About The Universe

The Universe is a set of islands that is planned to be built off the coast of Dubai, United Arab Emirates. They will form a cluster of islands in the shape of the solar system. The Universe will have 3,000 hectares of land and will take 15 to 20 years to build. Nakheel, the same company building the Palm Islands and The World, will develop The Universe. The Universe will be located between the Palm Jumeirah, The World, the Jumeirah coast and the Palm Deira. The project, which was announced in January 2008, is still in the planning stages. It will be dredged by Van Oord and Jan de Nul, the same companies used for The World, and the Palm Islands.

The initial design has the Sun represented on the left (near Jumeirah Palm), with the planets of the solar system represented as you head towards the right (near Port Rashid). You can clearly see the shape of Saturn as the 4th planet, assuming the Earth is not part of the trail (since “The World” has already been developed), but the relative sizes of Saturn and Mercury are a bit off. No we don’t know what the cinnamon bun shape at the other end is either, but we think it represents either a galaxy (perhaps the Milky Way), or a cinnamon bun. Nakheel says the islands are “coral-shaped”, so if you didn’t know what the shape of coral was, now you now it’s the same as planet and cinnamon bun shapes.

In case you’re wondering, the order of the planets from the Sun is Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Asteroid Belt (not a planet), Jupiter, Saturn (with rings), Uranus (insert schoolboy comment here), Neptune, Pluto.
In terms of celestial objects which Nakheel could base future developments on, we’d like to suggest they consider a small moon somewhere along a quieter part of the coastline, where we could sit and have a picnic lunch occasionally.