The Universe

The universe is so big that its dimensions are hard to imagine. The universe studied by astronomers is a part of the material world that can be studied by astronomical means that correspond to the achieved level of development of science (often this part of the universe is called a metagalaxy), stretches for 1.6·1024 km and no one knows how big it is beyond the visible parts

In the narrower sense, the universe is understood as the world of celestial bodies with the laws of their movement and development, their distribution in time and space. Matter in the universe is distributed extremely unevenly, a significant part of it is concentrated in individual more or less dense cosmic bodies: galaxies, stars and nebulae. Distances between individual objects are usually measured in light years, i.e. the distance light travels in one year (it takes more than 4 years from the Sun to the star closest to us).

The science of astronomy studies the celestial bodies that make up the universe. Astrophysics tries to understand the phenomena and processes occurring in the universe. Theories of the evolution of the universe and hypotheses of its further development are developed within the framework of cosmology. The scientific study of the universe is based on the so-called cosmological principle, which states that the laws of nature are the same throughout the universe. However, the evolution of the early universe is now in doubt. Many galaxies discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope do not fit the standard model of cosmology that astronomers currently believe.