Bill Hicks & George Carlin, Auto-Tuned, Share Their Views On Life

"The big electron -- it doesn't punish, it doesn't reward, it doesn't judge at all, it just is."

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Carl Sagan's 'Pale Blue Dot' - Animated

This is a wonderful animated adaptation of Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot. Sagan's book was inspired by a photograph of planet Earth taken in 1990 by the Voyager 1 spacecraft from a record distance of 3.7 billion miles from Earth.

The animation was created by Adam Winnik for his graduation thesis project at Sheridan College.

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The Sagan Series: 'The Humans'

The ninth video in The Sagan Series is now available for viewing. It's a wonderful mash-up of video from a variety of sources, including Koyaanisqatsi, Human Planet, and Baraka, and featuring the voice of Sagan himself, reading from 'Wanderers: An Introduction' from The Pale Blue Dot.

"For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled. Even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven't forgotten. The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood. We invest far-off places with a certain romance. This appeal, I suspect, has been meticulously crafted by natural selection as an essential element in our survival. Long summers, mild winters, rich harvests, plentiful game—none of them lasts forever. It is beyond our powers to predict the future. Catastrophic events have a way of sneaking up on us, of catching us unaware. Your own life, or your band's, or even your species' might be owed to a restless few—drawn, by a craving they can hardly articulate or understand, to undiscovered lands and new worlds." - Carl Sagan, The Pale Blue Dot

The Sagan Series is an educational project working in hopes of promoting scientific literacy in the general population. Created by Reid Gover.

Carl Sagan's Cosmic Calendar, Remastered: 13.7 Billion Years Of The Universe Cast Into A Single Calendar Year

The Cosmic Calendar casts the 13.7 billion year lifetime of the universe into a single calendar year, and was popularized by Carl Sagan on his television series Cosmos, and in his book The Dragons of Eden.

I've previously posted about The Cosmic Calendar. It's a wonderful tool for truly appreciating the vastness of time -- something with which we humans have difficulty.

In a new rendition of The Cosmic Calendar, remastered in HD by Milky Way Musings, Sagan presents the history of the universe and the emergence of life on Earth in a mere 11 minutes.

Perspective: The Lifetime Of The Universe Mapped Onto A Single Calendar Year

A reader commenting on yesterday's post depicting the history of the world cast into a 24-hour clock brought up another wonderful time-scale concept.

The Cosmic Calendar casts the 13.7 billion year lifetime of the universe into a single calendar year, and was popularized by Carl Sagan on his television series Cosmos, and in his book The Dragons of Eden.

A few mind-blowing bits of perspective:

• The Milky Way does not form until May.
• Our Solar System arrives in August.
• First life appears on Earth in September.
• Dinosaurs are extinct on December 30.
• Modern humans evolve on December 31 at approximately 11:54pm.
• Recorded history begins in the final 15 seconds of the year.
• Columbus arrives in America in the last second of the year.

(Image via Wikipedia)

The Relative Insignificance Of Your Problems (And Perhaps, Humanity)

If there's anything that's difficult for humans to grasp, it's the relative insignificance of humans.

While going about our days, it's easy for the little things to set us off.  A bad experience in the DMV line can alter our mood for the entire day. Getting cut off in traffic can raise our blood pressure. Getting rejected by an employer or a romantic interest can seem like the end of the world.

The below image, from the University of Wisconsin's Geoscience department, should help you put things into perspective. When the history of the world, and the evolution of life, is cast into a 24-hour clock, it's difficult to not feel that many of our daily gripes are trivial. In fact, it's difficult to not feel as if humanity itself is kind of trivial.

If the history of the world were cast into a 24-hour clock, humans would not show up until 11:58:43 PM.

Keep in mind that, in addition to the immensity of this timeline, it has been 13.75 ± 0.13 billion years since the Big Bang. (Earth was formed a mere 4.54 billion years ago).

If that's not enough to make those worries melt away, also consider that there are at least 100 billion stars with planets in our galaxy and about 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. If we widen the scope, we must also consider that scientists have estimated there are at least 10 trillion planetary systems in the known universe, with many planets possibly harboring intelligent life.

Relax.

h/t Sheril Kirshenbaum