Graphical timeline from Big Bang to Heat Death

This is the timeline of the Universe from Big Bang to Heat Death scenario.

• Planck epoch
• Big Bang
• 0: Linear time
• Double-logaritmic time:
• 100*log log year
• Heat Death
• 10E-43 seconds
• One picosecond
• One nanosecond
• One microsecond
• One millisecond
• 10E-10 years
• One second
• One hour
• One year
• One thousand years
• One million years
• One billion years
• 10E10 years
• One trillion years
• One quadrillion years
• 10E100 years
• 10¹⁰⁰ years
• 10E1000 years
• The Primordial Era
• The Stelliferous Era
• The Degenerate Era
• The Black Hole Era
• The Dark Era
• The Photon Era
• Inflationary epoch
• Radiation domination
• Matter domination
• The Primordial Dark Age
• Reionization
• Life on Earth
• 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.
• Separation of the strong force from the ~electronuclear force.
• Quarks and anti-quarks begin forming.
• The weak force separates from the ~electromagnetic force resulting in the four ~separate forces we know today.
• Electrons and positrons begin to annihilate each ~other.
• Quarks combine to form protons and neutrons. ~Quark/anti-quark pairs combine into mesons.
• Lepton/anti-lepton pairs are annihilated by ~existing photons. Neutrinos break free and exist ~on their own.
• Formation of atomic nuclei (hydrogen). Nuclear ~fusion begins to occur as they collide to form ~heavier elements.
• Nuclear fusion ends after AbOUT 3 minutes.
• 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.
• 100 million years. First star began to shine.
• 600 million years. Formation of the first galaxy
• 4 billion years. Earliest Population I stars
• 8.7 billion years. Formation of the Sun
• 13.7 billion years: this present day
• 18.7 billion years Sun becomes a red giant
• 200 billion years. The Sun dies down.
• Formation of new stars ceases. The last star die ~down. Death of unintelligent water-based life.
• Solar systems no longer exists. Planets flung out ~of ORBit or consumed by larger bodies.
• Galaxies no longer exist. Stars flung out of orbit ~or consumed by larger bodies as black holes.
• Proton decay to 1/2
• All protons decay. The matter that stars and life etc ~was built of no longer exist.
• Small and medium sized black holes have ~evaporated
• 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.

$s\; =$

\begin{cases}
\log_{10} \log_{10} year & \mbox{if } year > 10 \mbox{ , corresponding to } year = 10^{10^{s}} \\
0 & \mbox{if } 0.1 \le year \le 10 \\
-\log_{10} (-\log_{10} year) & \mbox{if } year < 0.1 \mbox{ , corresponding to } year = 10^{-10^{-s}}
\end{cases}

The seconds in the timescale have been converted to years by second/31557600 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.