Earth has existed for about 1/3rd of the time that the universe has.
Some stars smaller than ours are expected to fuse hydrogen for ten
trillion years, about 700x the current age of the universe. That puts us
in the top ~tenth of the top 'one percent' in terms of earliness,
assuming that energy must be taken from a star (as it always has been).
But that assumption is wrong.
it's theoretically possible to get energy from a black hole's gravity.
The biggest black holes are expected to be around for the next
GOOGOL years. Some form of life may be able to
sustain
itself this way.
A single atom of hydrogen is insignificant today. But in the early
universe, its random movement, and gravity, caused a huge effect on
today's universe.
Albeit we cannot trace this causal chain backwards.
In the same way, what you do today matters more than you can imagine.
