Map of Cosmic Timeline
Powers of Ten for TIME: from the first fraction of a second after the Big Bang, through 13.8 billion years of cosmic–Earth–life history, to the far future of 10¹⁰⁰ years.
time axis · 10⁻⁴³ s → 10¹⁰⁰ yearsCosmic Time Powers of Ten thời gian
A scrubber across it all: the Planck era → nucleosynthesis → CMB → first stars → now → the far future, the universe cooling.
Big Bang Vũ trụ sơ khai
The first 3 minutes: inflation, the 4 forces separating, the quark soup, H/He nucleosynthesis and the CMB light breaking free.
Earth History Trái Đất 4,6 tỉ năm
Geologic eras roll by: drifting continents, the Great Oxidation, Snowball Earth, the Cambrian explosion and the 5 mass extinctions.
Evolution Tiến hóa sự sống
Life’s timeline: LUCA → Cambrian → fish → dinosaurs → mammals → humans; extinctions prune the branches, diversity shifts.
Far Future Tương lai vạn vật
A red giant Sun, galaxy mergers, the black hole era, proton decay and the heat death — predicted by physics.
Human History Dòng lịch sử loài người
From hunter-gatherers through agriculture, industry to the digital & AI age — population booming and technology accelerating.
Stellar Lifetime Vòng đời ngôi sao
Fast-forward a whole star’s life by mass: main sequence → red giant → white dwarf, or supernova → neutron star/black hole.
Light Delay Trễ ánh sáng
Light’s finite speed means looking far is looking into the past — the Sun 8 minutes ago, Andromeda 2.5 million years ago.
Geologic Clock Đồng hồ địa chất 24h
Compress Earth’s 4.6 billion years into 24 hours: life at dawn, dinosaurs near midnight, humans only the last few seconds.
Arrow of Time Mũi tên thời gian
Why time has one direction: ink diffuses, a shattered glass never reforms — entropy only rises (the 2nd law of thermodynamics).
Measuring Time Đo thời gian & Đồng hồ nguyên tử
From sundials to the Cs atom: 1 second = 9,192,631,770 oscillations. Each tech leap a thousand times more precise — the basis of GPS & telecom.
Time Dilation Giãn nở thời gian
The faster you go (or the closer to mass), the slower the clock: γ=1/√(1−v²/c²). The twin paradox, GPS & muons are all real evidence.
Radiometric Dating Định tuổi phóng xạ
A parent isotope decays to a daughter by half-life — the ratio gives the age. C-14 dates fossils, U-Pb gives Earth’s age of 4.54 billion years.
Solar System Formation Hình thành hệ mặt trời
A gas-dust cloud collapses, spins up into a disk, dust accreting into planets. The frost line splits rocky planets & gas giants — 4.6 billion years ago.
Calendars & Precession Lịch & Tuế sai
Day, month, year come from astronomy; the 365.2422-day year forces leap years. Earth’s 26,000-year axial precession changes the North Star.
Big Five Extinctions Năm đại tuyệt chủng
Biodiversity rises then crashes 5 times in 540 million years — the Permian ‘Great Dying’ lost 96% of species, K-Pg wiped out the dinosaurs. And the 6th is today.
Big History Đại lịch sử — 8 ngưỡng
One single story from the Big Bang to today across 8 leaps of complexity — each happening only when the ‘Goldilocks conditions’ are met.
Human Life Span Vòng đời con người
Fast-forward from embryo → child → puberty → adult → old age: height, brain, reproduction & aging each have their own biological ‘clock’.
Day, Night & Year Ngày–Đêm & Mùa
Rotation makes day & night; the 23.5° tilt + orbiting the Sun make the four seasons & long–short days. Seasons come from sun angle, NOT distance.
Accelerating Tech Tăng tốc công nghệ (Moore)
Transistors per chip double every ~2 years — a straight line on a log scale, ×1 billion after 30 doublings. But exponentials don’t rise forever.