Each bead in this red string represents one billion years, from the Big Bang to the present. Descriptions are taken from the short version of the Great Story Timeline.
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| 13.7 billion years ago (bya) - THE GREAT RADIANCE / BIG BANG / PRIMORDIAL FLARING FORTH. |
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| 12 bya - GALAXIES emerge, consisting only of the simplest elements: hydrogen, helium, and primordial energy. The contraction of GRAVITY balances the expansive forces of the Great Radiance. |
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| 11 bya - Gravity draws hydrogen into dense spheres of gas, sprinkled throughout each galaxy. At a threshold pressure, nuclear fusion begins: this is the birth of STARS. Let there be Light! (This bead has silver sparkles in it.) |
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| 10 bya to present - SUPERNOVAS and RED GIANT STARS forge COMPLEX ELEMENTS (atoms heavier than helium: carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, calcium, iron, gold, etc.) and then spread these atoms throughout the galaxies by exploding or pulsing out streams of atoms. |
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| 5 bya - A SHOCK WAVE from a nearby supernova explosion energizes the primordial cloud of hydrogen gas, now enriched with complex atoms, that will become our swirling solar system. Our SUN IGNITES. |
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| 4.6 bya - EARTH and other planets in our solar system form by aggregating space debris in their orbital paths. Meteors and comets that crash into Earth become Earth. (This bead is green and brown.) |
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| 3.8 bya - The first LIFE forms (Archaea, a heat-loving form of bacteria) evolve in a very hot environment, possibly at great depth within Earth's crust or at hydrothermal fissures in the floor of oceans. (This bead has a paisley design painted on it, which looks kind of like a paramecium.) |
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| 2 bya - EUKARYA arise via symbiogenesis (in response to Oxygen Crisis and possibly a shortage of phosphorus?). Life becomes nested - one center of creativity within another, as oxygen-using mitochondria and photosynthesizing plastids cooperate with the larger host cells. Single-cell "protozoa" (protists) emerge. (These two beads are stuck together, suggesting to me both mitosis (asexual cell division) and this cooperation between cells.) |
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| 1.5 bya - MEIOTIC SEX emerges in eukarya, which is the first step in what will eventually evolve into a mode of reproduction that entails egg and sperm. Genetic exchange and reproduction are now linked into a single process. (This bead is four balls stuck together, suggesting to me the double division of sex cells into gametes during meiosis.) |
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