As the final letter in the Greek alphabet, omega is often used to denote the last, the end, or the ultimate limit of aset, in contrast toalpha, the first letter of the Greek alphabet; seeAlpha and Omega.
Ω was not part of the early (8th century BC)Greek alphabets. It was introduced in the late 7th century BC in the Ionian cities of Asia Minor to denote alongopen-mid back rounded vowel[ɔː]. It is a variant of omicron (Ο), broken up at the side (), with the edges subsequently turned outward (,,,).[3] The Dorian city ofKnidos as well as a few Aegean islands, namelyParos,Thasos andMelos, chose the exact opposite innovation, using a broken-up circle for the short and a closed circle for the long/o/.[3]
The name Ωμέγα isByzantine; inClassical Greek, the letter was calledō (ὦ) (pronounced /ɔ̂ː/), whereas the omicron was calledou (οὖ) (pronounced /ôː/).[4] The modern lowercase shape goes back to theuncial form, a form that developed during the 3rd century BC in ancient handwriting on papyrus, from a flattened-out form of the letter () that had its edges curved even further upward.[5]
Omega was also adopted into the Latin alphabet, as a letter of the 1982 revision to theAfrican reference alphabet. It's in sparse use (seeLatin omega).
Foroxygen-18, a natural, stable isotope of oxygen[6]
Foromega loop, a protein structural motif consisting of a loop of six or more amino acid residues in any sequence, a structure named for its resemblance to the Greek letter.[7]
Forohm – SI unit of electrical resistance;[8] formerly also used upside down (℧) to representmho, the old name for the inverse of an ohm (now siemens with symbol S) used for electrical conductance. Unicode has a separate code pointU+2126ΩOHM SIGN (HTML entityΩ), but it is included only for backward compatibility, and the canonically equivalent code pointU+03A9ΩGREEK CAPITAL LETTER OMEGA (Ω) is preferred.[9]
Instatistical mechanics, Ω refers to the multiplicity (number of microstates) in a system.
A secret boss in theFinal Fantasy series called Omega ( Ω ) Weapon.
A character from the seriesDoctor Who called Omega, believed to be one of the creators of the Time Lords of Gallifrey.
The symbol for the highest power level of aPSI attack in theMother/EarthBound games
A symbol used by U.S. citizens in the 1960s & 1970s to denote resistance to the U.S. war in Viet Nam. Adapted from the SI unit for electrical resistance.[20]
U+1D76E𝝮MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD CAPITAL OMEGA
U+1D788𝞈MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD SMALL OMEGA
U+1D7A8𝞨MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD ITALIC CAPITAL OMEGA
U+1D7C2𝟂MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD ITALIC SMALL OMEGA
^TheMATHEMATICAL characters are used only in math. Stylized Greek text should be encoded using the normal Greek letters, with markup and formatting to indicate the style of the text.
^abAnne Jeffery (1961),The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece, pp. 37–38.
^Herbert Weir SmythA Greek Grammar for Colleges §1.
^Edward M. Thompson (1912),Introduction to Greek and Latin Paleography, Oxford: Clarendon, p. 144.
^Capilla, José E.; Arevalo, Javier Rodriguez; Castaño, Silvino Castaño; Teijeiro, María Fé Díaz; del Moral, Rut Sanchez; Diaz, Javier Heredia (19 September 2012)."Mapping Oxygen-18 in Meteoric Precipitation over Peninsular Spain Using Geostatistical Tools"(PDF).cedex.es. Valencia, Spain: Ninth Conference on Geostatistics for Environmental Applications. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 23 September 2015. Retrieved8 May 2017.
^Weisstein, Eric W."Solid Angle".mathworld.wolfram.com. Retrieved7 February 2025.The solid angle Ω subtended by a surface S is defined as the surface area Ω of a unit sphere covered by the surface's projection onto the sphere.
^Weisstein, Eric W."Omega Constant".mathworld.wolfram.com. Retrieved18 January 2025.
^Weisstein, Eric W."Brocard Points".mathworld.wolfram.com. Retrieved7 February 2025.
^Weisstein, Eric W."Prime Factor".mathworld.wolfram.com. Retrieved12 August 2020.
^"Emblem of the Supreme Court - Herald Art". 7 May 2022. Retrieved8 February 2025.The emblem shows the plant badges of England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland surrounded by Omega the ultimate letter in the Greek alphabet.
^"Desde la Revolución hasta el 2020".Gobierno de Aguascalientes. Retrieved7 August 2024....su fachada representa a una omega que simboliza el final de la vida.
^"6 Ridiculous Sci-Fi Energy Schemes".Popular Mechanics. 16 October 2013. Retrieved7 February 2025.But the writers of one episode of Star Trek: Voyager apparently slept through that lecture, as they introduced the omega particle in "The Omega Directive."
^Weisstein, Eric W."Ordinal Number".mathworld.wolfram.com. Retrieved18 January 2025.The first transfinite ordinal, denoted ω, is ...
^Easwaran, Kenny; Hájek, Alan; Mancosu, Paolo; Oppy, Graham (2024), Zalta, Edward N.; Nodelman, Uri (eds.),"Infinity",The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2024 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved7 February 2025
^Weisstein, Eric W."Wright Function".mathworld.wolfram.com. Retrieved18 January 2025.
^Weisstein, Eric W."Distinct Prime Factors".mathworld.wolfram.com. Retrieved8 February 2025.The distinct prime factors of a positive integer n>=2 are defined as the ω(n) numbers p_1, ..., p_(ω(n))...
^Weisstein, Eric W."Brocard Angle".mathworld.wolfram.com. Retrieved7 February 2025.
^Weisstein, Eric W."Clique".mathworld.wolfram.com. Retrieved7 February 2025.A clique of a graph G is a complete subgraph of G, and the clique of largest possible size is referred to as a maximum clique (which has size known as the (upper) clique number ?(G)).
^"Life Table — Solving Actuarial Math with Python".actuarialmath-guide.readthedocs.io. Retrieved8 February 2025.A life table, from some initial age x0 to a maximum age ω, represents a survival model with probabilities...
