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The universe appears to be fairly flat, but according to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_of_the_universe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_of_the_univers
by perl4ever 6y ago
The universe appears to be fairly flat, but according to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_of_the_universe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_of_the_universe
...if the universe was like a "3-torus", it could be both flat and finite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-torus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-torus
If you ever played the classic game "asteroids", you might remember how everything wrapped around at the edges of the screen. A 3-torus would be like that, only in 3D.
On the other hand, one could imagine the universe as a 3-sphere, which I believe would mean it would be both locally curved and finite in volume. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-sphere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-sphere
There are also other possibilities, like something analogous to a Klein bottle with an extra dimension.
There are a bunch of possibilities for "flat and finite" as well as "positively curved and finite" that I can't begin to visualize.
There is even supposedly such a (hypothetical) thing as a negatively curved, (commonly described as saddle shaped) yet finite universe.
But regardless, the current belief about the real universe is that it is at least very close to flat, but not known to be finite or infinite.
- drran 6y agoAsteroids game is not a physical model. Did you ever played with GPT2 text generator? Your theory would be like that.