amazing pictures: Amazing Pictures Of The Universe

Amazing Pictures Of The Universe Definition

Source(Google.com.pk)

The universe is commonly defined as everything that exists.[1] It includes all kinds of physical matter and energy, the planets, stars, galaxies, and all the contents of space.[2][3]
Astronomers can use telescopes to look at very distant galaxies. Like this they see what the universe looked like a long time ago. This is because the light from distant parts of the universe takes a very long time to reach us. From these observations, it seems the physical laws and constants of the universe have not changed.
The Universe is huge and possibly infinite in volume. The matter which can be seen is spread over a space at least 93 billion light years across.[12] For comparison, the diameter of a typical galaxy is only 30,000 light-years, and the typical distance between two neighboring galaxies is only 3 million light-years.[13] As an example, our Milky Way Galaxy is roughly 100,000 light years in diameter,[14] and our nearest sister galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy, is located roughly 2.5 million light years away.[15] There are probably more than 100 billion (1011) galaxies in the observable universe.[16] Typical galaxies range from dwarf galaxys with as few as ten million[17] (107) stars up to giants with one trillion[18] (1012) stars, all orbiting the galaxy's center of mass. Thus, a very rough estimate from these numbers would suggest there are around one sextillion (1021) stars in the observable universe; though a 2003 study by Australian National University astronomers resulted in a figure of 70 sextillion (7 x 1022).[19]

The universe is thought to be mostly made of dark energy and dark matter, both of which are not understood right now. Less than 5% of the universe is ordinary matter.
The matter that can be seen is spread throughout the universe, when averaged over distances longer than 300 million light-years.[20] However, on smaller length-scales, matter is observed to form 'clumps', many atoms are condensed into stars, most stars into galaxies, most galaxies into galaxy groups and clusters and, lastly, the largest-scale structures such as the Great Wall of galaxies.
The present overall density of the Universe is very low, roughly 9.9 × 10−30 grams per cubic centimetre. This mass-energy appears to consist of 73% dark energy, 23% cold dark matter and 4% ordinary matter. The density of atoms is about a single hydrogen atom for every four cubic meters of volume.[21] The properties of dark energy and dark matter are not known. Dark matter slows the expansion of the Universe. Dark energy makes its expansion faster.
The Universe is old, and changing. The best good guess of the Universe's age is 13.73±0.12 billion years old, based on what was seen of the cosmic microwave background radiation.[22] Independent estimates (based on measurements such as radioactive dating) agree, although they are less precise, ranging from 11–20 billion years[23] to 13–15 billion years.[24]
The universe has not been the same at all times in its history. This getting bigger accounts for how Earth-bound people can see the light from a galaxy 30 billion light years away, even if that light has traveled for only 13 billion years; the very space between them has expanded. This expansion is consistent with the observation that the light from distant galaxies has been redshifted; the photons emitted have been stretched to longer wavelengths and lower frequency during their journey. The rate of this spatial expansion is accelerating, based on studies of Type Ia supernovae and other data.
The relative amounts of different chemical elements — especially the lightest atoms such as hydrogen, deuterium and helium — seem to be identical in all of the universe and throughout all of the history of it that we know of.[25] The universe seems to have much more matter than antimatter.[26] The Universe appears to have no net electric charge, and therefore gravity appears to be the dominant interaction on cosmological length scales. The Universe also appears to have neither net momentum nor angular momentum. The absence of net charge and momentum would follow if the universe were finite.[27]

The elementary particles from which the Universe is constructed. Six leptons and six quarks comprise most of the matter; for example, the protons and neutrons of atomic nuclei are composed of quarks, and the ubiquitous electron is a lepton. These particles interact via the gauge bosons shown in the middle row, each corresponding to a particular type of gauge symmetry. The Higgs boson (as yet unobserved) is believed to confer mass on the particles with which it is connected. The graviton, a supposed gauge boson for gravity, is not shown.
The Universe appears to have a smooth space-time continuum made of three spatial dimensions and one temporal (time) dimension. On the average, space is very nearly flat (close to zero curvature), meaning that Euclidean geometry is experimentally true with high accuracy throughout most of the Universe.[28] However, the universe may have more dimensions and its spacetime may have a multiply connected global topology.[29]
The Universe seems to be governed throughout by the same physical laws and physical constants.[30] According to the prevailing Standard Model of physics, all matter is composed of three generations of leptons and quarks, both of which are fermions. These elementary particles interact via at most three fundamental interactions: the electroweak interaction which includes electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force; the strong nuclear force described by quantum chromodynamics; and gravity, which is best described at present by general relativity.
The idea of special relativity is thought to hold in all of the universe, provided that the spatial and temporal length scales are sufficiently short; otherwise, general relativity must be applied. There is no explanation for the particular values that physical constants appear to have throughout our Universe, such as Planck's constant h or the gravitational constant G. Several conservation laws have been identified, such as the conservation of charge, conservation of momentum, conservation of angular momentum and conservation of energy.