Not even wrong

 

Previously posted on this blog on January 9, 2022

In a sedimentary core, a layer of a few centimeters is deposited every thousand years. Since industrial civilization will probably only last about 300 years, the sedimentary layer corresponding to the "peak" of human history will perhaps only be one centimeter thick! These sediments are found in the oceans. On land, erosion will destroy all traces of the cities and artefacts of the industrial age within a few million years.

If the whole existence of life on Earth had been one year (with 1 January marking the beginning of life 3.7 billion years ago, and 31 December marking its end 1.2 billion years into the future), the entire recorded span of human history so far would be about 32 seconds! Industrial civilization (about 300 years) would be less than two seconds. The date? September 26. If humanity would exist for 10 million years (the average life span of a vertebrate genus), that would still only be 17 hours. On September 27, we would be gone. For good. 

If the Earth had been a small "o" on this blog page, the Moon would be less than five centimeters away from Earth. That´s the furthest point humans have reached so far. The closest star, Proxima Centauri, would be 4,800 km away. If you live in Sweden, that´s the distance between Stockholm and Xinjiang in western China! Of course, that particular star system is probably uninhabitable for humans anyway. Apparently, some astronomers speculate that Epsilon Eridani is the closest star that might have inhabitable planets. On our scale, that star would be somewhere in New Guinea... 

And yet, we have somehow talked ourselves into thinking that our 300 years *is the end-goal of the entire infinite space-time continuum* cuz reasons or something. Of course, modern industrial civilization wasn´t supposed to last just 300 years. It was supposed to last FOREVER. We were supposed to be Homo deus.

In reality, we are not even the god that failed. We are more like the god who wasn´t even there...