Timeline of the Universe, From the Big Bang to the Death of Our Sun

By Nancy Atkinson - December 2, 2015 at 12:31 PM UTC | Cosmology
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Don't know much about history? How about the future? A new infographic by graphic designer

Martin Vargic

portrays both past and forthcoming events in our Universe, from the Big Bang to the death of our Sun. The graphic is color-coded and shows "significant events in cosmic and natural history." It also illustrates how briefly humanity has been part of the scene.

Fun future events are when Earth's day will become 25 hours long (Earth's rotation is slowing down), and the amazingly distant time when the Solar System finally completes one orbit around the galactic core.

The full infographic is below, and be prepared to give your scroll wheel a workout. This thing is huge, but very comprehensive for covering about 23.8 billion years!

Vargic also has created free apps of this timeline available (links to

Android

and

iOS

) which enable "anyone to explore the past and future of the world in a swift, clean and coherent fashion."

We recently featured

Vargic's visualization of exoplanets

. He's also done a very cool

Map of the Internet

, a

map of how the the constellations have changed over time

and visualization of the

Moon replaced with other bodies

, as well as a wide variety of other maps and infographics. You can check out his work on his website,

Halcyon Maps

. He puts out new graphics each week.

Without further ado, here is the history -- and future -- of the Universe:

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com