Aeon (Gyr)
One billion years. The Earth is about 4.5 aeons old.
1 aeon = 3.1556952×10¹⁶ seconds (exactly).
About the aeon
Aeon comes from a Greek word meaning life, vital force, or an age, and its Latin cousin aevum lies behind English words such as eternal and medieval. In ordinary speech it means any very long, indefinite stretch. Philosophical and religious traditions use it differently, with Buddhist and Hindu texts sometimes rendering kalpa as aeon and Gnostic writers using it for divine emanations.
Astronomers fix a definite size, defining an aeon as a billion years. The figure used here is therefore 10 to the power of 9 Gregorian years, about 3.16 times 10 to the power of 16 seconds, which is a convention rather than a measured length. Geologists use the closely related spelling eon for the largest divisions of Earth's history, namely the Hadean, Archean, Proterozoic and Phanerozoic, and these are not billion-year blocks, since the Phanerozoic covers only about 538.8 million years. With Earth about 4.54 billion years old, it is roughly 4.5 aeons old.
Sources: Wikipedia: Aeon; Wikipedia: Geologic time scale
Aeon conversion chart
1 aeon expressed in every other time unit:
| Unit | 1 aeon |
|---|---|
| Seconds | 3.1556952×10¹⁶ |
| Minutes | 525,949,200,000,000 |
| Hours | 8,765,820,000,000 |
| Days | 365,242,500,000 |
| Weeks | 52,177,500,000 |
| Months | 12,000,000,000 |
| Years | 1,000,000,000 |
| Milliseconds | 3.1556952×10¹⁹ |
| Microseconds | 3.1556952×10²² |
| Nanoseconds | 3.1556952×10²⁵ |
| Decades | 100,000,000 |
| Centuries | 10,000,000 |
| Millennia | 1,000,000 |
| Picoseconds | 3.1556952×10²⁸ |
| Common Years | 1,000,664,384 |
| Leap Years | 997,930,327.9 |
| Julian Years | 999,979,466.1 |
| Tropical Years | 1,000,000,849 |
| Sidereal Years | 999,962,045.8 |
| Synodic Months | 12,368,276,421 |
| Sidereal Days | 366,242,500,987 |
| Shakes | 3.1556952×10²⁴ |
| Fortnights | 26,088,750,000 |
| Score | 50,000,000 |
| Lustra | 200,000,000 |
| Olympiads | 250,000,000 |
| Indictions | 66,666,666.67 |
| Jubilees | 20,000,000 |
| Ghati | 21,914,550,000,000 |
| Muhurtas | 10,957,275,000,000 |
| Prahar | 2,921,940,000,000 |
| Shichen | 4,382,910,000,000 |
| Moments | 350,632,800,000,000 |
| Ship's Watches | 2,191,455,000,000 |
| Kin (Maya) | 365,242,500,000 |
| Winals | 18,262,125,000 |
| Tun (Maya) | 1,014,562,500 |
| Katuns | 50,728,125 |
| Baktuns | 2,536,406.25 |
More Astronomical units
- Julian year (time)
- tropical year (time)
- sidereal year (time)
- synodic month (time)
- sidereal day (time)
- astronomical unit (length)
- light-second (length)
- light-minute (length)
- light-hour (length)
- light-year (length)
- parsec (length)
- megaparsec (length)
- Earth mass (weight & mass)
- solar mass (weight & mass)
- milliarcsecond (angle)
- zodiac sign (angle)
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