[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 |