WEBVTT

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Time makes sense in small pieces.

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But when you look at huge
stretches of time,

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it’s almost impossible to wrap
your head around things.

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So let’s start small

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with minutes, hours, days.

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You probably spent the last 24 hours
mostly sleeping and working,

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with some coffee in there somewhere.

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Please watch less TV.

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Now let’s look at 2013:
relatively unnoticed,

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Hitler’s bodyguard died at the age of 96

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while in June, Edward Snowden
started the NSA scandal.

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Moving back a bit, the 21st century is
still pretty young and largely shaped

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by the attacks on 9/11 that ultimately 
led to the third Iraq war.

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Oh, and Facebook and smartphones
took over our lives.

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But we’re just getting started:

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Let’s back up further!

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The 20th century has seen its share
of conflicts too.

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After two devastating World Wars,

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the Cold War lasted for almost the
whole second half of it.

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An average human lifespan
covers most of this stuff

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as well as the birth of the internet 
and the beginning of the information age.

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The oldest living person on Earth
is currently Misao Okawa,

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who was born in 1898, which means that
her birth was closer to

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Napoleon ruling Europe
than to the current day.

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The last 500 years of human history

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brought enormous changes
to our lifestyles:

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Industrialisation gave rise to new
ideas like communism,

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farmers became workers 
and knowledge became easier to distribute.

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The theory of evolution changed how we
saw ourselves and the world we live in.

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All in a few hundred years!

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The 15th century was very eventful:

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Columbus’s “discovery” of America
and the fall of Constantinople

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mark the end of the Middle Ages.

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People in the Middle Ages where super into
war over territory and religion

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but the Black Plague was far
more efficient than war,

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killing every third European in six years.

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Arriving in the Common Era,
let’s take a look where we came from!

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Our current century is tiny,
and 2013 is barely visible.

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This is recorded human history.

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The pyramids were constructed
4,500 years ago,

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the peak of the Roman Empire was
2,000 years ago,

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so to the Romans the pyramids were as old
as the Romans are to us today.

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History starts with writing.
But what happened before that?

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About 12,000 years ago, 
the agricultural revolution took place.

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Mankind began farming,
which gave rise to

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the existence of cities
and larger communities.

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The dominance of the human species over
planet Earth really started here.

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90,000 years ago, neanderthals and
humans coexist in Europe.

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Fun fact: this is roughly the time
period a modern spacecraft

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would need to reach the nearest star.

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Homo sapiens, the modern human,
evolved 200,000 years ago.

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Looking at all of human history, what
we call AD seems pretty small, doesn’t it?

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6,000,000 years ago, our ancestors

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and the modern chimpanzee shared 
a common ancestor for the last time,

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and for 2,750,000 years, stone tools
were all the rage.

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A mere 65,000,000 years ago, the age of
the dinosaurs ended in

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an enormous explosion, which paved
the way for the rise of mammals.

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But the dinosaurs ruled the Earth
for an incredibly long time:

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over 165,000,000 years!

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That’s so long that it means a T. rex
that lived 65,000,000 years ago

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is closer to seeing a
live Miley Cirus concert

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than to seeing a live stegosaurus!

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Animal life on this planet
started 600,000,000 years ago:

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the earliest animals were fish and
other small simple sea creatures,

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then came insects, then reptiles,

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and finally, around 200,000,000 years ago,

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mammals join the party!

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Life itself began much further back:

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3,600,000,000 years ago.

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Before any animals appeared,
there were 2,400,000,000 years

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when life consisted only of tiny microbes,

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countless single-cell bacteria.

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For 3,000,000,000 years, all life on Earth
was invisible to the naked eye.

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It’s hard to understand how
single-cell organisms

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could develop into complex
life forms like fish or sloths.

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The answer is time, a whole lot of time:

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2,400,000,000 years is lot of
time to work with!

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4,600,000,000 years ago, the Sun was born
from the remnants of a giant explosion,

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60,000,000 years later, Earth formed.

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In those early years, frequent bombardment
by comets and asteroids

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supplied the Earth with large oceans 
and a moon to send spaceships to.

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But as far as the whole universe goes,
our Solar system is pretty new.

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13,750,000,000 years ago, the
universe was born, and

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600,000,000 years later, our own galaxy
formed from billions of stars,

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but what was before the Big Bang?

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The truth is, we don’t know that yet,
and maybe we never will.

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But we gave it some colours so
at least we have that.

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And there you have it:

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the past.

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Now let’s take a look at what
we know about the future.

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In roughly 1,000,000,000 years,

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the Sun will be so hot that 
life on Earth becomes impossible.

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The death of the Sun 4,000,000,000 years
later marks the end of the Solar system.

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OK, so no more Solar system.

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And what happens after that?

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A few trillions years from now,
star production will cease

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and one day the last star in the
universe will die.

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The universe will turn dark,

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inhabited only by black holes.

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Long after the last black hole
has evaporated,

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our universe reaches its
final stage,

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something called heat death.

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Nothing changes anymore,

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the universe

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is dead

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forever.

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Now you’re feeling some pretty
weird feelings right now, aren’t you?

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We are too.

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It’s only natural.

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The good news is:

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this is all far, far away.

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The only time that actually
matters is now!

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That cute girl you like,

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ask her out!

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Time is precious,

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make it count!