Our planet is 40% through its lifespan according to current estimations. On this imaginary 12-month calendar that makes ‘today’ the 17th of May. Compared to us, Earth would be a young adult, in its early 30s.
The Earth formed about 4½ billion years ago. It will be absorbed by the dying Sun in about 7½ billion years from now. That makes a total lifespan of 12,000,000,000 years which, as luck has it, works nicely when represented as one year. Download the poster in English or French (PDF).
On this scale:
- A month is 1,000,000,000 (1 billion) years
- a day is 32,876,712 years
- an hour is 1,369,863 years
- a minute is 22,831 years and
- a second is 381 years.
This helps us to put our evolution into perspective, just as David Attenborough did over 40 years ago in his TV series ‘Life on Earth’.
However, by condensing the future as well as the past history of our planet into a year, we can see some quite eye-opening things.
So let’s take a trip through the Life of Earth – from beginning to end.