— A Journey Through Cosmic Time
Inspired by Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot
The universe is 13.8 billion years old. So, let’s shrink it.
Let’s imagine the entire history of the universe compressed into a single year.
In this calendar:
January 1st at midnight — the universe begins with the Big Bang.
December 31st at 11:59:59 PM — right now.
Let’s walk through that year and see where we arrive.
The universe is born in a flash of unimaginable heat and light.
Time, space, and energy spill out into existence.
No stars. No galaxies. Just raw, expanding chaos.
Galaxies begin to form.
The Milky Way, our home, takes shape.
4.6 billion years ago.
The solar system begins. Earth starts forming from stardust.
A young planet, molten and violent.
Single-celled life appears in Earth's oceans.
Simple, silent... but it changes everything.
Oxygen builds up in the atmosphere.
Cells evolve.
Life becomes more complex — but it’s still all underwater.
Multicellular organisms flourish.
Fish, jellyfish, plants.
Life starts taking familiar shapes.
Giant reptiles dominate Earth.
The dinosaurs fall.
Mammals rise.
10:30 PM – Early hominids appear.
11:52 PM – Homo sapiens evolve.
11:59:53 PM – We begin agriculture.
11:59:56 PM – Cities rise.
11:59:58 PM – The pyramids are built.
11:59:59 PM – We write books, fly planes, go to the Moon... and create AI.
And now…
Look again at those final seven seconds.
That’s here. That’s now. That’s us.
On it, everyone you love, everyone you know,
everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was
lived out their lives.
The aggregate of our joy and suffering,
thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines,
every hunter and forager, every hero and coward,
every creator and destroyer of civilisation,
every king and peasant, every young couple in love,
every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer,
every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician,
every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,”
every saint and sinner in the history of our species
lived there
in the final 7 seconds of the universe’s year.
In just 7 seconds, we built cities, wrote love letters, dropped bombs, painted skies, crossed oceans, mapped the stars, and asked:
Why are we here?
We are a brief flicker in time.
But perhaps, in that flicker
We can choose to shine.