The universe as it appears today.
The universe as it appears today. From 1 billion years, and for about 12.8 billions of years, the universe has looked much as it does today. It will continue to appear very similar for many billions of years into the future. The thin disk of our galaxy began to form at about 5 billion years (8.8 bn years ago),and the solar system formed at about 9.2 billion years (4.6 bn years ago), with the earliest traces of life on Earth emerging by about 10.3 billion years (3.5 bn years ago). From about 9.8 billion years of cosmic time,the slowing expansion of space gradually begins to accelerate under the influence of dark energy , which may be a scalar field throughout our universe. The present-day universe is understood quite well, but beyond about 100 billion years of cosmic time (about 86 billion years in the future), uncertainties in current knowledge mean that we are less sure which path our universe will take.