Secret History of the Universe

Jump to...  The Big Bang ...  80,000 BCE  ...  3300 BCE  ...
1760  ...  1900  ...  1940  ...  1960  ...  1980  ...  2000  ...  Future

Introduction

According to the latest physics theories, our universe has been expanding at an ever increasing rate ever since the Big Bang, and that rate will continue to increase. The stars aren’t just moving away from each other, new “space” is actually being created in between the existing space. We may be receiving light today from a galaxy that was 10 billion light years away from us 10 billion years ago, but today, thanks to expansion, that galaxy is more like 30 billion light years away. And it’s moving away ever faster. In fact, the rate of expansion isn’t even bound by the law that nothing can move faster than the speed of light, so 10 billion years from now it will be so far away, we won’t ever receive light from it again.

And 10 billion years is a drop in the bucket in cosmological terms. Scientists think that eventually, the universe will have existed so mind-bogglingly long and be expanding at so mind-bogglingly fast a rate that it will rip itself apart. Keep in mind that at this point nothing will exist but black holes and they will be so far spread apart that any stray photons they would happen to emit would never reach each other. But the cool thing is this: you know what happens when you rip a nearly infinite number of black holes spread nearly infinitely far apart? You get an infinite number of Big Bangs, creating an infinite number of new universes that will start the process all over again.

Think about that for a moment. This could have been going on forever already. We’re like that room full of monkeys and typewriters. It’s not that anything could happen. It’s that anything will happen. Everything will happen. Every possible combination. Anything you can think of. It has happened, or will happen, or is happening somewhere right now. Somewhere in the cluster of infinite space-time universes, another me is typing this sentence and the only difference in his entire universe is that the word “buffalo” is spelled with a silent “k” in the beginning for absolutely no good reason.

Even better, though, in another part of the infinite cosmos, Batman is real, and he is kicking crime’s ass. Because if all of what I’ve written above is true, there has to be a God. There is no way that every possible thing can be true and God cannot be true. And if God is true, then – get ready for it – somewhere out there is the perfect universe, the one true universe that all other universes are just pale imitations of. It is a universe like our own, but turned up to 11, where all of the coolest things imaginable are all mashed together and coexist side by side in the real world.

Here, then, is that thought experiment. Call it a leap of faith: this is the world that I believe in—the world that I live in. In short, this timeline won’t necessarily reflect what you’re used to in your history books, your literature, your films, your television shows or your comic books. This is what really happened.

Enjoy, ladies and gentlemen, enjoy.

A Note about Canon

Weaving the great tangle of alternate histories into a coherent ultimate timeline is both an art and a science, and it is a gift that I believe God has blessed me with. (Although if you check the Internet, you will see that I am not alone. I will try to give credit wherever I can when I steal other people’s ideas.*) I have been compiling this chronicle for many years, and I have learned a few things along the way, some ultimate truths to guide me in my task:

1. No time travel. I love Doctor Who, I really do, but if you start introducing time travel, even just a little, everything unravels into an incoherent mess. No, in the one true universe, there is only one timeline. Things happen and that’s that. Move on. (Caveat: there are multiple, parallel universe within the multiverse. See below...)
2. If the universe we think we know is a shadow of the one true universe, then the one true universe shouldn’t deviate too much from our own, or it would become unrecognizable. For the most part, that means world history remains intact as we know it.
3. It takes a miracle for someone to come back from the dead. Jesus Christ did it. Unless someone’s narrative is similarly compelling, they stay dead.
4. When there is a conflict, the strongest storyline wins. Because the universe should be beautiful and mysterious and interesting, above all.
5. I have a pretty high threshold, but even I have my breaking point, so the moronically bad story lines just never happened. (Highlander II: The Quickening? The Godfather Part III? Red Superman and Blue Superman? I honestly don’t even know what you’re talking about.)

* However, note that the timeline I have created ignores one of the most common “shared universe” concepts: the Wold Newton family. I believe the Wold Newton concept is flawed for three reasons: 1) it relies on a meteorite to explain phenomena that already have explanations; 2) it forces relationships where none need exist; and 3) it is far too limited in overall scope for my tastes, focusing more on certain time periods and characters than others.

Table of Contents

GLOSSARY

PART ONE

• Preface
• The Early Universe / First World: 13.798-10 billion years ago
• The Reign of the Old Gods / Second World: 10-5 billion years ago
• The Age of Chaos / Innovial Eon: 5-4 billion years ago
• The Age of Bacteria / Archaean Eon: 4-2.45 billion years ago
• The Oxygenation Age / Early Proterozoic Eon: 2.45-1 billion years ago
• The Elder Age / Neoproterozoic Era: 1 billion-541 million years ago
• The Diversification Age / Paleozoic Sub-Era: 541-66.036 million years ago
• The Age of Reptiles / Mesozoic Sub-Era: 252.28-66.036 million years ago
• The Age of Mammals / Early Cenozoic Sub-Era: 66.036-4.5 million years ago
• The Hyperborean Age: 4.5-2.588 million years ago
• The Age of Hominids: 2,588,000 years ago-500,001 BCE
• Lemurian Age / Age of the Dragon Kings: 500,000-80,001 BCE

PART TWO

• The Valian Age / Muvian Age: 80,000-61,796 BCE
• The Years of the Lamps: 61,795-46,465 BCE
• The Years of the Trees: 46,464-36,404 BCE
• The First Age: 36,403-31,501 BCE
• The Second Age: 31,500-28,060 BCE
• The Third Age: 28,059-25,039 BCE
• The Fourth Age: 25,038-20,505 BCE
• The Thurian Age / Pre-cataclysmic Age: 20,504-16,494 BCE
• The Acheronian Age: 16,493-13,330 BCE
• The Hyborian Age: 13,329-9565 BCE
• The Mesolithic Age: 9564-6001 BCE
• The Neolithic Age: 6000-3301 BCE

PART THREE

• The Early Bronze Age: 3300-2651 BCE
• The Old Bronze Age / Old Kingdom: 2650-2041 BCE
• The Middle Bronze Age / Middle Kingdom: 2040-1551 BCE
• The Late Bronze Age / New Kingdom: 1550-1001 BCE
• The Early Iron Age / Archaic Period: 1000-510 BCE
• Classical Antiquity / The Roman Republic: 509-28 BCE
• Late Antiquity / The Roman Empire: 27 BCE-475 CE
• The Early Middle Ages: 476-792
• The Viking Age: 793-1065
• The High Middle Ages: 1066-1299
• The Late Middle Ages: 1300-1485
• The Renaissance / Age of Discovery: 1486-1649
• The Enlightenment / Age of Piracy: 1650-1759

PART FOUR

• The Age of Revolution: 1760-1836
• The Early Victorian Era: 1837-1869
• The Gilded Age / Late Victorian Era: 1870-1899

PART FIVE

• The Early 1900s / Edwardian Era: 1900-1909
• The Tumultuous Teens / World War I Era: 1910-1919
• The Roaring Twenties / Jazz Age: 1920-1929
• The Pulp Thirties / Depression Era: 1930-1939

PART SIX

• The Golden Forties / World War II Era: 1940-1949
• The Atomic Fifties / Boom Era: 1950-1959

PART SEVEN

• The Silver Sixties / Swinging Sixties / Counterculture Era: 1960-1969
• The Bronze Seventies / Me Decade: 1970-1979

PART EIGHT

• The Dark Eighties / Reagan Era: 1980-1989
• The Extreme Nineties / Alternative Era: 1990-1999

PART NINE

• The Prismatic 2000s / Millennial Era: 2000-2009
• The 2010s / Recent Events: 2010-2019

FUTURE EVENTS

• Introduction
• The Near Future: present day–9999
• The Post-Human Era: 10,000–599,999,999
• The Post-Earth Era: 600,000,000–99,999,999,999,999
• The Mature Universe: 100,000,000,000,000+

LIST OF ALTERNATE UNIVERSES AND DIMENSIONS

• Parallel Universes
• Other Material Universes
• Pocket Universes
• Virtual Universes
• Extra-Spatial Dimensions
• Metaphysical Dimensions

SECRET HISTORY OF PARALLEL UNIVERSES

• Intro to Parallel Universes
• Secret History of the Earth-D Universe
• Secret History of the Earth-M Universe
• Secret History of the Earth-O Universe
• Secret History of the Earth-Sim Universe
• Secret History of Counter-Earth