Time Spiral
Time Spiral
Illustration Credit: Pablo Carlos Budassi via Wikipedia
Explanation: What's happened since the universe started?
The time spiral shown here features a few
notable highlights.
At the spiral’s center is the
Big Bang, the place where
time,
as we know it,
began about 13.8 billion years ago.
Within a few billion years
atoms formed, then
stars formed from atoms,
galaxies formed from stars and gas,
our Sun formed,
soon followed by
our Earth,
about 4.6 billion years ago.
Life on Earth begins about 3.8 billion years ago,
followed by
cells, then
photosynthesis within a billion years.
About 1.7 billion years ago,
multicellular life on Earth began to flourish.
Fish began to swim
about 500 million years ago, and
mammals
began walking on land about 200 million years ago.
Humans
first appeared only about 6 million years ago,
and made the
first cities
only about 10,000 years ago.
The time spiral illustrated stops there, but human
spaceflight might be added,
which started only 75 years ago, and useful
artificial intelligence began to take hold
within only the past few years.