English has three words for outer space. space, universe, cosmos.
Don't all three just mean outer space?
SPACEthe empty stretch beyond Earth
Astronauts go out into space. It comes from Latin spatium, meaning room or extent. That's why a parking spot is a parking space too.
A parking lot and outer space are the same word?
UNIVERSEeverything that exists
Every dot in this photo is a galaxy, not a star. Galaxies, light, time, you and me. Add up everything that exists and you get the universe. In Latin it means turned into one.
COSMOSthe universe as an ordered whole
The Greek word kosmos meant order. It also meant decoration and adornment. See the universe as one well-arranged world and you call it the cosmos.
The universe means decoration?
Cosmetic comes from the same root. It means to put a face in order. The cosmos and makeup are relatives.
To sum up: astronauts go to space, scientists measure the universe, and poets sing of the cosmos.
So an astronaut can't go to the universe. They're already inside it.
And the Chinese characters, 宇宙?
The ancient Chinese book Huainanzi says: all directions and up and down are called 宇, and the span from past to present is called 宙. From the start, the word joined space and time.
Sources
Photo credits
- The Blue Marble (remastered).jpg, NASA/Apollo 17 crew; taken by either Harrison Schmitt or Ron Evans, Public domain (source)
- Bruce McCandless II during EVA in 1984.jpg, NASA, Public domain (source)
- Hubble ultra deep field.jpg, NASA and the European Space Agency., Public domain (source)
- Messier51 sRGB.jpg, NASA and European Space Agency, Public domain (source)
- Pillars of creation 2014 HST WFC3-UVIS full-res denoised.jpg, NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), Public domain (source)
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