I like to mess around in Excel; I’m not a math genius but I love crunching numbers. My natural curiosity was piqued this week while reading some information related to climate change. Those words, “climate change,” to me are synonymous and therefore redundant. Anyway, enough on my “climate change” grammar philosophy.

It’s generally agreed by the scientific community that planet Earth has been in existence for close to 4.5 billion years. With that in mind I set out to determine what percentage of time “modern” mankind has been cruising about on planet Earth relative to earth’s estimated existence.

I used 2017 years as my time base factor for “modern” mankind roaming around the planet. Utilizing those two assumptions, I plugged the numbers into my Excel program and came up with the following result. I’m sure someone has done this calculation at some time in the past but I must admit I have never seen it.

The calculations based on my assumptions established that mankind has been on the planet Earth 0.000000045 percent of the time, relative to the 4.5 billion years of the existence of planet Earth. In simple terms, this means that relative to the 4.5 billion years of planet Earth’s existence, mankind has been here less than half of a millionth of a second of that time.

The answer gave me pause. I realized what a microscopic blip in time mankind has had the opportunity to affect this great planet. I also realized how my own existence on this planet is eons less. I took a deep breath and understood how lucky I am to be here for this flashing moment in time.