The universal Teichmu¨ller space is an infinitely dimensional generalization of the classical Teichmu¨ller space of Riemann surfaces. It carries a natural Hilbert structure, on which one can define a natural Riemannian metric, the Weil-Petersson metric. In this paper we investigate the Weil-Petersson Riemannian curvature operator ˜ Q of the universal Teichmu¨ller space with the Hilbert structure, and prove the following: (i) ˜ Q is non-positive definite. (ii) ˜ Q is a bounded operator. (iii) ˜ Q is not compact; the set of the spectra of ˜ Q is not discrete. As an application, we show that neither the Quaternionic hyperbolic space nor the Cayley plane can be totally geodesically immersed in the universal Teichmu¨ller space endowed with the Weil-Petersson metric.