> "Hot singles in your nearby area."

This doesn't sound like standard English either, though.

If it's good enough for the New York Times, it's good enough for me:

https://ludwig.guru/s/nearby+area

You missed a key word. I'm not against the use of the phrase "nearby area" which is obviously acceptable, just like "nearby" + any_noun is acceptable. Anyway, there are also plenty of cases - although they rarely occur - where the phrase "your nearby area" could be used. This just isn't one of them.

https://ludwig.guru/s/your+nearby+area

Hot singles in a nearby area would make sense

Hot singles in your nearby area doesn't make sense, because it is unclear what the intention of the word "nearby" is. It clearly modifies "area". So the area is nearby something. By what is it nearby?

This analogy fails because distance on a cosmological scale means both space and time whilst on smaller scales we measure space and time as two distinct parameters.

If we go with the single analogy it would be like filtering on Tinder based on distance as well as when the last time that account was active.

It’s like if going more than 50 miles further out of your existing location would only show tinder accounts from 5 years ago which wouldn’t be relevant for what you are looking for which are people who are single right now and looking right now.

Bad rule of thumb, in general.

> "Hot singles in your area" is a bit different than "Hot singles in your nearby area."

I wasn't using the word "area", though.

> The term "nearby universe" is perfectly fine, as far as the English language goes.

Not according to my language sensibility at the very least. Just like sibling comment's remark about "nearby house" when talking about the very house you're currently in.

You are more than welcome to become a prominent cosmologist and advocate for the term change.

"Inheritance" means very different things to programmers and normal people. You can't expect domain use to follow your sensibilities.

One is class¹ inheritance, the other one is (most likely about) wealth inheritance. They do, however, both respect the notion of inheritance, I don't see why anyone's sensibilities would be affected. But then comes "local universe", which although refers to the local part of THE universe, it drops the definitive article, only because coining a new (albeit controversial) term in astronomy is more rewarding for someone looking to leave a mark on the domain than to respect logic to a more sensible result.

¹ Let's leave for now what "class" means for programmers vs. other kinds of people.

In this case you literally gave a better example “class”, that said in cosmology there is only one universe ours.

The multiverse and other theories of multiple universes nominally belong to other fields of study.

Cosmology is the study of the universe we live in, specifically it’s development.

That’s why we have terms such as the local/near by universe and the observable universe. I find odd that none that that seem to take offense with the former mentions the latter, since grammatically they are identical.