The Entire History of The Universe in 1 Year

If you took the entire 13.8 billion year history of our universe and squish it down into just a single calendar year, 365 days, what would that look like? When would our sun form? What about the earth? And perhaps most interestingly, when do humans enter the picture? On this scale, one second is equivalent to 437.6 years. So let's go back to the beginning, January 1st. It's midnight on January 1st and our cosmic calendar has just begun and it started with a bang. The universe as we know it began with the Big Bang. An infinitely hot and dense single point began rapidly expanding. This expansion grew our universe faster than the speed of light in a tiny fraction of a second. The universe at this point was just too hot for even the smallest subatomic particles to form. Over time, it would cool down, eventually allowing the quarks and electrons to be born. The building blocks of matter. These quarks would go on to form the protons and neutrons that we still see today. The particles that make up you and I. 14 minutes and 28 seconds into our year and the universe has finally cooled enough to allow electrons to be caught in the orbit around atomic nuclei. This forms the very first atoms, hydrogen and helium. When this occurred, the very first light in our universe was emitted, the cosmic microwave background radiation that we can detect today. But there were no stars yet. This event initially filled the universe with a faint orange glow, which would last for around 3 million years before shifting into non-visible wavelengths, leaving the universe in complete darkness for millions of years. The universe enters what is known as the Dark Ages at this point. There is no light created in the universe. It is just dark. And then on January 8th, something beautiful happens. From the gas and dust created in the Big Bang, gravity got to work and forged the first stars. These stars would have been drastically different to our sun, comprised of just 75% hydrogen and 25% helium. This is because stars work by fusing lighter elements into heavier elements in their core, forming the metals that we see in the universe today. And since these were literally the first stars in our universe, there were just no methods to create heavier elements before this. These stars would have been tens to even hundreds of times more massive than our sun and would have lived for less than a million years. Now, because they existed so long ago and lived for such a small period of time, well, relative to the stars of today, we are actually yet to find any of these mysterious first stars in our observations. It's January 19th and the universe has become filled with stars brightly shining and exploding in supernovae explosions. Gravity is hard at work and has finally begun forming the first galaxies. They start out fairly small, but would eventually grow over time by merging with their neighboring galaxies. Just a few days later, our home galaxy, the Milky Way, is born. At this point, the universe is just 6% of its present day age. At the same time, the beautiful structure of the universe as we see it today, this cosmic web that's visually similar to the neural pathways of the human brain, this structure begins taking shape. Gravity forces clusters of galaxies together that would continue to grow into the superclusters that we see in our universe today. It would have taken all the way until April 11th for the first stars like our sun to begin forming. These stars would have been filled with the heavier elements like iron and carbon, allowing planetary systems like ours to begin forming with rocky Earth-like planets. This may very well mark a distinct point in our universe's history in which planets capable of supporting life first began forming, creating a new era in the universe. And then it happened. On September 1st, our sun and the early solar system begins forming. At first, the proto-sun is born, and the massive planets Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus all begin taking shape. At this time, Neptune and Uranus would have been far closer to the inner solar system than we see them today. Some astronomers even believe that at this point, one or even more ice giant planets may have formed before being ejected out of our solar system. The sun sets alight for the first time, fusing hydrogen into helium, beginning its 10 billion year lifespan. Just two days later, the rocky planets begin forming. Earth, Mars, Mercury, and Venus are the ones that I would expect you to know. But what about Theia? Theia was a planet in our solar system that was the size of Mars, perhaps destined to be a second Earth. But then the Great Collision occurred. Theia smashed into our baby Earth with unbelievable force, sending debris flying everywhere throughout the early solar system. Out of the ashes, Theia rose and survived, not as a planet, as our moon. It would take a further 22 days of growth on our Earth, constant cycles of volcanic eruptions, ice ages, and seismic events before something magical would happen. As far as we know it, for the very first time in the entire universe, life emerged in the deep oceans of our young planet. The leading theory says life first emerged near these volcanic vents on the ocean floor. The extreme pressures combined with fluid from the volcanic vents and the ocean water could have reacted with minerals to create the first organic molecules, the building blocks for all life on Earth. The first lifeforms were born, single-celled prokaryotes. And these exact same conditions are present elsewhere in the universe. In fact, they're actually present here in our solar system today. Saturn's moon Enceladus and Jupiter's moon Europa are known to have vast liquid oceans buried deep beneath their thick, icy crusts. So who knows, maybe life is currently emerging in the oceans of those moons right now as it once did on Earth. Or maybe it's already happened. As we get towards the end of the year, some important milestones are reached. On October 3rd, the first photosynthetic bacteria begins emerging. They first absorb infrared light instead of visible light and produce sulfur, not oxygen. Later in the month, on October 21st, a brand new microorganism named cyanobacteria starts doing something beautiful. It uses sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water to produce its food with photosynthesis. The byproduct being oxygen. And this was the key. Our oxygen supply kept growing and growing, first filling the oceans before filling our atmosphere. This was the great oxidation event, providing the air for us to breathe. Life begins advancing rapidly. Microbes begin living with one another to form advanced forms of life never seen before. Finally, it's December 17th, around one week until Christmas, and fish finally begin evolving in the oceans. They grow skulls and vertebraes. Early in the morning on December 20th at 2.15am, the first sharks begin swimming in the vast oceans. And just 19 hours later, the first trees emerge on Earth. That translates to 30 million years after the sharks. I mean, can you believe that? Sharks actually beat trees to the planet by 30 million years. December 22nd marks an important day. Life finally begins slowly evolving to leave the water. This is the first step towards forming the vast animal groups we see on Earth today. Four days later, the dinosaurs and first mammals are born. They begin to dominate the land and spread far and wide. Around the same time, the ancient supercontinent Pangaea splits apart, forming the very first signs of the continents we see and live on today. December 30th, the day before New Year's Eve. At 6.38am in the morning, the dinosaur killer hits Earth. The asteroid strikes the Gulf of modern-day Mexico at 20km per second, creating an impact crater more than 170km wide. It completely decimates the surrounding area with the force of 10 billion atomic bombs of a similar size to those used in World War II on Japan. This amount of energy creates an inferno capable of scorching plants thousands of kilometers away in an instant. Earthquakes and tsunamis decimate the entire globe. But this was the least of their worries. Tiny particles of rocks and debris were shot up into the Earth's atmosphere, creating a thin layer of soot all around the entire globe. While this layer of dust and rock was only 1 tenth of an inch thick, it was superheated by the kinetic energy of the explosion. This caused it to rain fire, quickly heating the atmosphere. All of the creatures that weren't underground or underwater, essentially all the dinosaurs, would have quickly succumbed to the heat, dying. The thick layer of soot encased the globe, allowing nearly no sunlight to reach the Earth's surface for years. This caused temperatures to plummet, making a dire situation even worse for the creatures trying to survive. 75% of all species on Earth went extinct. An entire diverse population of creatures, never to be seen again. And lucky for you and I, our distant mammal ancestors were one of the lucky few who made it through. Now putting this in context of our cosmic calendar, all of this is happening with just 42 hours left in the year. We have 42 hours to go from this horrific scene to you sitting here watching this video today. And what happens next will change your perspective on life forever. You've been warned. Six hours later, at 12.59pm on the same day, December 30th, our first ape ancestors appear. The groundwork for human evolution has begun. December 31st, the last day of the year, New Year's Eve. Here's where things really start to pick up speed. Are you ready? 10.15, the human genus first appears in Africa. An hour later, at 11.37pm, the first homo sapiens are born. Humans are now walking the Earth, and there's just 23 minutes until midnight. The clock strikes 11.59.31, 29 seconds until midnight, and humans have just invented agriculture. We transitioned from hunting and gathering to cultivating farmland and living in one place. 14 seconds until midnight, and humans have just invented the wheel and writing in Mesopotamia. 12 seconds until midnight, and the Egyptian pyramids have just been built. 7 seconds until midnight, and the ancient Greek philosophers like Archimedes and Plato are alive. 3 seconds until midnight, and Nicolaus Copernicus has only just discovered that the Earth isn't the central of the universe. 1 second until midnight, the last 400 years of human history is compressed into this one final second. That means in our cosmic calendar, this final second of the year contains Galileo inventing the telescope and using it to view space for the very first time, Newton's formation of the laws of motion and gravity, the discovery of electricity, evolution is discovered by Darwin, Einstein's theory of relativity, the structure of DNA is discovered, World War 1 happens, the atomic bomb is made and used in World War 2, your parents meet, the first phones are created, America is established, Pluto is discovered, the first heart transplant takes place, the fall of the Berlin wall, your birth, the cold war, the renaissance, all of Mozart and Beethoven's works, your first time falling in love, the first photograph, the first video, the first YouTube upload, the first Vsauce intro, the first AstroCovid video, you watching this AstroCovid video, all of it in just 1 second. That's perspective. 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