If the entire history of the earth was relative to 1 day, how long would humans been around on earth?

Question

Alexander Acosta · Accepted Answer

Humans appear in about 2 minutes to midnight.

If the Earth formed at 12 AM, then the meteor shower began at 3 AM, life first appeared at 4 AM, sexual reproduction was invented at 6 PM, dinosaurs appeared at 11 PM, mammals appeared at 11:30 PM, and humans appeared in the final two minutes of the formation.

HIX Tutor · Answer

undefined Great question! Let's think together about this.

1. **How old is the Earth?** The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old.

2. **What is one day in hours?** One day has 24 hours.

3. **How many years are in a day?** 
   - If we put 4.5 billion years in one day (24 hours), we can divide the years by the hours.

4. **How many years per hour?** 
   - 4.5 billion ÷ 24 = about 187.5 million years per hour.

5. **How long have humans been around?** 
   - Humans have been around for about 200,000 years.

6. **How long is that in our one-day scale?** 
   - If we divide 200,000 by 187.5 million, we find how many hours humans exist.

7. **So, what is the answer?** 
   - Humans would be around for a tiny part of the day, about 0.000001 (or just a tiny fraction of a second) of that one day!

What do you think? Can you see how small that is?

Olivia Aldridge · Answer

undefined Humanity would have emerged in the final moments before midnight if Earth's history could be condensed into a single day.

Lydia Allen · Answer

undefined If the entire history of the Earth were compressed into a single day, the first humans, Homo sapiens, would have appeared very late in the day, just moments before midnight. In this analogy, the Earth formed at midnight, about 4.5 billion years ago, and the first humans emerged only about 200,000 years ago. Therefore, the duration of human existence relative to the entire history of the Earth would be approximately 1 minute and 17 seconds.