A View from the Back of the Envelope top

Time
s (second)
Scale of some things
Landmarks
A dot for every second in the day
A dot for each day
[ Scale | Landmarks | Other ]


1
10
100
1
10
1/10
1
10
1
15
150
1
15
150
3
30
300
3
30
300
3
30
300
3
30


us


ms

s


min


day


Y


kY


MY

GY

10ns
-6
-5
-4
-3
-2
-1
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
Duration of a:





blink
heart beat





2 weeks
season

person
country




continent


star
Light travels:
300 meters
2 miles



around Earth
from Moon


from Sun




near stars



across galaxy

near galaxies



visibility
Ago:
light from 300 meters away
light from 2 miles away









yesterday

last year

you were born

written history
civilization
modern human spread
homo sapiens

multi-cellular life
age of Earth & Sun
age of visible universe (~13 GY)

A View from the Back of the Envelope
Comments encouraged. - Mitchell N Charity <mcharity@lcs.mit.edu>

A previous draft, not yet fully replaced...
s
...
10-9ns nanosecond
10-8
10-7
10-6us microsecond
10-5
10-4
10-3ms millisecond
10-2
10-1
100second
101
102minute (×0.6)
103ks kilosecond
104hour (×0.36)
105day (×0.86)
106Ms megasecond | week (×0.60)
107year (×3.2)
108decade (×3.2)
109Gs gigasecond | century (×3.2)
1010300 years
10113000 years
1012Ts terasecond | 30 kyr
1013
10143 Myr
1015Ps petasecond
1016
10173 Gyr | age of earth
1018Es exasecond | 30 Gyr | age of universe (×~0.4, ~13 Gyr)