Suvarna Garge (Editor)

Graphical timeline from Big Bang to Heat Death

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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 10103 years, if protons decay.

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 = { log 10 ⁡ log 10 ⁡ y e a r if  y e a r > 10  , corresponding to  y e a r = 10 10 s 0 if  0.1 ≤ y e a r ≤ 10 − log 10 ⁡ ( − log 10 ⁡ y e a r ) if  y e a r < 0.1  , corresponding to  y e a r = 10 − 10 − s

The seconds in the timescale have been converted to years by s e c o n d / 31557600 using the Julian year.

References

Graphical timeline from Big Bang to Heat Death Wikipedia
(Text) CC BY-SA