Etymology
The word universe derives from the Old French word univers, which in turn derives from
the Latin word universum.[33] The Latin word was used by Cicero and later Latin authors in many of
the same senses as the modern English word is used.[34]
Synonyms
A term for "universe" among the ancient Greek philosophers from Pythagoras onwards was τὸ
πᾶν, tò pân ("the all"), defined as all matter and all space, and τὸ ὅλον, tò hólon ("all things"), which
did not necessarily include the void.[35][36] Another synonym was ὁ κόσμος, ho kósmos (meaning
the world, the cosmos).[37] Synonyms are also found in Latin authors (totum, mundus, natura)[38] and
survive in modern languages, e.g., the German words Das All, Weltall, and Natur for universe. The
same synonyms are found in English, such as everything (as in the theory of everything), the
cosmos (as in cosmology), the world (as in the many-worlds interpretation), and nature (as in natural
laws or natural philosophy).[39]
Physical properties
Main articles: Observable universe, Age of the Universe, and Metric expansion of space
Of the four fundamental interactions, gravitation is the dominant at astronomical length scales.
Gravity's effects are cumulative; by contrast, the effects of positive and negative charges tend to
cancel one another, making electromagnetism relatively insignificant on astronomical length scales.
The remaining two interactions, the weak and strong nuclear forces, decline very rapidly with
distance; their effects are confined mainly to sub-atomic length scales.
The universe appears to have much more matter than antimatter, an asymmetry possibly related to
the CP violation.[45] This imbalance between matter and antimatter is partially responsible for the
existence of all matter existing today, since matter and antimatter, if equally produced at the Big
Bang, would have completely annihilated each other and left only photons as a result of their
interaction.[46][47] The universe also appears to have neither net momentum nor angular momentum,
which follows accepted physical laws if the universe is finite. These laws are Gauss's law and the
non-divergence of the stress-energy-momentum pseudotensor.[48]
Constituent spatial scales of the observable universe
This diagram shows Earth's location in the universe on increasingly larger scales. The images, labeled along their left edge, increase
left to right, then from top to bottom.
Size and regions
See also: Observable universe and Observational cosmology
Television signals broadcast from Earth will never reach the edges of this image.
The size of the universe is somewhat difficult to define. According to the general theory of relativity,
far regions of space may never interact with ours even in the lifetime of the universe due to the
finite speed of light and the ongoing expansion of space. For example, radio messages sent from
Earth may never reach some regions of space, even if the universe were to exist forever: space may
expand faster than light can traverse it.[49]
Distant regions of space are assumed to exist and to be part of reality as much as we are, even
though we can never interact with them. The spatial region that we can affect and be affected by is
the observable universe. The observable universe depends on the location of the observer. By
traveling, an observer can come into contact with a greater region of spacetime than an observer
who remains still. Nevertheless, even the most rapid traveler will not be able to interact with all of
space. Typically, the observable universe is taken to mean the portion of the universe that is
observable from our vantage point in the Milky Way.
The proper distance—the distance as would be measured at a specific time, including the present—
between Earth and the edge of the observable universe is 46 billion light-years [50] (14 billion parsecs),
[51]
making the diameter of the observable universe about 93 billion light-years (28 billion parsecs).
[50]
The distance the light from the edge of the observable universe has travelled is very close to
the age of the universe times the speed of light, 13.8 billion light-years (4.2×109 pc), but this does not
represent the distance at any given time because the edge of the observable universe and the Earth
have since moved further apart.[52] For comparison, the diameter of a typical galaxy is 30,000 light-
years (9,198 parsecs), and the typical distance between two neighboring galaxies is 3 million light-
years (919.8 kiloparsecs).[53] As an example, the Milky Way is roughly 100,000–180,000 light-years in
diameter,[54][55] and the nearest sister galaxy to the Milky Way, the Andromeda Galaxy, is located
roughly 2.5 million light-years away.[56]
Because we cannot observe space beyond the edge of the observable universe, it is unknown
whether the size of the universe in its totality is finite or infinite. [3][57][58] Estimates suggest that the
whole universe, if finite, must be more than 250 times larger than the observable universe. [59] Some
disputed[60] estimates for the total size of the universe, if finite, reach as high as megaparsecs, as
implied by a suggested resolution of the No-Boundary
