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Duration

[Table of Duration excerpted from Spectrums, by David Blatner.]

5.4 x 10–44 s Planck time (shortest possible time)
6 ys Light travels diameter of atomic proton (1 chronon)
1 as (1 million ys) light travels length of 3 hydrogen atoms
200 fs Fast chemical reactions (such as eye reacting to light)
3.3 ps Light travels 1 millimeter
1 ns One machine cycle on 1 Ghz computer chip
2.5 ns One million wavelengths of red light
5.4 µs Light travels 1 mile in vacuum
22.7 µs Length of a sound sample on an audio CD
5 ms Bee wing beats once
8 ms Camera shutter speed at 1/125 s
33.3 ms One frame in digital movie
41.7 ms One frame in a film movie
30 cs Blink of an eye
43 cs Fastball travels from pitcher’s hand to home plate
1 second Human heartbeat; light travels 300,000 km
9.58 s World record 100 m dash
13 minutes About the half-life of a neutron outside an atom
1,039 seconds (17 minutes, 19 seconds) Record time holding breath underwater
86.4 ks One day
29.5306 days (2.55 Ms) Lunar month
125 days Life of red blood corpuscle
23 Ms (38 weeks) Length of human pregnancy
356.2422 days Average solar (“tropical”) year
75 years (2.3 Gs) Typical life span for a human being
3.16 Gs One century
122 years, 164 days Oldest human: French woman Jeanne Calment (1875–1997); that’s 3.86 billion seconds!
150 years Life span of tortoise
164.8 years Neptune’s solar orbit
248.09 years Orbit of Pluto around sun
31.55 Gs One millennium
2,540 years Time since Buddhism founded
6,000 years Time since humans learned to brew beer
11,800 years Time since last ice age (Holocene epoch)
25,784 years Earth’s axis returns to same location (precession of the equinoxes)
1 Ts (1012 s) 32,000 years
100,000 years Time since Homo sapiens appeared
65 million years Cenozoic period (time since the dinosaurs died off)
225 million years One rotation of the Milky Way
4.5 billion years Age of Earth
4.63 billion years Age of sun
13.75 billion years (about 434 Ps) Age of universe
10 trillion years (312 ´ 1018 seconds) Estimated life span of a red dwarf star
100 trillion years Stelliferous era (time until all stars burn out or collapse into black holes)
311.04 trillion years (about 9.8 Zs) Lifetime of Brahma in Hindu mythology
1034 years Estimated half-life of proton
2 x 1067 years Life span of a small black hole (mass of the sun)
10100 years Time until stars, galaxies, black holes, and virtually all matter in the universe cease to exist

 

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