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This is the timeline of the Universe from Big Bang to Heat Death scenario. The different eras of the universe are shown. The heat death will occur in around 1.7×10106 years, if protons decay.[ citation needed]

Timeline

Proton decay Black dwarf Sun Galaxy formation and evolution Chronology of the universe#Habitable epoch Cosmic microwave background radiation Timeline of the Big Bang#Recombination, photon decoupling, and the cosmic microwave background (CMB) Matter-dominated era Big Bang nucleosynthesis Inflationary epoch Planck time Graphical timeline of the universe Reionization Chronology of the universe#Dark Ages Photon epoch Lepton epoch Hadron epoch Quark epoch Electroweak epoch Grand unification epoch Graphical timeline of the Stelliferous Era Graphical timeline of the Big Bang Heat death of the universe Big Bang Planck epoch

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 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 does not 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)
1010000 10000 4
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

References

  • Fred C. Adams; Greg Laughlin (19 June 2000). The Five Ages of the Universe: Inside the Physics of Eternity. Simon and Schuster. ISBN  978-0-684-86576-8.