The 7 Most Horrifying Timescales Our Brain Can't Process

Hey guys! We’re now live on Spotify🎧 Listen here: https://open.spotify.com/show/1c2uppn... In 1976, Carl Sagan sealed three maps of Earth inside a satellite that isn't expected to fall back for 8.4 million years — the shortest number on this list. Tyrannosaurus lived closer to us than to Stegosaurus, Earth's breathable air has a calculated end date, and the smallest stars have lifespans no star has ever completed. So what lies beyond numbers the universe hasn't lived long enough to reach? Seven real timescales, each longer than the last, in a full three-hour walk made for any pace, including drifting off. Settle in and let these slow, enormous numbers keep you company tonight. Subscribe to The Cosmographer if you like the long way through the universe's greatest lists. CHAPTERS 0:00 Introduction 1:25 Number Seven Letters to the Far Future 34:04 Number Six The Galactic Year 1:01:39 Number Five The Last Billion Years of Air 1:29:22 Number Four The Red Dwarf Trillions 1:56:24 Number Three The Ember That Outlasts Everything 2:24:36 Number Two A Flash That Never Came 2:53:49 Number One A Different Kind of Time 3:22:46 The Hand You See Late SOURCES The future lifespan of Earth's oxygenated atmosphere (Nature Geoscience) — https://www.nature.com/articles/s4156... LAGEOS: Message to the Future (NASA Goddard) — https://earth.gsfc.nasa.gov/geo/missi... The Golden Record Cover (NASA Science) — https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voya... The Last Pictures (Trevor Paglen) — https://paglen.studio/lastpictures/ Posiva begins drilling disposal holes at Onkalo (ANS) — https://www.ans.org/news/2026-08-31/a... A Dying Universe (Adams & Laughlin, arXiv) — https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9701131 Relative likelihood for life as a function of cosmic time (OSTI) — https://www.osti.gov/biblio/22679502 Ultra-cool white dwarfs polluted by planetary debris (MNRAS) — https://academic.oup.com/mnras/articl... Caplan, far-future stellar remnant study (MNRAS, arXiv) — https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.02296 Super-Kamiokande I-IV nucleon search (Phys. Rev. D) — https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/Phys... Radboud University 2025 far-future study (ScienceDaily) — https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases... Time without end: Physics and biology in an open universe (OSTI) — https://www.osti.gov/biblio/5758431 Information Loss in Black Holes and/or Conscious Beings? (arXiv) — https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/9411193 Estimating Large Numbers (Cognitive Science) — https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/f... — Disclaimer: The Cosmographer produces educational entertainment. Factual claims come from published research and official scientific institutions, and any speculation or open question is labeled as such when it appears. This channel is not a news outlet. Watch at your own discretion. #DeepTime #FateOfTheUniverse