Cosmic Timeline

Knowing the universe is 13.8 billion years old lets us lay its whole history on a single line. Because the interesting events crowd into the first instants — a burst of expansion in the first fraction of a second, then recombination releasing the cosmic microwave background — the timeline is best read on a logarithmic scale. Step through the epochs:

Everything after the first billion years — stars, galaxies, planets, us — happens in the long, slow tail. The dramatic physics is all up front. We even know exactly when our own corner formed — about 4.57 billion years ago — from radiometric dating of the oldest meteorites.