A Year on Neptune is 165 Earth Years. It Hasn't Finished One Orbit Since We Found It.

We measure our lives in years neat, predictable laps around the Sun. But step onto another planet, and "year" becomes a word that stretches or compresses into something almost unrecognizable.

The solar system is a clock where each world ticks to its own rhythm, set by distance and gravity:

• Mercury: The inner sprinter. A year lasts just 88 Earth days. You'd have four birthdays for every one of ours.

• Venus: The slow spinner. Its 225-day year is actually shorter than its day. Time is broken here.

• Earth: Our familiar 365-day baseline. The cosmic calendar's middle child.

• Mars: The neighbor next door. A year runs 687 Earth days. A Martian is a toddler until nearly age two on our clock.

• Jupiter: The giant. 12 Earth years per lap. A Jovian teenager would be pushing retirement age here.

• Saturn: 29 Earth years. It has completed fewer than 12 orbits since Galileo first spotted it.

• Uranus: 84 Earth years. A single orbit spans a full human lifetime.

• Neptune: The distant lord. 165 Earth years. It has not yet completed a single full orbit since its discovery in 1846. Its first observed lap around the Sun will finish in the year 2011.

Think about that. Neptune is still finishing the cosmic lap it started during the presidency of James K. Polk, before the California Gold Rush, before the Civil War. A baby born on Neptune when it was discovered would be 165 Earth years old today and still waiting for their first birthday party.

This is the true scale of "out there." Distance isn't just measured in kilometers it's measured in decades and lifetimes. The inner planets sprint while the outer giants crawl, and we live on the one world whose year feels "normal" simply because it's the only clock we've ever known.