Created by Vargic, the Timeline of the Universe covers the past 13.8 billion years of space, and then plots out what’s likely to occur in the next 10 billion or so. Martin Vargic has done a wonderful job of describing the last 13.8 billion years of space and what might happen in the next 10 billion, too. Things that affect space, Earth, life, and humanity have been separated everything out into things, so that one can actually easily see what’s going to hit us the hardest in our end of days. To start from the beginning is the Big Bang that gave rise to the Universe 13.8 billion years ago. Located about 190.1 light-years away from Earth, Methuselah, the oldest known star in the Universe was birthed by the event. The astronomers in the past have been troubled quite a bit by this strange star, as one point of time the age was predicted to be around 16 billion years, which is well before the birth of the Universe, which doesn’t make sense at all. Using a new method of joining data on its distance, structure, brightness, and composition to come up with a considerably younger age for the oldest known star, the scientists were able to reconcile the age of Methuselah with the age of the Universe only in 2013. At the time, lead researcher Howard Bond from Pennsylvania State University said “Put all of those ingredients together, and you get an age of 14.5 billion years, with a residual uncertainty that makes the star’s age compatible with the age of the Universe.” According to the explanation provided by Mike Wall from Space.com, while 14.5 billion is still younger than the expected birth of the Universe, the ambiguity Bond is pointing to allows for addition or subtraction 800 million years. Even though only just, this would mean that their calculations could put the formation of Methuselah at 13.7 billion years old right after the Big Bang.
For the first time, Universe attains habitability, if you fast-forward to 10.4 billion years ago, which will give life finally a chance to emerge. All said, we will have to wait for the 4.2-billion-years-ago mark to really see any life on Earth at all. However, things will tend to start happening very hastily after that. The timeline also includes the more conservative estimate of 3.9 billion years ago for when life on Earth first emerges. If you love this timeline, head to Vargic’s website to download it. Vargic has made the illustration available as an app for Android and iOS, which might prove a nice educational tool in the classroom or at home.
