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Kurzgezazegg’t posted a video showing all of the Earth’s six billion year history in one hour. Time flows at about a million years per second: https://youtu.be/

Kurzgezazegg’t posted a video showing all of the Earth’s six billion year history in one hour. Time flows at about a million years per second: https://youtu.be/S7TUe5w6RHo?si=_KK15QPAqJLTxLQj https://youtu.be/S7TUe5w6RHo?si=_KK15QPAqJLTxLQj It gives a nice perspective, and it’s a visceral reminder that the planet has been through far worse than us. I find it comforting that even if we drive ourselves to extinction, life itself will continue on. And in the multicellular era, too. This is important, because whoever (or whatever) comes after us might still have a shot at colonizing Mars. It may seem like Earth has lots of time to do it, but the video shows just how precious our tiny slice is.

AtlasBarfed 3y ago
[flagged]
- cyberlurker 3y ago
  Just wanted to point out that life likely introduced Oxygen into the atmosphere.
- breakyerself 3y ago
  Yeah I take zero comfort in knowing life will go on after we go extinct. I'd do anything to ensure my child has a future and if she chooses to have kids I'd do anything to secure them a future here.
  - sillysaurusx 3y ago
    Well, yes. But we are a blip. Ten thousand lifetimes (roughly 40,000 generations) elapse every second of that video, and it’s over an hour long. Meanwhile your great grandchild "will have more in common with the stranger they married than they could ever have with you." https://youtu.be/wCA7sGZKFIY?si=LsBpPstKnpbVRBl5 https://youtu.be/wCA7sGZKFIY?si=LsBpPstKnpbVRBl5 We like to feel so important. And we are. But rooting for Team Earth to spread out beyond our planet gives me some comfort, rather than the existential horror of cosmic time scales relative to human lives. That’d be a bit like a fruit fly pining away that it only lives a few dozen hours, which must feel like a lifetime to it.
- iconhacker 3y ago
  Human did far worse than we thought. Even to this day, the Denmark government still commit this horrific crime: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/02/greenlandic-women-sue-danish-state-over-historical-contraceptive-violation！ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/02/greenlandic-wo...
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  The K-T mass extinction was very rapid, possibly as short as few thousand years and most models/data point to substantially less than a million years. Which is kind of compatible with an impact event. Other mass extinctions with different potential causes took longer.
- pfannkuchen 3y ago
  > climate change occur over much longer time periods I’m curious how we are sure that we aren’t under sampling? The climate data sample frequency I’ve seen from the distant past has not been on the order of decades or even single centuries. Is it possible that there is sometimes a natural higher frequency temperature oscillation that doesn’t show up in the natural records with our current techniques?
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    You’d see mass extinctions.
    - pfannkuchen 3y ago
      Not necessarily? That depends on the magnitude of the oscillation. If the present Earth continued warming for the next 50 years and then cooled down again, would we expect to see an extinction event in the fossil record, if we ignore human impacts other than temperature? I think the temperature change would have to be larger for that to happen? I'm not saying this is what is happening, or commenting on how likely it is, I'm just not sure why everyone seems to be ruling it out completely and I would like someone to fill me in.
      - rsynnott 3y ago
        > If the present Earth continued warming for the next 50 years and then cooled down again, would we expect to see an extinction event in the fossil record, if we ignore human impacts other than temperature? Over the next 50 years? Yeah, almost certainly. If the current change continues for the next 50 years, you’re going to have ecosystems changing _dramatically_. Of course, it’s kind of speculative, as you _can’t_ really disentangle the other effects of humanity easily, but if the current trend continues for another 50 years, it’s hard to see how that would not lead to a mass extinction event. > I'm not saying this is what is happening, or commenting on how likely it is, I mean, I think we can say that is _definitely_ not what is happening right now. It is not just doing it on its own. Like, what would the mechanism be?
- deleted 3y ago
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cyberlurker 3y ago
I enjoyed that video too. If the point of colonization of Mars is to diversify where life is to avoid full extinction, we really need to think bigger. That channel is filled with examples of nearby Supernova and Quasars that could extinguish life in the solar system. That timeline also opened my eyes to how long it took for the Cambrian explosion to occur.
- sillysaurusx 3y ago
  While I like the ambition, supernovae turn out to be one of the least likely extinction scenarios. Their video on this points out why: https://youtu.be/q4DF3j4saCE?t=8m45s https://youtu.be/q4DF3j4saCE?t=8m45s there aren’t any stars close enough to do damage in that time frame. I used to worry (as one does) in my 20s about quasars, but those are basically sniper rifles being fired in random directions. The probability of one scoring a critical hit is far less than a giant rock hitting us, which is probably the more pressing concern. I’m sadly bearish on us ever getting out of our solar system. I think AIs will be able to, but flesh and blood is ill suited for the journey. And as much as I love our mechanical overlords^Wfriends, they’re ill suited for colonization via reproduction, unless you buy the theory that swarms of nanites could really become viable.
  - mrexroad 3y ago
    If you haven’t read the book Diaspora, you might enjoy it.
    - sillysaurusx 3y ago
      Thanks for the book reference!
rsynnott 3y ago
> This is important, because whoever (or whatever) comes after us might still have a shot at colonizing Mars … What is this fixation people have on colonising Mars? Like, why is _that_ the reason that civilisation reemerging would be important?
- anjel 3y ago
  Vapid atmosphere and high levels of Radiation...sounds charming. I hope they like living underground as trogs.
  - nuccy 3y ago
    Mars might be just a first (easiest) step for becoming multi-planetary/spacefaring civilization. By itself it is not that special or important but if you have a colony on another planet you focus more on space technology and other options that it brings.
- throwbadubadu 3y ago
  Because then we can stop caring and go on as before! :) No, honestly I don't know either. I don't know what it even changes without mentioning Mars at all, and that's what all the "the Earth has been always gone through that" or worse advocates do not get? Besides it comparatively not being true at least at that timescale or with that population.. it all does not matter: It has never been about Earth in general or what may survive or reemerge at some point, it has always been about us (and our children)?!
  - sillysaurusx 3y ago
    What do I get out of it? Happiness, of course. If my life was all about me and ny children, then it’d truly be meaningless. Say we ran with your perspective. Mars doesn’t matter. Ok, that means it’s guaranteed that you, your children, and the descendants of everyone you know will die as our sun heats up. This is not so far away, as the video illustrates. So then, what do you get out of this? A few dopamine hits and some nice chemical reactions before the eternal void? What’s all of our work even amount to? We have the privilege of being the only life form ever to use technology. Technology! We can do things. Most life can’t do a damn thing. They live, briefly, and then die, gruesomely. And till the asteroid hit, that might have been the story of our planet until the sun gobbled it up. (Though imagining dinosaur astronauts is fun too.) Would you say that asteroid is all about you and your children? It’s what even made it possible for you to be here, along with the unbroken string of cells from billions of years ago till the present day. Me and my children? We’re nothing, in that perspective. We are here thanks to everyone that came before. And we owe it to those who come after to let them live an even better life. So unless you want the descendants of everyone you know to die horribly one day, colonizing space is our only way out. But that’s just what I get out of it. After all, my own chemical reactions are unlikely to change a thing, over a single millisecond of that video. There’s nothing wrong with focusing on yourself and enjoying the ride. But personally, I end up a lot happier trying to make life be about more than little ol’ me. (My daughter says "gaaaa!" as I write this, which is either a salute of agreement or a firm rebuttal. Time will tell.)
jacquesm 3y ago
Your takeaway from that video is completely different than mine. If anything it shows me how incredibly rare and precious this moment in time is and how much had to happen before multi-cellular life could begin to evolve and how long after that it took to get to intelligent life. That means that there may not be anything to 'come after us' depending how much of a mess we make, and any complacency regarding all this is dangerous. We stand to lose a lot, possibly everything and there may simply not be an 'after' for intelligent life on Earth. Life will go on, but not in a form that will ever even be able to contemplate colonizing Mars, let alone to act on it.
- LeonenTheDK 3y ago
  Even if there is something to "come after us", and it's intelligent, I've seen it argued that most if not all of the easy to get "advanced" resources (eg oil, some minerals) have been harvested. For a new civilization to rise and reach our levels again from scratch would be very difficult. I haven't checked the veracity of that statement recently though, I'll see if I can't find it again.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    Without any reference: that makes a lot of sense. We are essentially withdrawing stored sunshine from 100's of millions of years ago to re-use it today.
    - User23 3y ago
      Obviously true for coal. Far less obviously true for simple hydrocarbons, which appear prevalent everywhere in the solar system.
  - danielheath 3y ago
    Most minerals can be re-extracted from our ruins; energy resources are irreplaceable, but mining former cities for steel and copper is likely to be easier than purifying them from ground deposits.
lamontcg 3y ago
> I find it comforting that even if we drive ourselves to extinction, life itself will continue on. Given that the Universe is probably infinite, and certainly so stupidly big that there's no way this planet is unique, life will always continue on. No idea why you should find this comforting. The condition of this planet, to humans, should always matter to ourselves. > might still have a shot at colonizing Mars Or we could just choose not to wreck this planet.

AtlasBarfed 3y ago

[flagged]

cyberlurker 3y ago
Just wanted to point out that life likely introduced Oxygen into the atmosphere.
breakyerself 3y ago
Yeah I take zero comfort in knowing life will go on after we go extinct. I'd do anything to ensure my child has a future and if she chooses to have kids I'd do anything to secure them a future here.
- sillysaurusx 3y ago
  Well, yes. But we are a blip. Ten thousand lifetimes (roughly 40,000 generations) elapse every second of that video, and it’s over an hour long. Meanwhile your great grandchild "will have more in common with the stranger they married than they could ever have with you." https://youtu.be/wCA7sGZKFIY?si=LsBpPstKnpbVRBl5 https://youtu.be/wCA7sGZKFIY?si=LsBpPstKnpbVRBl5 We like to feel so important. And we are. But rooting for Team Earth to spread out beyond our planet gives me some comfort, rather than the existential horror of cosmic time scales relative to human lives. That’d be a bit like a fruit fly pining away that it only lives a few dozen hours, which must feel like a lifetime to it.
iconhacker 3y ago
Human did far worse than we thought. Even to this day, the Denmark government still commit this horrific crime: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/02/greenlandic-women-sue-danish-state-over-historical-contraceptive-violation！ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/02/greenlandic-wo...
RandomLensman 3y ago
The K-T mass extinction was very rapid, possibly as short as few thousand years and most models/data point to substantially less than a million years. Which is kind of compatible with an impact event. Other mass extinctions with different potential causes took longer.
pfannkuchen 3y ago
> climate change occur over much longer time periods I’m curious how we are sure that we aren’t under sampling? The climate data sample frequency I’ve seen from the distant past has not been on the order of decades or even single centuries. Is it possible that there is sometimes a natural higher frequency temperature oscillation that doesn’t show up in the natural records with our current techniques?
- rsynnott 3y ago
  You’d see mass extinctions.
  - pfannkuchen 3y ago
    Not necessarily? That depends on the magnitude of the oscillation. If the present Earth continued warming for the next 50 years and then cooled down again, would we expect to see an extinction event in the fossil record, if we ignore human impacts other than temperature? I think the temperature change would have to be larger for that to happen? I'm not saying this is what is happening, or commenting on how likely it is, I'm just not sure why everyone seems to be ruling it out completely and I would like someone to fill me in.
    - rsynnott 3y ago
      > If the present Earth continued warming for the next 50 years and then cooled down again, would we expect to see an extinction event in the fossil record, if we ignore human impacts other than temperature? Over the next 50 years? Yeah, almost certainly. If the current change continues for the next 50 years, you’re going to have ecosystems changing _dramatically_. Of course, it’s kind of speculative, as you _can’t_ really disentangle the other effects of humanity easily, but if the current trend continues for another 50 years, it’s hard to see how that would not lead to a mass extinction event. > I'm not saying this is what is happening, or commenting on how likely it is, I mean, I think we can say that is _definitely_ not what is happening right now. It is not just doing it on its own. Like, what would the mechanism be?
deleted 3y ago
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- deleted 3y ago
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cyberlurker 3y ago

I enjoyed that video too. If the point of colonization of Mars is to diversify where life is to avoid full extinction, we really need to think bigger. That channel is filled with examples of nearby Supernova and Quasars that could extinguish life in the solar system. That timeline also opened my eyes to how long it took for the Cambrian explosion to occur.

sillysaurusx 3y ago
While I like the ambition, supernovae turn out to be one of the least likely extinction scenarios. Their video on this points out why: https://youtu.be/q4DF3j4saCE?t=8m45s https://youtu.be/q4DF3j4saCE?t=8m45s there aren’t any stars close enough to do damage in that time frame. I used to worry (as one does) in my 20s about quasars, but those are basically sniper rifles being fired in random directions. The probability of one scoring a critical hit is far less than a giant rock hitting us, which is probably the more pressing concern. I’m sadly bearish on us ever getting out of our solar system. I think AIs will be able to, but flesh and blood is ill suited for the journey. And as much as I love our mechanical overlords^Wfriends, they’re ill suited for colonization via reproduction, unless you buy the theory that swarms of nanites could really become viable.
- mrexroad 3y ago
  If you haven’t read the book Diaspora, you might enjoy it.
  - sillysaurusx 3y ago
    Thanks for the book reference!

rsynnott 3y ago

> This is important, because whoever (or whatever) comes after us might still have a shot at colonizing Mars … What is this fixation people have on colonising Mars? Like, why is _that_ the reason that civilisation reemerging would be important?

anjel 3y ago
Vapid atmosphere and high levels of Radiation...sounds charming. I hope they like living underground as trogs.
- nuccy 3y ago
  Mars might be just a first (easiest) step for becoming multi-planetary/spacefaring civilization. By itself it is not that special or important but if you have a colony on another planet you focus more on space technology and other options that it brings.
throwbadubadu 3y ago
Because then we can stop caring and go on as before! :) No, honestly I don't know either. I don't know what it even changes without mentioning Mars at all, and that's what all the "the Earth has been always gone through that" or worse advocates do not get? Besides it comparatively not being true at least at that timescale or with that population.. it all does not matter: It has never been about Earth in general or what may survive or reemerge at some point, it has always been about us (and our children)?!
- sillysaurusx 3y ago
  What do I get out of it? Happiness, of course. If my life was all about me and ny children, then it’d truly be meaningless. Say we ran with your perspective. Mars doesn’t matter. Ok, that means it’s guaranteed that you, your children, and the descendants of everyone you know will die as our sun heats up. This is not so far away, as the video illustrates. So then, what do you get out of this? A few dopamine hits and some nice chemical reactions before the eternal void? What’s all of our work even amount to? We have the privilege of being the only life form ever to use technology. Technology! We can do things. Most life can’t do a damn thing. They live, briefly, and then die, gruesomely. And till the asteroid hit, that might have been the story of our planet until the sun gobbled it up. (Though imagining dinosaur astronauts is fun too.) Would you say that asteroid is all about you and your children? It’s what even made it possible for you to be here, along with the unbroken string of cells from billions of years ago till the present day. Me and my children? We’re nothing, in that perspective. We are here thanks to everyone that came before. And we owe it to those who come after to let them live an even better life. So unless you want the descendants of everyone you know to die horribly one day, colonizing space is our only way out. But that’s just what I get out of it. After all, my own chemical reactions are unlikely to change a thing, over a single millisecond of that video. There’s nothing wrong with focusing on yourself and enjoying the ride. But personally, I end up a lot happier trying to make life be about more than little ol’ me. (My daughter says "gaaaa!" as I write this, which is either a salute of agreement or a firm rebuttal. Time will tell.)

jacquesm 3y ago

Your takeaway from that video is completely different than mine. If anything it shows me how incredibly rare and precious this moment in time is and how much had to happen before multi-cellular life could begin to evolve and how long after that it took to get to intelligent life. That means that there may not be anything to 'come after us' depending how much of a mess we make, and any complacency regarding all this is dangerous. We stand to lose a lot, possibly everything and there may simply not be an 'after' for intelligent life on Earth. Life will go on, but not in a form that will ever even be able to contemplate colonizing Mars, let alone to act on it.

LeonenTheDK 3y ago
Even if there is something to "come after us", and it's intelligent, I've seen it argued that most if not all of the easy to get "advanced" resources (eg oil, some minerals) have been harvested. For a new civilization to rise and reach our levels again from scratch would be very difficult. I haven't checked the veracity of that statement recently though, I'll see if I can't find it again.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Without any reference: that makes a lot of sense. We are essentially withdrawing stored sunshine from 100's of millions of years ago to re-use it today.
  - User23 3y ago
    Obviously true for coal. Far less obviously true for simple hydrocarbons, which appear prevalent everywhere in the solar system.
- danielheath 3y ago
  Most minerals can be re-extracted from our ruins; energy resources are irreplaceable, but mining former cities for steel and copper is likely to be easier than purifying them from ground deposits.

lamontcg 3y ago

> I find it comforting that even if we drive ourselves to extinction, life itself will continue on. Given that the Universe is probably infinite, and certainly so stupidly big that there's no way this planet is unique, life will always continue on. No idea why you should find this comforting. The condition of this planet, to humans, should always matter to ourselves. > might still have a shot at colonizing Mars Or we could just choose not to wreck this planet.