To Scale: TIME

"We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever. " Wylie, I think we all have a pretty good grasp of what time is. Yes.

So why are we doing this? Every human being understands time as seconds and minutes and hours and years. But our brains are not wired to grasp how old the universe is.

This is a realm of time that we cannot imagine. Father Time, how long has that clock been going? A few billion years.

Why? Well, could you unwind it for us? Man, are you crazy?

The best way to understand the history of the cosmos is to see a timeline that shows you the history of the cosmos. If you want to understand the age of the universe, you have to see a scale model of time. And the only way to see it is to build it.

Welcome to the Mojave. Thanks, man. What are we doing here?

With a big open space like this lakebed, you can take the years of the history of the universe and translate it into distance. So double check my math-- --200 lights to be safe. How long did you say a kilometer was?

We're going to build two models. We're going to build a model of the history of human civilization. And then we'll build another model that shows the history of the universe.

And by doing that, you can see how small we are in the history of the universe. Aright. What's the plan?

The plan. Let's talk about it. In the next 10 hours, We have to lay out 800 lights, each ten meters apart.

Walk four and a half miles, probably several times in 100 degree heat. And how are we going to convince our friends to come and do this with us? I think we'll have to pay them.

(we did not pay them) As if this wasn't hard enough, We have to get a single shot of the whole model right at dusk when the light is dim enough so that we can see our lights but not so dark that we can't see the landscape. We'll only have one shot. No pressure, homey.

No pressure. We have to get it right. Are you anticipating any running today?

I am not anticipating any running. 8 hours later Why are you running? Because we’re running out of daylight.

Must go faster. Must go faster. Way over there.

So why did you want to do this, Wylie? I don’t know. Oooh, he likes to cut it close.

Ready for this? Ready! 1 million years ago, our ancestors control fire.

Around its warmth and safety, they become social. They cooperate to survive. They begin to cook and gain more energy from food.

Over thousands of generations, their brains grow. They become we. We make tools, rituals.

As earth warms, we migrate. We make art, music, culture. We domesticate animals.

Then plants. We create cities, kingdoms, empires, the wheel, writing, math, monuments, religion, conquest, nations, revolution, democracy, modern science, medicine, economy, trade, industry, transport, electricity, communication, technology, and at last, today. But this is only the latest chapter.

To see the whole story, we change our scale. The Big Bang. Time begins as the universe expands into existence.

This expansion cools energy into matter. Clouds of simple atoms condense to form stars. In their cores, atoms fuse into new elements.

And when fusion ends, the enriched matter returns to the cosmos. Raw material for future worlds. Over the eons, 100 billion stars gather into each galaxy.

And the universe is home to 200 billion galaxies. In one, our sun and planets form. As earth cools, rain fills oceans.

Atoms forged in ancient stars bond into molecules. One starts to copy itself. Life begins.

It evolves to live off light. And that fills our air with oxygen. Then a powerful new kind of cell is born.

From it, life evolves into endless forms. It moves on to land, grows large. But disaster strikes.

Small mammals emerge into a world left to them. They evolve to be larger, smarter, to stand up, and become us. We did it.

We did it! Ah, man. What are you standing in front of?

So what you're looking at here is a scale model of the history of the universe. And on that scale, all of human history is this big. Every person you've ever heard of existed in this last centimeter of space.

And your life would be less than the width of a hair. That is your life against the history of the universe. What are you feeling?

Ah, man. That whole history. Just to get us here.

I think it's it’s beautiful. I think, I look at this and I think This is it, man. We have one life.

We are alive for the briefest moment. But that time is a gift from the universe. It's a tiny moment, but what a moment.

It makes you think about how you want to spend your own time. What's important with the time you have?