the Pyramids were ancient history?!

[SM-hrww]

My perspective of time has completely changed since being diagnosed with cancer this year. It’s been completely cured now, but if I was born 50 years ago I wouldn’t have lived past 18 years old. Such a small difference in time in the scale of things.

[anthonyhutchins]

When people say technology is too advanced I laugh. We are literally at the beginning. Internet has only been used by the public for 27 years. People have only been driving cars for over 100 years. Electricity for Christ sake is about 150 years ago. We are the start and no where even close to hitting stride yet when you consider time on a universal scale.

[owenbartrop]

That breeze though. Bending space time.

[mauilawrenceangeles]

"This is the best/worst time to live"
--- said by almost every human being who lived in each time period

[npc]

What I take from this is that I just barely missed my chance at dating Cleopatra

[johntannius]

The arrogance of humanity is that most of us view humans as an end product of all that time rather than just another tag on the timeline.

[MrMcSnuffyFluffy]

AI - 200 years from now - "And, we've only been here for 197 years, right before the extinction of humans."

[fugithegreat]

I printed out the strips today to do this tomorrow in class with my students. Also, thanks for helping me feel a whole lot younger! Yesterday I had a mini midlife crisis because I realized that I got my driver's license over 20 years ago. 😂

[MicahBuzanANIMATION]

As someone who was raised to believe the earth was created only 6, 000 years ago, this is really blowing my mind.

[alexray]

I did something like this in ninth grade science. We used the entire length of the hallway and human history was less than half a floor tile

[shivg]

It's Okay To Be Smart
Vsauce: Or is it?

**Vsauce intro plays**

[englandbengal]

“Nowhere did we fail harder than deep time”
Deep Distance: Am I a joke to you?!

[TommoCarroll]

Deep Time: *"Do you even lift, bro?"*

[schlurfen]

Remember when the Earth didn’t even exist?

Only kids can relate

[ekrakski]

As an academic specializing in evolutionary bio, I have to say it’s hard to convey to most people the *overwhelming magnitude* a period of 3.5 billion years is. Of course the math of it isn’t too conceptually challenging, but the actual vastness of that number when put into the perspective of our relatively minuscule lifetimes, and all of the enormity of events we perceive within... it goes over the heads of most. I really like this string analogy. It gives a relative visual perspective on a scale small enough to not be so mind boggling.

[tcarrotgaming]

That is what is called string theory.
(Yes, I understand that string theory involves 1-dimensional items that make up the things that make up the things that make up everything, etc, etc, and is not, in fact, related to actual threads, and especially not timelines.)

[drewmur]

People run into the same issue with space. Trying to comprehend the VAST distances between stars is difficult, even for people that study it.