The Universe, condensed into one person's lifespan

[MooMoo2]

Welcome to 2019! If you're born today in a developed country, you'll have about a 50% chance of living to 81+ and seeing the next century. But what if the whole ~13,800,000,000 year-old universe were compressed into that 81-year-old person's lifespan? Well, here's how that timeline would look:

January 1, 2019, 00:00 - Welcome! The big bang has occurred. At this time, the universe is composed of an incredibly hot and dense quark-gluon plasma.

January 1, 2019, 00:00 - A few (real-time, not compressed time) minutes after the big bang, atomic nuclei are created. Most of the universe's helium is produced during this nucleosynthesis. Like today, the universe consists almost entirely of hydrogen (~74%) and helium (~24%). However, the 110+ elements that are heavier than lithium are not produced until much later. The universe's temperature is approximately 10^9 Kelvin.

January 2, 2019 - Neutral atoms are created. The universe is now transparent and has cooled to a few thousand degrees Kelvin, which is enough to allow visible light to travel long distances. However, there are no light producing structures such as stars and galaxies.

Late January - Early February, 2019 - The background temperature of the universe is between 273K and 373K, a temperature compatible with liquid water and common biological life. Although extremely unlikely, it is theoretically possible for primitive life to have appeared for a few million years.

Late 2021 - Early 2022 - The first stars emerge.

2023 - Stars and other matter are attracted together by gravity, forming the first galaxies.

2048 - The Milky Way's thin disk forms.

2073 - Earth's sun forms.

March 2073 - The Earth is formed, just a few weeks after the Sun.

June 2073 - A large Mars-sized body impacts the Earth. The impact fragments coalesce and form the Moon.

2075 - Liquid water is now present on Earth.

2076 - Life appears on Earth, but only microbes are present. The earth now has a solid crust with no oxygen in the atmosphere.

2084 - Oxygenic photosynthesis evolves. This is the first time that Earth's atmosphere has a significant amount of oxygen. The oxygen kills off most anaerobic lifeforms.

2089 - The first Eukaryotes evolve. The Earth's rotational rate was fast enough to result in 20 hour days, yielding a total of ~450 days per year.

2091 - The first complex multicellular life forms appear.

2094 - The first plants appear, which are algae-like. Life forms become increasingly spiny, possibly as a defense against predators.

2095 - The first land plants appear.

Late 2095 - An extreme Ice Age "Snowball Earth" occurs. Glaciers reach and cover large areas of the equator.

Fall 2096 - The Cambrian Explosion occurs. A wide variety of complex animals with mineralized skeletal remains evolve. Most major animal groups first appear in the fossil record. Life begins in the ocean and then spreads onto the land.

October 2097 - The first vertebrate land animals appear.

February 2098 - Winged insects appear and become widespread. Amphibians are common, diverse, and are the dominant land vertebrates. The atmospheric content of oxygen (35%) reaches its highest levels in geologic history (compared with 21% today). Vast areas of forest covered the land, which would eventually result in today's coal beds.

June 2098 - Landmasses collide, forming supercontinent Pangaea. Today's Appalachian mountains are the remnants of this collision.

Late Summer, 2098 - The first mammals appear. They remain small (less than 15 kg) until the extinction of the dinosaurs.

November 2098 - Dinosaurs become the dominant terrestrial vertebrates and remain that way until their extinction.

August 2099 - A large ~10 mile diameter asteroid strikes the Earth. Dinosaurs become extinct.

September 2099 - The Indian Plate crashes into the Eurasian Plate, closing the ancient Tethys Ocean and forming the Himalayas.

Early October, 2099 - Mammals begin to rapidly diversify. They transform from a few small and generalized forms into most of the modern varieties we see today.

Late October, 2099 - Antarctic Glaciation begins. The period from that time until today is known as the Late Cenozoic Ice Age.

December 11, 2099 - The gorilla-human last common ancestor no longer exists. The two species split.

December 18, 2099 - The chimpanzee-human last common ancestor no longer exists. The two species split.

December 20, 2099 - Water from the Atlantic Ocean bursts through the Strait of Gibraltar, which refills the Mediterranean Sea.

December 22, 2099 - Human bipedalism has evolved.

December 24, 2099 - Stone tools are first used by early hominoids. The Stone Age begins.

December 25, 2099 - The Isthmus of Panama forms, separating the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and creating the Gulf Stream current.

December 27, 2099 - Hominoids have moved out of Africa.

December 30, 2099 - Hominoids have controlled fire and may have also cooked their food.

December 31, 2099, early morning - Homo sapiens (anatomically modern humans) appear. They occasionally interbred with Neanderthals and Denisovans.

December 31, 2099, 21:00 - Clothing is first developed.

December 31, 2099, 22:00 - Neanderthals die out, leaving Homo sapiens as the only surviving hominoid species.

December 31, 2099, 23:25 - Pigs are domesticated, followed by sheep and cattle a few minutes later.

December 31, 2099, 23:41 - Writing is invented, and recorded history begins.

December 31, 2099, 23:46 - The Great Pyramid of Giza is built.

December 31, 2099, 23:54 - The Roman Empire reaches its greatest extent.

December 31, 2099, 23:57 - Humans reach New Zealand, the last major inhabitable landmass to be discovered and settled.

December 31, 2099, 23:59 - The Industrial Revolution occurs. In less than a minute, humanity will have invented electric and nuclear power, antibiotics, the internal combustion engine, spaceflight, computers, and near-instant worldwide communication. Wow, what a journey!

[R. Gerbicz]

Originally Posted by MooMoo2

Welcome to 2019! If you're born today in a developed country, you'll have about a 50% chance of living to 81+ and seeing the next century. But what if the whole ~13,800,000,000 year-old universe were compressed into that 81-year-old person's lifespan?
.........
December 31, 2099, 23:59 - The Industrial Revolution occurs.

I'd like to point out one miniscule error in your deep and interesting analysis:
the next century begins on January 1, 2101, so not in 2100, think about why.

[The Carnivore]

If you extend it into the future, the Sun's increasing luminosity will make Earth uninhabitable by complex life forms in 2107. The Andromeda Galaxy will have collided with the Milky Way in 2124, and the Sun will become a red giant eight years after that.

Star formation elsewhere in the universe will continue for several thousand more years.

As far as humanity's impacts go, Mt. Rushmore, the Egyptian pyramids, and Neil Armstrong's footsteps on the moon will have eroded into unrecognizability within a week. However, the fossilized remains of underground urban infrastructure are expected to persist for at least a few months. Nuclear waste will still be detectable during this timeframe, though it will cease to be lethal long before then.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by The Carnivore

If you extend it into the future, the Sun's increasing luminosity will make Earth uninhabitable by complex life forms in 2107. The Andromeda Galaxy will have collided with the Milky Way in 2124, and the Sun will become a red giant eight years after that.

Star formation elsewhere in the universe will continue for several thousand more years.

As far as humanity's impacts go, Mt. Rushmore, the Egyptian pyramids, and Neil Armstrong's footsteps on the moon will have eroded into unrecognizability within a week. However, the fossilized remains of underground urban infrastructure are expected to persist for at least a few months. Nuclear waste will still be detectable during this timeframe, though it will cease to be lethal long before then.

I rather doubt your "few months" estimate though I recognize the "at least" quantifier. Most of the radioactivity from our reactors will have decayed within that timescale (the principal exceptions being Th, U and Pu) but the truly bizarre distribution of their (semi-)stable end-product isotopes should last for a few gigayears in real time, a few decades in compressed time. The Oklo reactor is still blindingly obvious 2 gigayears later.

Other fossilized remains of humanity will include ceramic toilets (at least as resilient as animal bones), the chemical composition of a rather thin layer in rock strata as distinctive as that at the K-T boundary, and the remains of mineralogical collections in museums and bank vaults where the chemical composition is completely at odds with the local geology. It's possible that the also truly bizarre global distribution of certain grass pollen (principally wheat, maize and rice) will survive for a gigayear or so to anyone who cares to look.

[The Carnivore]

Originally Posted by xilman

I rather doubt your "few months" estimate though I recognize the "at least" quantifier. Most of the radioactivity from our reactors will have decayed within that timescale (the principal exceptions being Th, U and Pu) but the truly bizarre distribution of their (semi-)stable end-product isotopes should last for a few gigayears in real time, a few decades in compressed time. The Oklo reactor is still blindingly obvious 2 gigayears later.

Other fossilized remains of humanity will include ceramic toilets (at least as resilient as animal bones), the chemical composition of a rather thin layer in rock strata as distinctive as that at the K-T boundary, and the remains of mineralogical collections in museums and bank vaults where the chemical composition is completely at odds with the local geology. It's possible that the also truly bizarre global distribution of certain grass pollen (principally wheat, maize and rice) will survive for a gigayear or so to anyone who cares to look.

You're right, I had overlooked that.

Upon further research, I found out a better and much easier way of leaving a legacy. You don't need to compose music, discover something new, or build a giant statue of yourself. Just Eat Mor Chikin:
https://phys.org/news/2018-12-broile...hropocene.html

There are so many chickens that their body mass is greater than all other birds combined. And they are not anywhere close to their initial native state—the modern broiler is unable to survive and reproduce in the wild. It has been bred to eat non-stop, allowing it to grow to a desired size in just five to nine weeks.
…
Billions of bones wind up in landfills where they are covered over in an oxygen-free environment, making it likely that they will, over time, become fossilized.
…
the next dominant life form will likely dig up our landfills and find evidence of our love for the broiler chicken.

Bon Appetit!

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by R. Gerbicz

I'd like to point out one miniscule error in your deep and interesting analysis:
the next century begins on January 1, 2101, so not in 2100, think about why.

I hate this Hungarian guy, he is always faster than me!

@OP: you missed the last picosecond of the century: a lot of guys posting on mersenneforum...

[axn]

Originally Posted by LaurV

@OP: you missed the last picosecond of the century: a lot of guys posting on mersenneforum...

Cute, but completely WRONG!!!!!!!!

MF.org has been running for about 15 years which is one billionth the age of the universe. A century is about 3 billion seconds. Therefore MF has been up for about 3 seconds.

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by axn

Cute, but completely WRONG!!!!!!!!
MF.org has been running for about 15 years which is one billionth the age of the universe. A century is about 3 billion seconds. Therefore MF has been up for about 3 seconds.

Well, I was not referring to the whole life of the forum, but only to the "guys" currently posting. And the initial word was not "guys", somebody censored it...