The patterns of scientific collaboration have been frequently investigated in
terms of complex networks without reference to time evolution. In the present
work, we derive collaborative networks (from the arXiv repository)
parameterized along time. By defining the concept of affine group, we identify
several interesting trends in scientific collaboration, including the fact that
the average size of the affine groups grows exponentially, while the number of
authors increases as a power law. We were therefore able to identify, through
extrapolation, the possible date when a single affine group is expected to
emerge. Characteristic collaboration patterns were identified for each
researcher, and their analysis revealed that larger affine groups tend to be
less stable
