Have We Ever All BLINKED At The Same Time?

Has there ever been a moment in our history when no one was watching because every living human just happened to blink at the exact same time? Well, let's see. Humans blink about once every 4 seconds, and a typical blink is about a third of a second long. That means the chance that a particular person will be blinking at a particular moment is about 1 in 12.

The chance that a second person will also be blinking at that moment is 1 in 12 squared. So, within 1,443 of a second, we would expect to find one simultaneous blink between two people, which means you and a friend probably blink together every 48 seconds or so.

But three people will only blink altogether about every 10 minutes. You see, the chances go down as we consider more and more people. For example, five guys, the Backstreet Boys, probably only blink together once every day.

Twenty-two people will only blink at the same time once every six quadrillion years. So, 8 billion people—the number of years we would have to wait for a simultaneous blink amongst that many people is a number followed by 8 billion zeros.

So we have never all blinked together, which means we are always watching. [Music]