This is the timeline of the Universe from
Big Bang to
Heat Death scenario.
ImageSize = width:830 height:2000
PlotArea = left:40 right:235 bottom:75 top:75
Colors =
id:period1 value:rgb(1,1,0.7) # light yellow
id:period2 value:rgb(0.7,0.7,1) # light blue
id:events value:rgb(1,0.7,1) # light purple
id:era2 value:lightorange
id:era1 Value:yellowgreen
DateFormat = yyyy
Period = from:-171 till:300
TimeAxis = format:yyyy orientation:vertical # order:reverse does not work
ScaleMajor = unit:year increment:10 start:-170
ScaleMinor = unit:year increment:1 start:-171
AlignBars = justify
BarData =
bar:Clock
bar:Dummy1
bar:Era
bar:Dummy2
bar:Dummy3
bar:Periods
bar:Dummy4
bar:Events
TextData =
fontsize:M
pos:(365,75)
text:"Planck epoch"
# pos:(210,50)
pos:(205,50)
text:"Big Bang"
pos:(20,50)
text:"0: Linear time"
pos:(10,1980)
text:"Double-logaritmic time:"
text:"100
★ log log year"
pos:(200,1960)
text:"Heat Death"
PlotData=
textcolor:black fontsize:M
width:90
bar:Clock color:events align:right shift:(43,3) mark:(line,teal)
at:-171 text:"10E-43 seconds"
at:-141
at:-135
at:-129 text:"One picosecond"
at:-122 text:"One nanosecond"
at:-113 text:"One microsecond"
at:-102 shift:(43,-13) text:"One millisecond"
at:-100 text:"10E-10 years"
at:-88 text:"One second"
at:-60 text:"One hour"
at:0 text:"One year"
at:48 text:"One thousand years"
at:78 text:"One million years"
at:95 text:"One billion years"
at:100 text:"10E10 years"
at:108 text:"One trillion years"
at:118 text:"One quadrillion years"
at:126
at:132
at:200 text:"10E100 years"
# at:200 text:"10100 years"
at:300 shift:(43,-13) text:"10E1000 years"
width:55
bar:Dummy1
width:130
bar:Era mark:(line,white) align:center shift:(0,0)
from:-171 till:90 color:era1 text:"The Primordial Era" # or end at one million? stelliferous without stars?
from:90 till:115 color:era2 text:"The Stelliferous Era"
from:115 till:160 color:era1 text:"The Degenerate Era"
from:160 till:200 color:era2 text:"The Black Hole Era"
from:200 till:218 color:era1 text:"The Dark Era"
from:218 till:300 color:era2 text:"The Photon Era"
width:55
bar:Dummy2
bar:Dummy3
width:165
bar:Periods align:center shift:(0,0) mark:(line,white)
from:-171 till:-165 color:period2 text:Grand unification epoch # end at 10-37 seconds, not 10-33?
from:-165 till:-163 color:period1 text:"Inflationary epoch"
from:-163 till:-129 color:period2 text:Electroweak epoch
from:-129 till:-113 color:period1 text:Hadron epoch # 10-12 to 10-6 seconds?, not 10-6 to 10-2. Error in text?
from:-113 till:-88 color:period2 text:Lepton epoch
from:-88 till:-72 color:period1 text:Epoch of Nucleosynthesis
from:-72 till:68 color:period2 text:"Radiation domination"
from:68 till:75 color:period1 shift:(0,0) text:"Matter domination"
from:75 till:90 color:period2 text:"The Primordial Dark Age"
from:90 till:93 color:period1 text:"Reionization" # 100-400 million years
from:100 till:101 color:period2 text:"Life on Earth"
width:55
bar:Dummy4
width:55
mark:(line,purple) textcolor:black fontsize:M
bar:Events color:events align:left shift:(30,-2)
at:-171 shift:(30,-15) text:"Planck time, the smallest observable unit of time ~and the time before which science is unable to ~describe the universe. At this point, the force of ~gravity separated from the electronuclear force."
at:-165 text:"Separation of the strong force from the ~electronuclear force."
at:-161 text:"Quarks and anti-quarks begin forming."
at:-129 text:"The weak force separates from the ~electromagnetic force resulting in the four ~separate forces we know today."
at:-113 shift:(30,10) text:"Electrons and positrons begin to annihilate each ~other."
at:-110 shift:(30,-30) text:"Quarks combine to form protons and neutrons. ~Quark/anti-quark pairs combine into mesons."
at:-106 shift:(30,30) text:"Lepton/anti-lepton pairs are annihilated by ~existing photons. Neutrinos break free and exist ~on their own."
at:-88 shift:(30,10) text:"Formation of atomic nuclei (hydrogen). Nuclear ~fusion begins to occur as they collide to form ~heavier elements."
at:-72 text:"Nuclear fusion ends after about 3 minutes."
at:75 text:"372,000 to 387,000 years - Hydrogen nuclei ~capture electrons to form stable atoms. Photons ~are no longer able to interact strongly with atoms. ~Cosmic microwave background radiation forms."
at:90 text:"100 million years. First star began to shine."
at:94 text:"600 million years. Formation of the first galaxy"
# at:98 text:"4 billion years. Earliest Population I stars"
at:100 shift:(30,-10) text:"8.7 billion years. Formation of the Sun"
at:101 mark:(line,magenta) text:"13.7 billion years: this present day"
# at:101 text:"18.7 billion years Sun becomes a red giant"
at:105 text:"200 billion years. The Sun dies down."
at:115 text:"Formation of new stars ceases. The last star die ~down. Death of unintelligent water-based life. "
# at:118 shift:(30,20) text:"Solar systems no longer exists. Planets flung out ~of orbit or consumed by larger bodies."
at:120 shift:(30,5) text:"Galaxies no longer exist. Stars flung out of orbit ~or consumed by larger bodies as black holes."
at:156 text:"Proton decay to 1/2"
at:160 shift:(30,10) text:"All protons decay. The matter that stars and life etc ~was built of no longer exist."
at:200 text:"Small and medium sized black holes have ~evaporated"
at:218 text:"The last supermassive black holes have ~evaporated"
Usually the
logarithmic scale is used for such timelines but it compresses the most interesting Stelliferous Era too much as
this example shows. Therefore a
double-logarithmic scale ''s'' (''s
★ 100'' in the graphics) is used instead. The minimum of it is unfortunately only 1, not 0 as needed, and the negative outputs for inputs smaller than 10 are useless. Therefore the time from 0.1 to 10 years is collapsed to a single point 0, but that doesn't matter in this case because nothing special happens in the history of the universe during that time.
:
Comparison of log10 and log10log10 scales| year | log10 year | combination of log10log10 year and -log10(-log10 year) |
|---|
| 101000 | 1000 | 3 |
| 10100 | 100 | 2 |
| 1010 | 10 | 1 |
| 102 | 2 | 0.30 |
| 101 | 1 | 0 |
| 100 | 0 | undefined but here forced to 0 |
| 10-1 | -1 | 0 |
| 10-2 | -2 | -0.30 |
| 10-10 | -10 | -1 |
| 10-100 | -100 | -2 |
The seconds in the timescale have been converted to years by
using the
Julian year.
See also
★
Big Bang
★
Heat death of the universe
★
Graphical timeline of the Big Bang
★
Graphical timeline of our universe
★
Graphical timeline of the Stelliferous Era
★
Tiny Graphical timeline from Big Bang to Heat Death. This timeline uses the log scale for comparison with the loglog scale in this article.