ETYM Latin universum, from universus universal; unus one + vertere, versum, to turn, that is, turned into one, combined into one whole; cf. French univers. Related to One, and Verse.
1. Everything stated or assumed in a given discussion; SYN. universe of discourse.
2. Everything that exists anywhere; SYN. existence, nature, creation, world, cosmos, macrocosm.
3. The whole collection of existing things; SYN. cosmos.
All of space and its contents, the study of which is called cosmology. The universe is thought to be between 10 billion and 20 billion years old, and is mostly empty space, dotted with galaxies for as far as telescopes can see. The most distant detected galaxies and quasars lie 10 billion light years or more from Earth, and are moving farther apart as the universe expands. Several theories attempt to explain how the universe came into being and evolved; for example, the Big Bang theory of an expanding universe originating in a single explosive event, and the contradictory steady-state theory.
Apart from those galaxies within the Local Group, all the galaxies we see display red shifts in their spectra, indicating that they are moving away from us. The farther we look into space, the greater are the observed red shifts, which implies that the more distant galaxies are receding at ever greater speeds.
This observation led to the theory of an expanding universe, first proposed by Edwin Hubble 1929, and to Hubble's law, which states that the speed with which one galaxy moves away from another is proportional to its distance from it. Current data suggest that the galaxies are moving apart at a rate of 50–100 kps/30–60 mps for every million parsecs of distance. + prikaži više