Buzz
Throughout the vast history of the universe, time is often insignificant. Stars are born, shine brightly, and eventually fade away, as billions of years pass in the endless void. Einstein taught us that time holds meaning only when someone is present to experience its effects. This list explores events and breakthroughs in which time itself can be measured in mere fractions of a second.
10. The Extinction Event – Asteroid Impact at the End of the Mesozoic Era
66 million years ago, during the final extinction event at the close of the Mesozoic Era, an asteroid the size of a mountain collided with Earth at a staggering speed of 40,000 miles per hour. The impact was equivalent to 100 trillion tons of TNT. As scientist Joanna Morgan states, “anything within 600 miles of the impact site was instantly, or within a few seconds, incinerated by the fireball.” In the blink of an eye, one of the most destructive events in Earth's history unfolded. The consequences weren’t just immediate; the long-term effects led to the complete extinction of the dinosaurs and wiped out 75% of life on Earth.
9. The Birth of Conscious Thought
Archimedes, while trying to determine if a crown was made of pure gold, had a moment of brilliance. After stepping out of his bath, he shouted, 'Eureka!' and ran through the streets, naked. He had discovered that the water displacement caused by his body could be used to measure the crown's gold content, thanks to what we now call 'Archimedes' Principle.'
Although Archimedes had been pondering the gold crown dilemma for some time, his famous 'Eureka' moment occurred seemingly in an instant. Neuroscientific studies suggest that the brain takes between 300 and 500 milliseconds to react to a stimulus. So, the next time inspiration strikes, whether in a daydream or in a flash of insight, make sure to write it down before it slips away.
8. The Bullet that Ended Lincoln's Life
On the evening of April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln and his wife were attending the play 'Our American Cousin' at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. There, John Wilkes Booth sneaked into the presidential box and fired a .44-caliber Derringer pistol into the back of Lincoln’s head. While Lincoln survived for about 9 hours after the attack, the bullet's journey was nearly instantaneous. Despite the Derringer's relatively small size, the bullet traveled at speeds between 500 and 700 feet per second, making it quick enough to deliver a fatal blow. Although modern handguns can shoot at velocities up to 2000 feet per second, the Derringer was still a formidable weapon in its time.
7. Edison Powers Up His Light Bulbs
Though Thomas Edison is often credited with inventing the electric light, he wasn't the first to attempt using electricity to illuminate a room. In 1802, Humphry Davy created the Electric Arc Lamp, the first electric light, though it was far too bright for practical use and didn't last long. Fast forward to 1874, when Canadian electricians Henry Woodward and Mathew Evans developed a lamp using carbon rods between electrodes inside glass cylinders filled with nitrogen. They couldn't sell their invention, so they sold their patent to Edison, who went on to refine their design and revolutionize the light bulb.
On December 31, 1879, Thomas Edison flipped a switch, allowing electricity to flow through wires at nearly the speed of light (186,000 miles per second in a vacuum). While the bulbs Edison used over 140 years ago may have taken a second or two to fully light up, that moment marked the start of the most significant illumination since the discovery of fire, taking only a fraction of a second to begin.
6. Radio – The First Wireless Message Across the Atlantic
Samuel Morse's telegraph required a key, a battery, wires, and poles between stations to transmit messages. While the telegraph had been in use for around 50 years, Guglielmo Marconi revolutionized communication by inventing the wireless telegraph. By the end of the 19th century, Marconi defied expectations by sending the first wireless message across the Atlantic.
Marconi began transmitting signals in 1894 over short distances, reaching across the English Channel by 1899. Then, on December 12, 1901, in Canada, Marconi received a simple Morse code message from England: the letter 's'. The signal didn't follow the Earth's curvature as some had suggested, but instead reflected off the ionosphere and back toward Canada. Despite atmospheric interference, the radio waves traveled at the speed of light, and the transmission was almost instantaneous.
5. The Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945, Little Boy on Hiroshima and Fat Man on Nagasaki, dramatically changed the trajectory of World War II. These bombs unleashed destruction that would leave a lasting impact for decades to come.
Little Boy, a uranium-based bomb, exploded with an energy equivalent to about 13 kilotons of TNT, while Fat Man, powered by plutonium, yielded 21 kilotons. The process begins when a free neutron collides with an atomic nucleus, causing a chain reaction where more neutrons are released, which in turn release even more energy. This chain reaction spreads almost instantaneously, as free neutrons travel at roughly 3% of the speed of light. From start to finish, the entire process takes just a microsecond (one millionth of a second). The Los Alamos physicists called this brief moment a 'shake,' as in 'as fast as the shake of a lamb’s tail.' In mere seconds, between 60,000 and 80,000 people perished in Hiroshima, and 40,000 in Nagasaki.
4. Transistor Switching Speeds
In late 1947, the invention of the transistor revolutionized the electronics industry of the 20th century. Inventors William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain were later awarded the Nobel Prize for their groundbreaking work in this field.
The early germanium transistors had a switching speed of up to 60 GHz, which meant it took about 20 nanoseconds (20 billionths of a second) to switch. Advances such as replacing germanium with silicon, and the creation of digital transistors (transistor chips with built-in resistors), dramatically improved the transistor's performance. Today, the fastest transistors can switch at an incredible 800 GHz or more.
3. Supernovae
Supernovae are believed to play a crucial role in seeding galaxies, solar systems, and even our planet. Evidence from the remnants of the 1680 Cassiopeia A explosion shows elements such as calcium, sulfur, silicon, iron, and most abundantly, oxygen. Other essential elements for life, including phosphorus, carbon, nitrogen, and hydrogen, were also present. One theory suggests that a supernova nearby could have triggered massive lightning strikes, altering the environment and pushing our ancestors out of the trees, forcing them to adapt quickly to new challenges.
The most frequent type of supernova is the core-collapse variety. When a star with a mass 10 to 50 times that of our sun reaches the end of its life, it burns through its hydrogen and begins to consume helium. It continues to burn through heavier elements until it reaches iron, which it cannot burn. The core collapses uncontrollably, while the outer layers fall at 23% of the speed of light (about 70,000 meters per second). A fraction of a second later, the remaining material rebounds off the iron core, initiating the shockwave's first phase.
In the past 1,000 years, humanity has witnessed three separate supernovae. We may have already descended from the trees, but if the next supernova is close enough, we might all need to learn how to swim.
2. Search Engine Results
In 1990, Archie was introduced, recognized as the first-ever search engine. With its multiple options for refining searches, it often took more time to set the parameters than to get the results themselves. Archie, along with its companions Veronica and Jughead, could only search titles and descriptions; none of them indexed the actual content of the documents they found.
In the years that followed, many more search engines emerged, but none could crawl the full text of every indexed webpage until Web Crawler in 1994. We all have memories of using Lycos, Excite, AltaVista, and Ask Jeeves at some point. And who could forget the days of dial-up, when we had to endure what felt like an eternity (which was really just a few agonizing seconds) for search results to load?
When Google arrived in the late 90s, it introduced an algorithm that emphasized page ranking. Today, while Google is mostly a mess pushing censorship for profit, almost any modern search engine can return results in less than a second. Brilliant search engines like DuckDuckGo don’t share their full methods for providing such lightning-fast results, but when it’s that quick, does it even matter how?
1. The Internet's First Message
On October 29, 1969, researchers at UCLA used a new experimental system called ARPANET to send the first message between networked computers. The message that arrived at Stanford read 'LO,' intended to say 'LOGIN.' Unfortunately, the system crashed after just those two letters were transmitted.
Both UCLA and Stanford had recently set up Interface Message Processors, or routers, as we call them today. Once Stanford installed its IMP, a high-speed connection was established between the two. This created a two-node network that allowed someone at one school to access resources on the other school's computer. At the time, the ARPANET line speed was 50 kilobits-per-second. With 8 bits in a byte, the two-letter message would take 16 bits to transmit. A bit of math shows the transmission time was in the realm of a few 10-thousandths of a second. No wonder we get frustrated today when it takes even a few seconds for a webpage to load—back in 1969, they set the standard high!
