A map of time · from the Big Bang to its very end
Horizons.
Beyond Limits
From humanity’s first cities until today, roughly ten thousand years have passed. That same span, repeated half a million times, separates us from the death of the Sun. What follows is only the beginning of the map below.
If you only have two minutes: pick an era below, tap a card, and stop right there — the rest will keep for another time.
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Why this project exists
Horizons follows known time and possible time alike — from the Big Bang to the last particles of a burnt-out universe. The map below combines what we know with reasonable certainty about the past with predictions about the future, each carrying its own confidence level: some are observationally confirmed facts, others reasonable extrapolations, and the most distant ones are either well-established physics — the motion of stars isn’t a guess — or theoretical speculation built on laws still unconfirmed.
Beyond the map, three further sections take on questions physics alone can’t fully answer: what the universe actually IS, what logical paradoxes surface from its structure — and whether we’re alone in it. They’re presented as competing scenarios, not answers. A few alternate branches show, in addition, what entirely different trajectories of the future might have looked like — and where, now and then, they reconnect with the main map. At the end, a few thematic trails link fragments from across the whole map around one single idea, and a glossary briefly explains the names and concepts that keep recurring.
The declared model is futuretimeline.net, a similar project, in English. The content here is original, thought through and written from scratch, as an offline app, with no external connections and no tracking.
– events on the map · 8 domains · 12 eras · from the Big Bang to beyond 10100 years
The scale of time — pick an era
Alternate Branches
The main map follows a single thread — the one considered most plausible today. But history isn’t linear: different choices, unexpected discoveries, or catastrophes could open entirely different paths. The branches below are exercises in counterfactual imagination, not alternate predictions. Some reconnect, now and then, with events on the main map — marked distinctly, with a solid border instead of a dashed line.
The Time Spiral
The same main map, this time laid out in space: the central thread climbs in a spiral through time. The 2D view is the clearest and most accessible way to see it — everything visible at once, no dragging required. The 3D view adds the branches, orbiting around the same spiral and touching it again exactly where they converge. The same content, as a list, is available in the map above and in the branches section.
The Nature and Purpose of the Universe
Modern cosmology explains, with great precision, HOW the universe has behaved since fractions of a second after the Big Bang. The question of WHY anything exists, and whether it serves any purpose, goes beyond what the scientific method can test — so physics, philosophy, and religion offer, today, different answers. None of the scenarios below is this app’s “position”; they are a map of ideas currently in circulation. A few cards are marked distinctly: an anti-scenario directly contradicts the idea next to it, a non-scenario rejects the question itself as poorly framed, and an impossibility shows what can be ruled out with (near) certainty.
If you had to pick one of the cards above as the most likely — which one, and why?
Paradoxes
Every section above touches, at least once, on an apparent logical contradiction — a place where everyday intuition collides with real mathematics or physics. The paradoxes below aren’t the universe’s “errors,” but useful signals: each shows exactly where intuition about time, infinity, or identity breaks down.
Life Beyond Earth and Advanced Civilizations
In 1950, physicist Enrico Fermi asked a simple question: if the universe is so vast and so old, “where is everybody?” The Drake Equation (1961) structured the problem as a product of probabilities, without solving its core. The scenarios below — some scientific, some speculative — try to explain why the sky seems silent, and what each variant would mean for how humanity might react to real contact.
If we received a confirmed signal from another star system tomorrow, would you want us to answer, or stay silent?
Thematic Trails
Each trail links, with a single click, fragments from across the whole app — the main map, branches, scenarios, paradoxes — around one single idea.
Glossary
Names and concepts that appear throughout the map, briefly explained.