Wednesday, November 04, 2015

Deep time


Time is a funny old thing, most of us can't cope with more than a couple of generations with respect to truly grasping it. But in terms of the history of the Earth, a few Human generations is nothing. As this little analogy illustrates, in terms of our planet we're just a scintilla of conciousness, the scum on the surface of the lake, and in terms of the whole Universe we're an infinitesimal speck. I wonder if it takes 4 billion years for complex conciousness to evolve or whether it has evolved many times in the life of the Universe and then destroyed itself (probably arguing about whose invisible friend is true). Let's hope it's the former, the latter is just too depressing to contemplate.

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