The Entire Universe, One Picture, and One Year

So. So. SO. EXCELLENT. Did you make this graphic yourself? It's awesome, I'm going to link to this from my next blog post :)

Yes -- so awesome!! Thank you for this and for your most excellent blog, and have a great 2012!

Can you expand on "universe declares independence from multiverse" around 7 billion years? I had thought that losing contact with other potential universes was something that happened during the inflation era (in eternal-inflation-type scenarios) -- did I misunderstand what was meant by 'independence' or did I spectacularly misunderstand the physics?

Re: Dec 25th: Yeah, that was me, Santa, even back then. My sleigh was pulled by hmmm... what was it, bevore raindeer or even T-Rex existed? I guess I was using giant dragonflies :-). I also remember having a nice and warm sandy beach on the North pole

Heather @1, yes, I made this myself; it took way longer than I expected, and of course I scavenged many of the small images from elsewhere, but this is my original work.

Luisa @2, thank you as well, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Ivan @3, the "Universe declares independence" is just a tongue-in-cheek joke about July 4th, which is the day the United States declared independence from Great Britain. Much like the Santa Claus reference or the new SWAB profile photo, it's simply a cultural reference to our actual calendar.

Santa @4, the date I gave you on our calendar corresponds to the start of the Triassic period, about 250 million years ago. Where on Pangaea did you live back then?

Thanks, Ethan, this is great. It reminds me of the analogous "Earth history" calendars I saw as a boy, and marveled out how thin our slice of "modern history" was compared to 4.5B of the Earth. (Here, 1/3 of that distance from Dec 31.) I'm glad the "independence from multiverse" was a joke, because there is no evidence or solid theory of such things. Yet it would be interesting to see someone try to seriously make a connection if there is a multiverse, altho the "independence day" would be presumably on the order of Planck times or other tiny interval.

Every good! As I'm into astrobiology, I'm especially glad for an actual factual evolutionary image of human ancestry, not the usual folk biology "ladder of descent" (chimps (!)-to-man).

Btw, new dating makes the Earth-Moon impactor perhaps ~ 200 Ma younger than the calendar date mentioned here.

@ Neil Bates:

The solid theory of multiverses is the natural simplest model of standard inflationary cosmology as presented here. The evidence is all the anthropic predictions (6 of them according to Bousso et al) and perhaps other observation as well.

And there are plenty more multiverse theories like that. It is a restrictive TOE singleverse theory that looks both unnatural and iffy at the moment, IMHO. To borrow, "there is no evidence or solid theory of such things".

Very nice. For the dinosaur-meteor impact I always liked the cartoon and caption of a T-rex standing protectively over a small mammal saying "Save yourself mammals. We will fend off the asteroids". The picture you chose carries some of that attitude.

Not too keen on the march of progress icon (human evolution) as it is misunderstood by nearly everyone and provides a handy strawman for ideologues to attack. But it certainly encapsulates things and it would be difficult to find anything better (especially considering how small a fraction of time primates have been here).

I wish I could have this made into wallpaper....hmmm, I bet it would be a great border running along the top of a wall if it was in horizontal format....

Awesome Ethan! I'm going to print this on my color plotter at work to hang on my son's wall (and probably a second copy for my office)! Have a happy and healthy 2012!

Cheers!

Very cool. I'll have to look at it on a bigger screen to fully appreciate it properly.

@5: Ethan, in those days beaches and sand resorts of Pangea didn't need any names since Google Maps wasn't invented yet. I made an appropriate feature request to my present making dwarves, but they advised me to keep a low profile for another 250 MY and enjoy the holiday season in peace.
Hope you had a nice New Years Eve and I'll hear from you again soon!
Santa

Ethan, what a great infographic! Is it OK I use it for my Dutch Astroblog (www.astroblogs.nl)? Of course with all the credits.

Adrianus V @13, sure thing! What's the point of making something wonderful if you can't share it with the world?

Yeah, you're right. Here's my blog: http://www.astroblogs.nl/2012/01/01/infografiek-het-hele-universum-in-e…

yout "first life" picture looks like mitochondria. Found in Eukaryotes, not in the first cells?

This is a most amazing timeline; thank you for the hard work.
What a wondrous thing it is, this universe!

http://alhtheia1.blogspot.com/2012/01/blog-post_8166.html

Is it just coincidence that this awesome picture coincides with CallumCGLP's new episode, Carl Sagan's Cosmic Calendar?

That's it! There is nothing more to be said about the indefinite pronoun EVERYTHING.

grant

Great work. What about year two? Reading Peter Ward (2009) left me with the impression that Earth is not likely to support multicellular life beyond about 13 January of this year on your scale. And my guess is that our species didn't make it very far into the first hour of the new year. Our Sun is expected to enter the red giant phase of its development late in year two or early in year three. Looks like we need an exit strategy.

http://alhtheia1.blogspot.com/2012/01/blog-post_8166.html

You should really have your name tucked into the graphic so it doesn't get lost if someone saves a copy.

IF ... there were not-yet eyes ( by which images are seen ), was there "light" as depicted by the early parts of the time line ?