From Big Bang to Today: Watch 13.8 Billion Years of Universe Evolving

Our universe started off as a pinprick 13.8 billion years ago and has been expanding ever since. It went through a massive cycle of changes after the big bang, something that is too big to comprehend on a cosmic scale.

However, John Boswell, also known as melodysheep on YouTube, has created a stunning time-lapse video showcasing the entire life of the universe on a 10-minute scale. Every second of the clip represents 22 million years’ worth of evolution and shows how our Earth and other critical celestial objects in the universe came to be.

The video starts with the big bang, a massive cosmic explosion, and shows how the first stars formed from the gravitational interaction between gas and dust. The connection between these stars led to the birth of some of the oldest galaxies of the universe, with many being gravitationally-bound to each other.

Our own galaxy, Milky Way, came into existence about 10 billion years ago, along some of the oldest voids of the universe, aka stellar mass black holes. These voids, as Boswell said in the clip, are those mysterious objects that suck in everything in their proximity, emit jets of radiation, and are capable of ripping stars apart.

There was no sign of our solar system until the first supernova occurred, rare cosmic explosions that marked the death of first stars some 7.5 billion years ago. Such explosions occur with the brightness of a billion suns and the remains of these stars further lead to the birth of new stars in the cosmos.

That said, after the first supernova, a cycle started that formed our very own sun in a nebula, approximately five billion years ago. A network of planets, including Earth, also formed around a new-born sun.

However, the process wasn’t over yet. Debris from the formation of early solar system struck our planet and created the moon, our only natural satellite. Viewers can see the dramatic collision of the debris with a young Earth, which started off as a hellish world with volcanoes, but later went on to support the first form of life underwater.

Over the ensuing three billion years, the volume of oxygen on the planet increased thanks to microscopic organisms, ultimately leading to the birth and evolution of the mammals and humans.