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While it does sound weird, it is a term that scientists are using to distinguish between the universe as a whole of existence that was, is including us and will be, and what we can observe within our capabilities from our position on Earth, in the Sol system, travelling in the Orion Arm of Milky Way galaxy. The universe and the observable universe.

This of course has nothing to do with the popular scifi concept of parallel universes.

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The observable universe isn’t the same as the local universe. The observable universe encompasses a region of approximately 13.7B light years from our point of observation which is earth, the local or near by universe is limited to about 1b light years.

Both have their usefulness when conducting observations as we need to take certain assumptions based on what we know.

The former is anything that is currently within our cosmological horizon the latter is anything we can observe that is in the same relative slice of time or cosmological development stage as us.

A better call would have been "nearby part of the universe", with "the" being the most important word that should not have been left out. It may not have been as terse/catchy as "nearby universe", but it would not have strayed into controversy (the kind of which we see here).

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