Life

1.      Beginning with none of the oxygen that we breath, it is estimated that life on Earth has been around for about 3.9 billion years.  

 

Somewhere in the first billion years or so, some life forms started excreting oxygen, which poisoned and killed all of the other life forms on the planet at the time.

 

It took about 2 billion years to get to the level of oxygen we have now.

 

 

2.      Out of the estimated 100 million asteroids that that intersect with the Earth’s orbit around the sun, there are about 2,000 big enough to cause a major extinction.  Mass extinctions of life on Earth occurred 440,  251 (asteroid),  210 and 65 (asteroid)  million years ago.  About 74,000 years ago, a volcano caused the last widespread extinction.

 

If the average species on Earth lasted about four million years, chances are that 99.99% of the approximately thirty billion species of everything that has ever lived on Earth is extinct.

 

The more complex life was, the faster it may have disappeared.

 

 

3.      If life on Earth were one day, a big meteor would have hit it about every 3 minutes.  Plants on land showed up around 10 P. M., or about 450 million years ago.  Insects showed up around 10:30 P.M. and dinosaurs about 11 P.M. 

 

No one knew about dinosaurs until 1855.

 

Some scientists figure Homo Sapiens have been around somewhere between 150,000 to 1,800,000 years, or about 20 seconds before midnight, or .04% or less of the approximate age of the planet.  Modern human beings have existed for about 10,000 years, or 0.0001% of Earth’s age.

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Don’t worry, be happy

 

-Bobby Mcferrin