History Of The Universe

Few things get me as riled up as the human being's lack of perspective: about our place in the "grand scheme of things," about our longevity, or about the kinds of impact -- damaging and otherwise -- that we have on our planet. We seem terrified of massive perspectival shifts, threatened by our own galactic history or the dark matters that astronomers so often bandy about. There is one trope, I've found, however, that can lead laypeople to safely revel in the sheer minisculity of our race: the Condensed History of the Universe. "Imagine that all of time were to take place in one day," the Condensed History posits, before thrusting the lofty events of cosmic time into moderately-paced succession, relegating all of human history -- all of life on Earth, in fact -- into one fleeting second book-ending the last hour of the hypothetical 24. We've all encountered this metaphor, in high-school science textbooks, gallantly curated natural history museums, educational films, or the conversations of our stoner neighbors.

In any case, I've been dabbling with history. Here is a short film of my authorship where not a lot happens until 13.7 billion years after the Big Bang:

"Not only are we not at the centre of the cosmos, but we are alien to it: we are a singularity. The Universe is strange for us, we are strange for the Universe."

PRIMO LEVI, "News From the Sky," from Other People's Trades