Cosmic year (astronomy)

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The Cosmic Year is a scale in which the lifetime of the universe is mapped onto a calendrical year; that is to say, the Big Bang took place on a cosmic January 1 at precisely midnight, and today's date and time is December 31 at midnight. On this calendar, the solar system did not appear until September 9, life on Earth arose on September 30, the first dinosaurs appeared on December 25 and the first primates on December 30. Early Homo sapiens did not arrive until ten minutes before midnight on December 31, and all of human history has been recorded in the last 21 seconds. On this timescale, an average human life is about 0.15 seconds. The scale was popularized by Carl Sagan in his book The Dragons of Eden and on the television series Cosmos, which he hosted.

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