# Deep Time
> **Machine-Evolution Nexus:** [[articles/Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution|Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution]] places this node within the history and governance of substrate-independent evolution.
**Domain:** Evolution / Earth History / Scale
**Doc Type:** Canonical Wiki Node
**Maturity:** Developed
## Definition
Deep time is the immense geological and evolutionary timescale across which planetary and biological change becomes legible.
## Nexus Context
The article pairs it with computational scale: processes can be invisible because they are too slow, large, distributed or numerous for ordinary observation.
## Evidence Boundary
Scale limits observation but does not license inference without instruments. Records, models and provenance are required to distinguish real processes from narrative projection.
## Relationships
[[wiki/Fossil Record|Fossil Record]], [[wiki/Scalar Nesting|Scalar Nesting]], [[wiki/Evolutionary Dynamics|Evolutionary Dynamics]], [[wiki/Technical Archaeology|Technical Archaeology]]
## Sources / Provenance
- Geology and evolutionary biology; nexus synthesis.