Physical Agent Inventory: The Physical Universe

Last modified: Tue 4/15/97 2000 PDT

Canon Terms	Object	Classes	(none)
		Instances	PhysicalUniverse; ExtraterrestrialUniverse
	Event	Classes	(none)
		Instances	(none)

The physical universe is that Physical Agent which is the aggregate of all other known Physical Agents. The study of the physical universe as a whole is called cosmology, part of physics.

• You can learn about the physical universe here:
• Tutorial on Cosmology and Dark Matter (jonathan Dursi)
• Cosmology and the Big Bang (Mike Guidry)
• Cosmology: A Research Briefing (National Academy of Sciences)
• Introduction to Cosmology (NASA)
• A Cosmology Simulation (Fullagar/Quinn/Salmon/Warren/Zurek)
• Encyclopedia of Cosmology (Lawrence Berkeley Lab)

Since the physical universe is very much larger than the scale at which human auditory or tactile perception can operate, most observations come to us visually as electromagnetic (EM) energy. Observation of EM energy is (currently) the only means of perceiving most of the extraterrestrial universe, that part of the physical universe with lies outside the Earth and with which humans cannot easily interact through auditory or tactile channels, due to the separation of space. The study of the extraterrestrial universe is the subject matter of astronomy, part of physical science. An innovation with important applications in astronomy is the optical telescope.