So, I recently went to a short stargazing trip and it was just amazing. But more importantly, it made me think about the fact that eyes are so incredible.
Eyes see up to 150 frames per second. Most movies are 24 fps. Let’s say a normal human in 2019, watches YouTube and video on social media for like an hour a day, sleep for like 7 hours, and works for 8 hours. So:
- An hour of 24 or 30 fps videos, (let’s say 27 fps) that is equal to 27*60*60=97,200 pictures.
- On the job, 6 hours (out of total 8) of watching the monitor that works 120 fps on average equals to 6*60*60*120=2,592,000 pictures.
- 8 hours of not working and neither sleeping + two hours on work that you don’t see the monitor equals (8+2)*60*60*150=5,400,000
(Note that the human eye can physiologically detect up to 1000 frames per second. The average human, tasked with detecting what framerate he/she is looking at, can accurately guess up to around 150 fps. (from Quora) Basically, we are not using the full potential of our eyes when we’re looking at a monitor.)
Approximately, on a normal day, our eyes sees about 8,100,000 different pictures and brain processes all of these images. So let’s say we live for 100 years thanks to the medicine that’s getting better everyday and ourselves that are hopefully trying to have a good and healthy lifestyle.
So, from ages 20 to 100, we roughly see this much different photos:
8,100,000*365*80 = 236,520,000,000 ≃ 250,000,000,000
Two hundred and fifty billion different pictures.
250,000,000,000 pictures is roughly equal to 1,446,780 2-hour movies.
So you are basically making 1,446,780 movies for the people that are gonna cut out your head after you die and do experiments on your brain.
Have you ever thought about how different these 2 million films that you’re automatically making look like? Let’s just talk about the different things that one might see during his/her lifetime.
Most of the time, at night, they might stare at the roof of your room. But imagine if you go camping and sleep while staring at the endless sky with endless stars.
When you go to stargazing and see the moon that is 238,900 miles (384,472 km) away from you so crisp and clear, it just blows your mind. Just imagine the scenario of looking at your hand and in the next second, looking through the telescope and seeing the moon that is thousands of miles away from you. Or watching the Saturn that is 1.2 billion kilometers away from the earth. 1.2 freaking billion miles. If you drive 70 mph with your car, it takes 714,286 days or 1956 years to get to Saturn; and you can see a thing this far through the telescope, right after you look at a piece of stone on the ground.
Imagine what your eyes see when you parachute. You see such distant points that earth actually looks round on the horizon. Or imagine going scuba diving and seeing a fish moving near your hand and staring at you in such a weird way.
Imagine riding a spaceship and flying out of earth. These are just different from when you’re staring at your plate when you’re eating lunch on a normal day in life.
Imagine seeing the hands of your newborn infant child; hands so small that they don’t even have enough power to hold the small finger on your hand yet.
Imagine seeing the smile of someone you like.
Imagine seeing an email you’ve been waiting to get for weeks.
There are endless things to experience in like 100 years that we’re alive. But let’s see the other side too; there is a chance that we might have a stroke in this very second and die. I think it’s just a waste of resources if I don’t live life to the fullest and experience different things as much as possible. And if something was not possible, try to change the meaning and the boundary of possibilities.
Making 2 million amazing films for the people who are gonna cut out my head after I die; seems like a cool goal to me. What about you?
