Lifespans On Our World Can Be Short Or Extremely Long.

One of four.

A lifespan.

British spelling.

A mayfly is a small flying insect that lives around lakes, ponds, and streams in North America. An adult mayfly will live for less than 24 hours.

Mice like the ones you see around your home have very short lives, living in the wild, their lifespan is roughly one year.

An average human lifespan is described as three score years and ten, which is 70. I am over that age, so I suppose every year now is a bonus for me.

Bowhead whales can live over 200 years.

One organism, the bristlecone pine tree, can live to an amazing age. An unnamed tree still alive today has an estimated age of over 5,000 years. It grows in the White Mountains of California.

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Two of four.

The Cosmic Dark Ages.

Image credit, Webflippy from Pixabay

The Universe came into existence about 13.8 billion years ago, but there were no stars at that time. When we look up at the night sky we can see that it is teeming with stars and other celestial objects. But imagine a sky that is totally black, that is how it must have been when the Universe was very young.

It took about 200 million years after the big bang (the birth of the Universe) for stars to form and shine.

Surprisingly, we can also see the Andromeda galaxy with unaided eyes. The Andromeda galaxy is over 2.5 million light-years away, we are seeing the galaxy as it was way back then.

Imagine, for every hour of that 2.5 million years, the light from that galaxy has travelled 1,080 million kilometres towards us, it may seem like a very large distance but it is just a footstep when we consider the size of that enormous area we call the Universe.

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Three of four.

The Reason For A Leap Year.

Image credit, Thomas Bormans Unsplash

Our planet Earth takes 24 hours to make a full rotation on its axis. We know that time as a day.

We are all aware that there are 365 days in our calendar year, but a solar year is actually 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds, which is the exact time the Earth takes to make a complete circuit or orbit around the Sun.

That is the reason a time adjustment is needed, and a leap day is added to the end of February every 4 years. You will know it as a leap year.

That additional leap day is added to keep the calendar year synchronised with a solar year.

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Four of four.

Evolution, Or Not?

Image credit, Church of the King Unsplash

You are a highly advanced life form, but why has this happened? Why are you here?

Consider yourself very special and unique, the odds against your existence are astronomical.

Evolutionary biologists agree that humans and other living species are descended from simple bacteria-like ancestors.

Bacteria can be traced back at least 3.5 billion years. Over countless generations, small modifications have taken place, and the small changes that are more favourable to life are more likely to be passed on to the next generation. This has been happening since the first life appeared on our planet.

Our lives are far too short to witness the tiny changes taking place in populations.

This very long process is called natural selection. This is the reason you are here and reading this article today.

Life is amazing, but it must be said that it is not yet fully understood why life got a start in our world, but we know how it has evolved.

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