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posted by martyb on Tuesday November 05 2019, @03:14PM   Printer-friendly
from the go-east-to-get-west dept.

When researchers reanalysed the gold-standard data set of the early universe, they concluded that the cosmos must be "closed," or curled up like a ball. Most others remain unconvinced.

A provocative paper published today in the journal Nature Astronomy argues that the universe may curve around and close in on itself like a sphere, rather than lying flat like a sheet of paper as the standard theory of cosmology predicts. The authors reanalysed a major cosmological data set and concluded that the data favours a closed universe with 99% certainty — even as other evidence suggests the universe is flat.

The data in question — the Planck space telescope's observations of ancient light called the cosmic microwave background (CMB) — "clearly points towards a closed model," said Alessandro Melchiorri of Sapienza University of Rome. He co-authored the new paper with Eleonora di Valentino of the University of Manchester and Joseph Silk, principally of the University of Oxford. In their view, the discordance between the CMB data, which suggests the universe is closed, and other data pointing to flatness represents a "cosmological crisis" that calls for "drastic rethinking."

What Shape Is the Universe?

In your opinion, which shape is more likely ?


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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday November 05 2019, @09:16PM (1 child)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 05 2019, @09:16PM (#916534) Journal

    Yep. I agree.

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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 05 2019, @09:26PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday November 05 2019, @09:26PM (#916543)

    Next, instead of theoretical flatlanders on a globe on your desk, put your flatlanders on the surface of the Earth and make them blind, they only get their information from propagating sound waves... kind of like our relativistic limits with the speed of photons in our space.

    It would only take 32 hours for an atmospheric sound wave to travel the circumference of the Earth, but that starts to give some perspective on how that's going to mess with attempting measurements to detect curvature.

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