The Cosmic Calendar — Cool Infographics

Sep 7

Sep 7 The Cosmic Calendar

This last December was the 10th anniversary of Carl Sagan's death. One of his most popular episodes of Cosmos was titled The Dragons of Eden where he first described his Cosmic Calendar. This website from discovery.com has a simple image showing the Cosmic Calendar as Carl described it. A few websites are selling posters of the Cosmic Calendar, like AllPosters.com.

The premise is that if you compress the entire history of the universe into a calendar year, homo sapiens only exist in the last 6 minutes, and the last second represents the last 400+ years of human history.

You can see Cosmos, and hear Carl describe it on YouTube here:

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Randy Krum

Randy Krum is an infographics and data visualization designer, author of the book, “Cool Infographics: Effective Communication with Data Visualization and Design,” and instructor of Infographics and Data Visualization Design at Southern Methodist University's Continuing and Professional Education program (CAPE). Randy also runs the popular website, Coolinfographics.com. Started in 2007, the site has grown into one of the most influential infographic sites online, handling up to 50,000 unique visitors a day. He is the Founder and President of InfoNewt, his design company that designs infographics and visualizations for clients used for both online marketing and internal communications. Randy speaks at conferences, universities, corporate events, and government agencies about infographic design, data visualization methods, visual content marketing, and the effective use of visual information. Learn more at RandyKrum.com

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