The Universe is a football

[Anonymous]

LONDON (Reuters) -- The universe may be finite, spherical and patched together like a soccer ball, according to U.S. and French researchers.

Jeffrey Weeks, a MacArthur Fellow based in Canton, New York, and researchers from the University of Paris and Observatory of Paris studied astronomical data which suggests the universe is finite and made of curved pentagons joined together into a sphere.

In research reported in the Thursday edition of the science journal Nature, the scientists said data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotrophy Probe, which maps background radiation left over from the Big Bang, is not consistent with an infinite universe.

"Since antiquity, humans have wondered whether our universe is finite or infinite. Now, after more than two millennia of speculation, observational data might finally settle the ancient question," Weeks said.

In a commentary on the research, George Ellis of the University of Cape Town in South Africa, said if Weeks and his colleagues are correct we might indeed live is a small, closed universe.

Source: CNN.com

It's amusing to think we may be spinning around inside a giant football, booted around a municipal park by a group of sweaty omnipotent beings.
Small deities in the park, togas for goalposts.... Isn't it? Wasn't it? Mmm?
Marvellous.

 

[McAvennie]

This is too clever for my wee head. I don't get what could possibly be beyond the limits of this 'football'? What happens when you reach the limits? Where did it come from?
I've always kinda accepted the theory that space goes on forever and ever and ever. Although how they worked that out is beyond me. It's kind of like 'the world is flat' theory when you think of it.
To me this further confirms my beleif that we are a kid's science experiment in some giagantico alternate reality where this football is marble sized and the history of man is probably about ten minutes of their time. Scary!

 

[Anonymous]

This is too clever for my wee head. I don't get what could possibly be beyond the limits of this 'football'? What happens when you reach the limits? Where did it come from?

Well, there's been theories around for a few decades now about Space being multi-dimensional string, folded up into a seven, or eleven dimensional sphere.

Our Universe just being a fleeting one of many potential parallel Universes, frothing and foaming like the head on a pint of Guiness, except all sharing the same point in time.

No. What really boggles my imagination is,

BBCi News, 09/October/03: 'Cosmos Is Shaped Like A Football'

More precisely, we may inhabit a dodecahedral cosmos. It is, according to the scientists, the best way to account for the latest satellite observations.

Dodecahedrons, and similar shapes, have long fascinated mankind. Plato believed that the Universe was made up of them.

Leonardo da Vinci also studied them, as did the great astronomer Kepler, who thought the structure of the Solar System was based on geometrical shapes.

How could they possibly have figured something like that out, if it's true that that is the shape of the Universe?

 

[Anonymous]

So what they are saying is that if you were able to travel in a straight line for 60 billion light years you would arrive back at Earth.
You can't see that far because of the redshift.
In fact I think it would be impossible to reach a location which is presently 60 billion light years away as it is receding from us faster than light, which makes this hypothesis ultimately untestable.

The small repeating universe has been suggested by various mathematicians at various times; I'm not convinced, but there is no reason to dismiss the possibility yet.

 

[Anonymous]

So what they are saying is that if you were able to travel in a straight line for 60 billion light years you would arrive back at Earth.

Oh no you misunderstand...

If you travel in a straight line for 60 billion years you still wouldn't be able to claim that was a corner. REF!

 

[floyd23a1]

and all the universe is football-shaped

Mathematicians studying data from the cosmic microwave background have suggested that a possible structure for a finite universe would be if it were shaped similar to a football. They theorise that light reaching the boundary of the universe would reappear on the opposite face.

The Universe could be shaped like a soccer ball, say mathematicians.

The idea is prompted by data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite. This sees back to when the Universe was about 380,000 years old, and reveals the all-pervading radiation left over from the Big Bang - the cosmic microwave background.

There are fluctuations in this background, like waves in the sea. They are the legacy of the small lumps in the early Universe that gave rise to stars and galaxies.

An infinite Universe would contain waves of all sizes. The WMAP did not see any very large waves. This points to space being finite - for the same reasons that you don't see breakers in your bathtub.

The best explanation for these observations is that the cosmos is a Poincaré dodecahedral space, says a team led by Jeffrey Weeks, an independent mathematician based in Canton, New York. Mathematical models of a spherical, solid Universe edged by 12 curved pentagons produce the patterns seen in the background radiation without any special fine-tuning. "It fits the data surprisingly well," says Weeks.

The dodecahedron is "a nice solution", agrees cosmologist Janna Levin of the University of Cambridge, UK. But other geometries could produce similar patterns in the microwave background, she warns. "It's going to be a surprise if the Universe has chosen such a beautiful platonic form," she says. "And I'd be surprised if the Universe was so small."

Full article from Nature


I like this idea!

(BTW: what's beyond the universe, are we the ball in a cosmic game of footy between the gods. If so who's winning?)