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This timeline attempts to show the best scientific estimates of the timings of past events and predictions of the approximate timing of hypothetical future events with cosmological significance. Some locally significant events of interest to members of Homo sapiens are also included. See Dating Creation for alternative views based on religious tradition. (Note: in this context, billion means 1,000,000,000).1 The Big Bang
- 13.7 ± 0.2 billion years ago: Universe, which includes time and space, begins with Big Bang
See also timeline of the Big Bang for the first 300,000 years after the Big Bang.
2 The distant past
- 300 thousand years after the Big Bang, hydrogen nuclei capture electrons, forming the first atoms
- 600 million years after the Big Bang: formation of first galaxies, see Galaxy formation and evolutionIn astrophysics, the questions of galaxy formation and evolution are: How, from a homogeneous universe, did we obtain the very inhomogeneous one we live in How did galaxies form How do galaxies change over time The formation of galaxies is still one of th
- 5 billion years ago (~8.7 billion years after the Big Bang): formation of the SunThe Sun (also called Sol is the star in our solar system. Planet Earth orbits the Sun. Other bodies that orbit the Sun include other planets, asteroids, meteoroids, comets and dust. Not all objects passing through the solar system have been orbitally capt
- 4.5 billion years ago: formation of the EarthEarth also known as the Earth or Terra is the planet on which we live, the third planet outward from the Sun. It is the largest of the solar system's terrestrial planets, and the only planetary body that modern science confirms as harbouring life. The pla -- start of geologic timescaleA timeline of geologic periods in accordance with the dates and nomenclature proposed by the International Commission on Stratigraphy. The Earth is thought by geologists to be 4. 6 billion years old. The geologic or "deep" time of Earth's past has been or
- 3.5 billion years ago: first signs of single-celled lifeAlternate uses: see Life (disambiguation) and Living (disambiguation Life is a multi-faceted concept with no simple definition; this article is confined to the primary meanings in biology; articles on life in other senses are included in the article life on Earth
- 600 to 500 million years ago: multicellular life evolves
3 The human era
- 2.5 to 2 million years ago: appearance of the genus Homo (see human evolutionHuman evolution as a scientific field has a long and sometimes controversial history, however, since the mid- 1990s, there has been a remarkable convergence of views about how humans have evolved. This convergence includes paleoanthropologists, geneticist)
- about 150,000 years ago: appearance of Homo sapiens
- for the past and present of mankind, see centuriesMillennia These pages contain the trends of millennia and centuries. The individual century pages contain lists of decades and years. See history for different organizations of historical events. See Calendar and List of calendars for other groupings of y
- 12 to 10 thousand years ago (the HoloceneThe Holocene Epoch is a geologic period that extends from the present back about 10,000 radiocarbon years. The beginning of the Holocene was punctuated by the Younger Dryas cold period, the final part of Pleistocene epoch. The end of the Younger Dryas has epoch): Homo sapiens invent agriculture; start of human civilization
- 1961: men first orbit the Earth in spacecraft
- ...
- 40,000 years from now, Voyager 2 will approach another planetary system.
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