13.7 Billion Years ago - Big Bang
- 10-32 second after Big Bang (abb) - hyper-inflation
10-32 - 10-6second - inflation slows, gravity emerges followed by strong , weak and electromagnetic forces. Matter consists of fundamental particles including quarks, electrons, photons, and neutrinos.
10-6 - 1 second abb - hadrons (protons and neutrons) form
3 - 20 minutes abb- deuteron, helium and lithium nuclei form. 3 times as much hydrogen than helium by mass. Only traces of other nuclei.
300,000 years abb - expanding cloud of gas cools enough for electrons to associate with nuclei forming atoms
.5 - 1 billion years abb - earliest stars and galaxies form
1 - 3 billion years abb - larger galaxies with black holes and quasars at their centre form
7 - 10 billion years ago (bya)- Milky Way galaxy forms
4.6 bya - Solar System forms
3.7 bya - first life on Earth
1.7 bya - multi-cellular life on Earth
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3.3 billion years from now - Milky Way collides with Andromeda
6.3 billion years from now - Sun dies
100 trillion years from now - Stars have all blown up and collapsed into black holes and neutron stars, or have withered into white dwarfs.
1037 years from now - After an epoch of proton decay, the only stellar-like objects remaining are evaporating black holes.
10100 years from now - Black holes have evaporated. Only fundamental particles remain: photons of colossal wavelength, neutrinos, electrons, and positrons.