Formation of the Earth

4600 million years ago
or 1112 meters to today

Geolo­gical era: Hadean

Accord­ing to everything we know, 4.6 billion years ago, the glow­ing fire­ball that was to become the Earth, the Sun and other plan­ets were all formed from a cloud of gas.

The universe itself was already 9.2 billion years old. If the loca­tion of the begin­ning of space and time were marked on this timeline, it would be 2.2 km away from this point.

Some­where on the way to the next sign chem­ical evol­u­tion began to work. This term refers to the non-biolo­gical combin­a­tion out of the ingredi­ents of the prim­or­dial soup. At the next sign, chem­ical evol­u­tion becomes biolo­gical evol­u­tion. There, 122 meters away, evol­u­tion — the devel­op­ment of life — begins.

Evid­ence of the first life appeared just 500 million years after the solar system came into exist­ence. This gives us reason to think that the appear­ance of life is not as unlikely as was once thought – provid­ing the condi­tions are right.

The earth is extremely hot. Once the bombard­ment of meteor­ites began to subside, the Earth cooled enough for a thin crust to be created. Volca­noes and geolo­gic outgass­ing created an atmo­sphere, although it still had no oxygen. Some liquid water condensed from the expelled gases.