The Briefest Story of the Universe (And How You Fit In)
The Briefest Story of the Universe (And The Moment You Joined)
Written by: Product & Editorial Team
These articles, and the products they're inspired by, were written, researched, and brought to life by the humans at kurzgesagt, one of the largest science communication channels on YouTube.
You Are Here
You live 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang.
That is how long it took for space to stretch, matter to take shape, stars to rise, and the atoms that form you to assemble.
You stand at the heart of your own observable universe. Wherever you look, you see not only distance, but time itself. Light from distant galaxies reveal to you what they looked like long ago. The farther you look, the further back you see. Lets travel to your place in cosmic history: a brief moment in a vast, unfolding universe.
The Beginning of Everything
(Before 10-43 seconds – 10-32 seconds)
Before the Big Bang…
...there was no "before". There was no time. No space either.
But then everything came into existence in the smallest amount of time that is measurable – what physicists call the Planck time.
The universe was unimaginably small and inconceivably hot. All particles and forces were identical, wrapped together into a single, unified state.
And then it started to expand.
In the inflation epoch, the universe grew with impossible fury: septillions of times larger in every direction. It lasted only a fraction of a second but it was still billions of times longer than the instant that birthed the universe.
In the end, our universe had grown to the size of a marble.
A Universe of Particles
(~10-12 – 10-5 seconds)
The expanding slowed and the universe thickened into a hot, dense soup. The elementary particles – quarks, antiquarks and gluons – floated freely around. They collided, then divided, over and over, never at rest.
It was still too hot for stable particles to form. But then the cosmic soup began cooling down. Gradually, the quarks started to bind into protons and neutrons – a combination of particles called hadrons.
Matter and antimatter met, annihilating each other and leaving only a small excess. Out of this small excess would one day emerge us, and every single thing we know.
The First Elements
(~10-5– 1000 seconds)
Within the first few minutes, protons and neutrons began to join. From their union came the first simple nuclei: hydrogen and helium.
Roughly 75% hydrogen and 25% helium: a simple but powerful cosmic recipe that would shape the early universe. Electrons still roamed freely, forming a fog that trapped the light. The universe was dark, dense, and hot. It would stay that way for a long time to come.
Where It All Comes Together
We’ve compressed this entire timeline and each key moment into a single, visually striking poster: History of the Universe Poster.
It’s shaped like a cosmic sausage, but this isn’t just a design choice. The cylinder reflects how the universe’s radius has changed over time, calculated from cosmological constants. For storytelling and design purposes, the axes are not to scale (or else those early moments would be an invisible dot).
The First Light
(~380,000 years)
It was now 380,000 years after the Big Bang. The universe had cooled enough for electrons to settle into orbits around nuclei. Atoms formed.
The photons could travel across space, without constantly clashing into charged particles like electrons. The universe, once opaque, became transparent.
These first free photons are still around. We can detect them as cosmic microwave background – the faint radiation that fills all of space.
This is the most ancient light we can see today.
The Long Dark
(~380,000 years – 100 million years)
After the first light, the universe was transparent, but without the stars to illuminate it. From about 380,000 years to 100 million years, apart from the faint, ancient glow of cosmic background radiation, the universe lay in darkness.
Yet this darkness was not uniform. Some regions were slightly denser and heavier than the rest. Gravity began its quiet work: slowly pulling the denser parts together, shaping them into vast, thick clouds.
From them, the first stars were born.
The First Stars and Galaxies
(~100 million years – 400 million years)
Around 100 million years after the Big Bang, some of the gas clouds could not hold their own weight anymore. They collapsed onto themselves. The pressure at their heart ignited hydrogen fusion – the same process that fuels our Sun.
These first stars were absolute giants, perhaps thousands of times heavier than the Sun. They lived, however, much more briefly. Inside their burning hearts, new elements took shape: carbon and oxygen, which were heavier than the hydrogen and helium of our early cosmos.
As the universe continued to expand, gravity pulled stars and gas clouds into ever larger structures. These structures would eventually become the first galaxies. These young galaxies had supermassive black holes in their hearts. Enriched with heavy elements, they became the building blocks from which the modern universe would grow.
The Birth of Our Solar System
(~9 billion years)
Billions of years passed. Stars were born and died, seeding space with heavier elements.
About nine billion years after the Big Bang, our Sun emerged. Around it, a swirl of dust and gas began to gather. And from this swirl, the planets – including our Earth – formed. The atoms within you were forged in stars that burned and vanished long before our Sun ever rose.
The Expanding Mystery
(~8 billion years)
Around eight billion years after the Big Bang, the expansion began to speed up once more. Our universe was growing exponentially.
Scientists attribute this to dark energy: a mysterious form of energy built into space itself. No one knows what it is. Galaxies drift further apart, faster and faster, driven by a force we do not yet understand.
The Distant Future
???
If the dark energy continues to force the universe into exponential growth, the galaxies will drift so far apart that their light fades. Stars will exhaust their fuel. Black holes will evaporate.
This universe will grow cold and dark – a state known as the heat death.
Some scientists imagine other futures. Big Crunch, where the universe collapses onto itself. Big Rip, where the expansion tears it all apart. But the most likely version of the future is quieter than either of these.
A slow fading into darkness.
For now, the universe is filled with stars, fraught with matter and fluttering with life. You were born in this rare, brilliant moment, and it's exactly where you belong.
Key Takeaways
The universe began 13.8 billion years ago in a hot, dense state and has been expanding ever since.
The encounter between matter and antimatter allowed excess matter to survive, making galaxies, stars, planets, and life possible.
Over billions of years, stars formed, lived, and died, creating heavier elements and enriching the cosmos.
Our Solar System emerged about 9 billion years after the Big Bang, from gas and dust shaped around the Sun.
The expansion of the universe is accelerating due to dark energy, and the most likely long term outcome is a gradual fade into darkness.
The History Of The Universe, For Your Walls
This article was inspired by our History of the Universe Poster – a dazzling timeline of the cosmic events that made you possible. It's printed on thick, premium A1 paper, and finished with a shiny foil to become the star of any wall you hang it on.
We spent countless hours researching and fact-checking this timeline together with experts, while our talented illustrators created the immense, almost dreamy visualization that looks stellar on any wall you hang it on.
The History of the Universe Poster
