We're going on a journey.
This video depicts billion years of time unfolding on a 10 minute scale - from to Big Bang to today.
Every passing second represents 22 million years.
On this scale, humans do not appear until the last fraction of second.
The universe begins in 5...
The universe begins in 4...
The universe begins in 3...
The universe begins in 2...
The universe begins in 1...
In those first dazzling moments,
space itself exploded in a burst of radiant energy.
The newborn universe began to expand, and cool.
For hundreds of millions of year the force of gravity slowly drew matter together into a gigantic web,
the architecture of the cosmos.
Clouds of gas and dust condensed like giant water drops along the cosmic strands
and formed galaxies.
Neighboring galaxies trapped by their mutual gravity,
draw together in a fantastic collision.
In real time it would last a billion years,
the force of gravity strips long tales of gas and stars from the huge new galaxy.
As it evolves the universe passes through distinct eras,
vast ages with beginnings and endings
are marked by unique milestones:
the births and deaths of its wonders.
We're the product of a grand evolutionary sequence.
Cosmic evolution.
About which we are only occasionally aware.
We encounter our own galaxy, the Milky Way.
In it, stars are formed, and some have died.
Here, a red giant star is slowly being consumed.
Its gases swirling to the depths of a black hole.
The immense gravitational pull of these monsters can rip a star apart,
they tear matter from its surface, and drag it into orbit,
this super-heated matter spins around the mouth of the black hole,
and great jets of radiation fire from the core.
Although these jets can be seen across the cosmos,
the core itself remains a mystery.
Not even light can escape,
so their interior is forever hidden from us.
Stars are nuclear furnaces,
they shine until they use up their fuel.
Massive stars end explosively.
These exploding stars send out the elements of life:
the oxygen we breath
the carbon in our muscles,
the iron in our blood.
These are new stars, forming from the elements blown out by supernova explosions.
New stars being born,
from the remains of dead ones.
And it's from this universal process of death, and rebirth
that we emerged.
Because it was in a nebula just like this
5 billion years ago
that our Sun was formed.
Now a cloud of cosmic gas sprinkled with these elements comes together with the grip of gravity.
A star was born, that would come to be known, as the Sun.
Around it, a network of planets formed,
among them, was the Earth.
In their infancy, our Earth and Moon were bombarded constantly by cosmic dust,
asteroids,
and comets.
With violent impacts
and potent ultra-violet radiation from the Sun
the young Earth was a very hostile world.
The land was dominated by volcanoes
hostile and lifeless.
But deep in the oceans, life had begun.
The latest theory is that chemicals, spewing from underwater volcanic vents
solidified and created the conditions needed
for the first cells to form.
For some 3 billion years
simple, microscopic organisms
were the most advanced form of life on the planet.
Some, called blue-green bacteria
slowly released tiny bubbles of oxygen
and profoundly changed the atmosphere.
Some of this oxygen formed a thin layer of ozone
blocking most of the Suns ultra-violet rays.
In this changed environment
new organisms flourished in the Earths waters.
Colonies of green algae produced more oxygen.
Just before complex life appeared,
the world was in the grip of the biggest ice age in its entire history.
Then organisms evolved an astonishing variety of forms.
Timelapse of the Entire Universe