plate 6 · deep time
the same universe, sliced along time instead of space. all three axes are logarithmic — position on the line is proportional to the exponent — because the interesting physics is packed absurdly close to the start.
the first second
* 10^-43 s planck era: gravity goes quantum; known physics ends
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* 10^-36 s inflation: space doubles every ~10^-37 s
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* 10^-32 s inflation ends; vacuum energy becomes hot plasma
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* 10^-12 s the higgs field switches on; particles get mass
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* 10^-6 s quarks bind into protons and neutrons
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* 1 s neutrinos decouple and fly free ever since
more happened in that second than in all the time since: inflation stretched quantum jitter into the seeds of every galaxy, matter narrowly outvoted antimatter (one part in a billion — the universe is the leftover), and the laws froze into the shapes we measure today. inflation itself remains standard but unconfirmed; its smoking gun, primordial gravitational waves, is still being hunted.
from one second to now
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* 3-20 min nucleosynthesis: 75% hydrogen, 25% helium
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* 50 kyr matter starts to outweigh radiation
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* 380 kyr recombination: gas goes transparent - the CMB
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* ~10 Myr the dark ages: warm hydrogen and nothing else
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* ~180 Myr cosmic dawn: the first stars ignite
* ~280 Myr MoM-z14: the earliest galaxy yet seen (z=14.4)
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* ~1 Gyr reionization complete; galaxies assemble
* ~3 Gyr cosmic noon: star formation peaks
* 9.2 Gyr the sun and earth form
* 10.3 Gyr dark energy takes over; expansion accelerates
* 13.8 Gyr now
note how late we are. the CMB — the wall every telescope hits — is released nearly three-quarters of the way down this axis; the first stars wait until the final fifth; the sun turns up two rows from the end. the current record galaxy, MoM-z14, was spotted by JWST in 2025 at a time when the universe was 2% of its present age.
the deep future
* 5 Gyr the sun becomes a red giant; earth is done
* 10 Gyr milky way + andromeda: a coin-flip merger
* 100 Gyr galaxies beyond the local group fade from view
* 100 Tyr the last red dwarfs gutter out
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* 10^20 yr dead galaxies evaporate, remnant by remnant
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* 10^38 yr if protons decay, atoms are gone by now
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* 10^67 yr stellar black holes boil away (hawking)
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* 10^100 yr the last supermassive black holes evaporate
* ... heat death: nothing left to happen
this axis is a forecast, and it leans on one assumption: that dark energy stays constant. DESI’s 2025 measurements hint it may be weakening — in which case the bottom half of this chart is negotiable. the stars, at least, are not: the universe has already made roughly 95% of all the stars it will ever make. the era of starlight is the thin stripe at the very top of this chart, and we are lucky enough to live in it.