Terasecond and longer
A terasecond (symbol: Ts) is one trillion seconds. That is about 31,700 years. It can be written as 1012 seconds.
Here is a list of time spans longer than 1 terasecond:
- 1015 seconds = 1 petasecond = 31.7 million years
- 1018 seconds = 1 exasecond = 31.7 billion years
- 1021 seconds = 1 zettasecond = 31.7 trillion years
- 1024 seconds = 1 yottasecond = 31.7 quadrillion years
- 1027 seconds = 1 ronnasecond = 31.7 quintillion years
- 1030 seconds = 1 quettasecond = 31.7 sextillion years
Teraseconds
[change | change source]Here are some examples of events that take this long:
- 75,000 years — time since the ancestors of the Indigenous Australians reached Australia
- 76,000 years — half-life of nickel-59
- 154,000 years — half-life of neptunium-236
- 159,200 years — half-life of uranium-233
- 200,000 years — age of Homo sapiens
- 211,100 years — half-life of technetium-99
- 250,000 years — age of Homo neanderthalensis
- 301,000 years — half-life of chlorine-36
- 340,000 years -- half-life of curium-248
- 379,000 years -- time after the Big Bang until cosmic microwave background radiation began
- ~700,000 years -- time since the earth's magnetic field last changed
- 1,000,000 years -- the lifespan of a blue supergiant star
- 1,530,000 years -- half-life of zirconium-93
- 2,600,000 years -- amount of time the Paleolithic era lasted
- 2,600,000 years -- half-life of technetium-97
- 3.74 million years -- half-life of manganese-53
- 4 million years -- time since the last ice age
- 4.2 million years -- half-life of technetium-98
- 6.5 million years -- half-life of palladium-107
- 15.6 million years -- half-life of curium-247
- 20 million years -- time since the first forms of grass appeared
- 23.42 million years -- half-life of uranium-236
- 26 million years -- time since the first elephants were born
Petaseconds
[change | change source]- 34 million years -- time since the evolution of the cat
- 34.7 million years -- half-life of niobium-92
- 49 million years -- time since the whales returned to the water
- 60 million years -- time since the evolution of the first primates.
- 135 million years -- time since end of Jurassic and beginning of Cretaceous period
- 250 million years -- Galactic year - an orbit around the center of the Milky way of our Sun and the Solar system
- 251.4 million years -- time since the Permian–Triassic extinction event
- 280 million years -- time since end of Carboniferous and beginning of Permian Period.
- 390 million years - first fishapods
- 575 million years - age of the oldest animal fossils
- 580 million years - time since the end of a possible Snowball Earth ice age
- 703.8 million years - half-life of uranium-235
- 750 million years - time since the beginning of a possible ice age
- 1277 million years - half-life of potassium-40
- 1.8-2.1 billion years - age of the earliest eukaryotes
- 2.3 billion years - time since the first known ice age
- 3.5 to 3.8 billion years - age of oldest records of life: stromatolites and cyanobacteria
- 4.468 billion years - half-life of uranium-238
- 4.5 billion years - age of the Earth
- 13.7 ± 0.2 billion years (4e17 seconds) - age of the universe according to the Big Bang theory
- 20 billion years - time until the end of the universe in the Big Rip scenario
Exaseconds
[change | change source]- 100 billion (1011) years -- If the universe is closed, the lifetime of the universe
- Some radioisotopes have very long half-lives: