Interactive Visualization

THECOSMIC YEAR

13.8 Billion Years on a Single Calendar

From the Big Bang to the present — and beyond. The Cosmic Year maps 13.8 billion years of cosmic, geological, biological, and human history onto a single year — where January 1 is the Big Bang and midnight on December 31 is now.

Zoom seamlessly from the full year overview down to individual cosmic seconds, where each second spans ~438 real years. Explore thousands of events across four categories, colored by 16 scientific eras from the Primordial to the Modern.

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THE COSMIC YEAR

About The Cosmic Year

The Cosmic Year — inspired by Carl Sagan's thought experiment — maps 13.8 billion years onto a single calendar year. If all of time were compressed into a single year, the Big Bang would be January 1 and the present moment would be midnight on December 31. (The project was originally named Kosmophany, from the Greek kosmophania, "making the cosmos visible.")

Zoom from the full year overview down to individual cosmic seconds. At the deepest zoom level, each cosmic second spans ~438 real years — all of recorded human history fits in the last ~11 seconds of December 31.

16 Scientific Eras

The default color mode divides cosmic history into 16 scientifically-defined eras:

1. Primordial
Jan 1 · Big Bang through recombination (Planck, quark, hadron, lepton, nucleosynthesis epochs)
2. Dark Ages
Jan 1–4 · No stars, neutral hydrogen fills the cosmos
3. Cosmic Dawn
Jan 4–11 · First stars (Population III) ignite
4. Reionization
Jan 11–27 · UV from first stars ionizes intergalactic gas
5. Galaxy Assembly
Jan 27 – Mar 21 · Galaxies form through mergers and accretion
6. Cosmic Noon
Mar 21 – May 15 · Star formation rate peaks at redshift z~2
7. Stellar Era
May 15 – Sep 2 · Heavy elements build up; Milky Way disk forms
8. Hadean
Sep 2–20 · Earth forms, Moon-forming impact, Late Heavy Bombardment
9. Archean
Sep 20 – Nov 2 · First life, prokaryotes, banded iron formations
10. Proterozoic
Nov 2 – Dec 17 · Great Oxidation, eukaryotes, Snowball Earth
11. Paleozoic
Dec 17–24 · Cambrian explosion, fish, land plants, reptiles
12. Mesozoic
Dec 24–30 · Dinosaurs, birds, flowering plants, mammals emerge
13. Cenozoic
Dec 30 – Dec 31 ~22:20 · Mammals diversify, primates evolve
14. Quaternary
Dec 31 22:20 – 23:59:33 · Ice ages, genus Homo, stone tools
15. Holocene
Dec 31 23:59:33 – 23:59:59 · Agriculture, civilizations, written history
16. Modern
Dec 31 23:59:59 – midnight · Industrial revolution to present

8 Thresholds of Complexity

The Big History Project identifies eight key thresholds that mark the emergence of greater complexity in the universe:

1. The Big Bang
The Universe begins
2. Stars Light Up
First stars; later galaxies form
3. New Chemical Elements
Forged in stars and supernovae
4. Earth & the Solar System
Planets and "Goldilocks" conditions
5. Life
Life emerges on Earth
6. Collective Learning
Language and culture accelerate change
7. Agriculture
Farming, villages, cities, states
8. The Modern Revolution
Fossil fuels, industrialization, rapid global change

Scaling Law of Evolution

Biological and cultural revolutions follow an accelerating pattern: each major transition arrives faster than the last, following a geometric progression that converges toward the present. This "scaling law" was independently discovered by researchers studying the timing of evolutionary breakthroughs — from the emergence of life through the rise of civilizations.

The 21 phases progress from the pre-biotic cosmos through ever-shorter intervals of innovation: the first biosphere lasted 2.5 billion years, the Paleozoic 335 million, the Neolithic just 5,000. The pattern suggests that complexity itself accelerates the pace of change.

Pre-Scaling
13.8–10 Ga · Primordial cosmos, before the pattern begins
Galactic Chemistry
10–7 Ga · Heavy elements enable prebiological chemistry
Prebiological
7–4 Ga · Rocky planets form, organic chemistry intensifies
First Biosphere
4–1.5 Ga · Prokaryotes dominate for 2.5 billion years
Post-Oxygen
1.5 Ga–570 Ma · Eukaryotes, multicellularity
Paleozoic
570–235 Ma · Cambrian explosion through land conquest
Mesozoic
235–66 Ma · Dinosaurs, mammals, flowering plants
Cenozoic
66–24 Ma · Mammalian radiation
Hominoids
24–4.5 Ma · Great apes, bipedalism
First Homo
4.5–2 Ma · Stone tools, genus Homo
Lower Paleolithic
2 Ma–700 ka · Oldowan tools, out of Africa
Fire
700–400 ka · Control of fire doubles the energy budget
Acheulean
400–150 ka · Standardized hand axes
Mousterian
150–40 ka · Levallois technique, symbolic thought
Upper Paleolithic
40–11 ka · Art, music, cultural explosion
Neolithic
11–6 ka · Agriculture, first villages
Urban
6–2.75 ka · Cities, writing, empires
Axial Age
2.75–1.5 ka · Philosophy, world religions
Post-Classical
1.5 ka–500 ya · Printing, exploration
Industrial
500–170 ya · Steam, fossil fuels
Information
170 ya–present · Computers, internet, AI

Colors: Hawaii scientific colour map (Crameri 2018), perceptually uniform and CVD-friendly.

Color Modes

Eras — 16 scientific eras (default). Thresholds — 8 Big History Thresholds of Complexity. Geological — Official ICS 2023/09 colors for geological periods. Regimes — Four regimes: Cosmos, Earth, Life, Humanity. Scaling — 21 phases of the evolutionary scaling law (Snooks-Panov).

Regimes

● Cosmos — The universe: Big Bang, stars, galaxies, Solar System
● Earth — Our planet: tectonics, climate, extinctions
● Life — From the first cell to human evolution
● Humanity — Civilizations, science, and the modern world

Zoom Levels

The calendar supports 6 levels of semantic zoom:

Year — 12 month blocks, ~1.15 billion years per month
Month — Individual day cells, ~37.8 million years per day
Day — 24 hour slots, ~1.575 million years per hour
Hour — 60 minute slots, ~26,300 years per minute
Minute — 60 second slots, ~438 years per second
Second — Sub-second detail

Controls

Scroll or pinch to zoom. Drag to pan. Click on an event marker to see details. Keyboard: +/- zoom, 0 reset, Esc close panels.

References & Sources

Sagan, C. (1977). The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence. Random House.
Sagan, C. (1980). Cosmos. Random House.
Christian, D. (2004). Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History. University of California Press.
Christian, D. (2018). Origin Story: A Big History of Everything. Little, Brown and Company.
Chaisson, E.J. (2001). Cosmic Evolution: The Rise of Complexity in Nature. Harvard University Press.
Panov, A.D. (2005). Scaling law of the biological evolution and the hypothesis of the self-consistent Galaxy origin of life. Advances in Space Research, 36(2), 220–225. doi:10.1016/j.asr.2005.03.001
Snooks, G.D. (1996). The Dynamic Society: Exploring the Sources of Global Change. Routledge.
Crameri, F., Shephard, G.E. & Heron, P.J. (2020). The misuse of colour in science communication. Nature Communications, 11, 5444. doi:10.1038/s41467-020-19160-7
ICS Chronostratigraphic Chart v2023/09. stratigraphy.org/chart
Big History Project. bighistoryproject.com
NASA, ESA, ESO — astronomical event data and imagery.
Wikipedia — timeline articles (CC-BY-SA 4.0).

Suggested Citation

GLOBAÏA (2026). The Cosmic Year — 13.8 Billion Years of History [Interactive visualization]. globaia.org/cosmic-year/

Credits

The Cosmic Calendar concept was created by Carl Sagan in The Dragons of Eden (1977) and popularized in Cosmos (1980).

The Big History framework draws on the work of David Christian, Eric Chaisson, and the Big History Project.

The evolutionary scaling law follows the Snooks–Panov model of accelerating complexity transitions.

All scientific colour maps (Navia, Hawaii) by Crameri (2020) — perceptually uniform and CVD-friendly.

Geological period boundaries and colors from the ICS Chronostratigraphic Chart v2023/09.

Built by GLOBAÏA.

Version 0.1

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