The History of 'Now'

Humans are the only creatures to have asked, and begun answering, the question: ‘where is now?’. That is, how much past was required to produce our verdant present, and how much future might be left ahead, waiting to be produced. We are the animal that has sought to gain its bearings in time: aiming to gauge not only the age and remaining lifespan of our own planet, but also of the wider universe itself. But answers to this question have themselves changed over time. From medieval prophecies to the cosmic microwave background radiation, this essay retraces humanity’s growing sense of orientation within the unfolding chronology of nature writ large. It visualises this with an accompanying, data-rich graph: plotting notable predictions from the past, leading up to the present. The aim is to provide a synoptic vantage on how much our sense of where we find ourselves within time has developed over time.