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The physical universe is defined as all of space and time [a] (collectively referred to as spacetime) and their contents. [10] Such contents comprise all of energy in its various forms, including electromagnetic radiation and matter, and therefore planets, moons, stars, galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space.
Relativity theory leads to the cosmological question of what shape the universe is, and where space came from. It appears that space was created in the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago [30] and has been expanding ever since. The overall shape of space is not known, but space is known to be expanding very rapidly due to the cosmic inflation.
The term outward space existed in a poem from 1842 by the English poet Lady Emmeline Stuart-Wortley called "The Maiden of Moscow", [13] but in astronomy the term outer space found its application for the first time in 1845 by Alexander von Humboldt. [14] The term was eventually popularized through the writings of H. G. Wells after 1901. [15]
An infinite universe (unbounded metric space) means that there are points arbitrarily far apart: for any distance d, there are points that are of a distance at least d apart. A finite universe is a bounded metric space, where there is some distance d such that all points are within distance d of each other.
The observable universe is thus a sphere with a diameter of about 28.5 gigaparsecs [27] (93 billion light-years or 8.8 × 10 26 m). [28] Assuming that space is roughly flat (in the sense of being a Euclidean space), this size corresponds to a comoving volume of about 1.22 × 10 4 Gpc 3 (4.22 × 10 5 Gly 3 or 3.57 × 10 80 m 3). [29]
With this Hubble formulated the Hubble constant, which allowed for the first time a calculation of the age of the Universe and size of the Observable Universe, which became increasingly precise with better meassurements, starting at 2 billion years and 280 million light-years, until 2006 when data of the Hubble Space Telescope allowed a very ...
The Indians [who?] believed in a cyclic universe related to three other beliefs: (i), time is endless and space has infinite extension; (ii), earth is not the center of the universe; and (iii), laws govern all development, including the creation and destruction of the universe. The Indians believed that there were three types of space ...
The universe is generally understood to have begun with the Big Bang, followed almost instantaneously by cosmic inflation, an expansion of space from which the universe is thought to have emerged 13.799 ± 0.021 billion years ago. [8] Cosmogony studies the origin of the universe, and cosmography maps the features of the universe.